Eva Galvan

The family of the late Sterling professor and literary critic Harold Bloom GRD ’56 donated approximately 10,000 books to Pauli Murray College.

The books — donated by Bloom’s wife Jeanne Bloom — came from his personal collection.

“The gift is a brand-new one,” Tina Lu, the Pauli Murray head of college, wrote in an email to the News. “It’s probably 10000 books? We haven’t counted them yet.”

Pauli Murray College will hold a reception for Jeanne Bloom and her son David in early October.

“It’ll be a great way to welcome these books into the community, a way to celebrate Mrs. Bloom for her generosity,” Lu wrote, “and she’ll get to see that these books will live on.”

Harold Bloom, who joined Yale’s English department in 1956 after receiving his PhD from Yale, continued to teach until four days before his death in 2019. His prolific scholarly work spanned across Romanticism, Shakespeare and the Bible.

Suzette Courtmanche, a senior administrative assistant in Lu’s office, said the college began corresponding with Bloom’s family about the book donation last spring semester and received the books shortly before Commencement in May.

Lu credited English professor Leslie Brisman as a key figure in facilitating this book bequest, calling him a good friend of both the Blooms and Pauli Murray College.

“When Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray College first opened, I saw beautiful library spaces — but no books!” Brisman wrote in an email to the News.

According to Lu, the college “has turned down many, many offers of books over the years” but accepted this bequest because Bloom was a “distinctively Yale figure.”

“We happen to have the space largely because we’ve been waiting to accept the ‘right’ gift,” Lu wrote. “I wanted a book collection that actually feels like it is important to Yale.”

Brisman wrote that he was “thrilled” that Bloom’s collection would find a home in Murray.

Erika Wang ’27, a Pauli Murray student who works as a college aide, is one of the students tasked with sorting through the volumes. According to Wang, most of the books are stored in a room on the fifth floor of Bass Tower that students not assigned to work with this collection are not allowed to enter.

One of the highlights of Wang’s work has been discovering personalized letters as she sorts through the collection.

“They’re a lot of handwritten letters as well as type-written ones,” she said. “You’re really able to get a glimpse into some history, the past, as well as someone else’s life. A lot of times he’s basically asked to review the writings of other people, and he’ll kinda use the letter as a bookmark for the book that he’s reading.”

Bloom’s life as a professor and critic is evident in his book collections, Wang said. She recalled seeing many books edited or with an introduction by Bloom.

Bloom’s books of poetry “make a very handsome collection almost inimitable in contemporary poetry,” Brisman wrote, “given how voracious a reader of poetry Professor Bloom was and how many poets send their works to him.”

Kristina Akova ’29, a student at Pauli Murray College, expressed surprise at this book donation.

“I’ve never heard about Harold Bloom until Yale,” she told the News. “All I know about him is that he was a famous Yale professor.” 

Pauli Murray College was founded in 2017.