Editing Widener Library (section)

===Literary references===

In [[H.&nbsp;P. Lovecraft]]'s fictional universe [[Cthulhu Mythos]], Widener is one of five libraries holding a 17th-century edition of the ''[[Necronomicon|Necro{{shy}}nom{{shy}}i{{shy}}con]]'', hidden somewhere in the stacks.{{r|necro}}

[[Thomas Wolfe]], who earned a Harvard [[master's degree]] in 1922,{{r|ask_wolfe}} told [[Max Perkins]] that he spent most of his Harvard years in Widener's reading room.{{r|shandtucci}} He wrote of {{nobr|"[wandering]}}<!--I wander--> through the stacks of that great library like some damned soul, never at rest{{mdashb}}ever leaping ahead from the pages I read to thoughts of those I want to read";{{r|crime_wolfe}} his [[alter ego]] [[Eugene Gant]] read with a watch in his hand, "laying waste of the shelves."{{hsp}}{{r|look}}

Historian [[Barbara Tuchman]] considered "the single most formative experience" of her career the writing of her undergrad{{shy}}uate thesis, for which she was "allowed to have as my own one of those little cubicles with a table under a window" in the Widener stacks, which were "my [[Eureka (word)#Archimedes|Archimedes' bathtub]], my [[burning bush]], my [[Alexander Fleming#accidental discovery|dish of mold]] where I found my personal penicillin."{{hsp}}{{r|tuchman}}