Prosecutors charged a former Arkansas attorney and convicted documents thief November 19 with stealing six William Faulkner letters from the Kent Library rare book room at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau. Robert Hardin Smith, who served nearly two years in prison for stealing manuscripts from the University of Kansas and the University of Arkansas libraries in 1996, was identified from a photograph by SMSU Archivist Lisa Speer as the man who last looked at the missing letters September 30 and who signed the guest registry as “R. Smith.”
SMSU officials discovered the theft November 11 after Faulkner collector Tom Fisk saw three of the letters for sale on eBay by Noble Enterprises of Rowlett, Texas, which had bought the letters from Smith in October. All six letters have been recovered, but Smith remains at large, the Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian reported November 22.
The letters are from the university’s Brodsky Collection, one of the four largest collections of Faulkner materials in the world. According to SMSU spokesperson Ann Hayes, the library is conducting an inventory of the Faulkner materials, but has not turned up any other missing items.
Posted November 25, 2002.