The Mullock Collection (Basilica Museum, St. John’s)

The Mullock Collection is the only nineteenth-century book collection in Newfoundland and Labrador that survived in its original setting dating from 1856. Held by the Basilica Museum in St. John’s, the library of Dr. John Thomas Mullock (1807-1869), Roman Catholic Bishop of Newfoundland and then St. John’s, reflects its owner’s wide-ranging learning and multilingual abilities. The Mullock Collection includes some 1300 books in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and other languages, published over four centuries, from the early sixteenth century to Mullock’s death in 1869. Originally intended for public use, the Mullock Collection forms the nucleus of the current Episcopal Library. The attached catalogue contains books that bear Mullock’s ownership mark and are housed respectively at the Basilica Museum and Memorial University’s Queen Elizabeth II Library.

A digital copy of the illustrated book of essays on the Mullock Collection, The Finest Room in the Colony. The Library of John Thomas Mullock, eds. Ágnes Juhász-Ormsby and Nancy Earle (St. John’s: Memorial University Libraries, 2016) can be found through the following link:

370 x 290mm. [45] leaves. The written area measures 320 x 180mm, in two columns (except for the introduction and afterword), with lettering and decoration by Boyd Warren Chubbs, in black, brown, gold, blue, red and claret inks, with punctuation in gold. Text and decoration on the recto side only. There are 32 large decorated capitals, 24 smaller decorated capitals, as well as numerous large coloured capitals highlighting various areas of the text. There is a vine and leaf motif, pen flourishes, paraph marks, and rubrication throughout. Head and tail pieces separate the various books. Line numbers are in red. The text is illustrated with 31 watercolours by Gerald Leopold Squires, including 2 full-page illustrations (Fol. 4 &Fol.18). Written on 320lb deckled-edged “Aquarelle Arches” paper, the leather binding is by Dr. Brian Roberts, ‘The Book Doctor.’

…from A Grand Tour: Catalogue

Please visit the Alcuin Book Awards page for more information.

This catalogue highlights forty-seven of the 1,180 eighteenth-century imprints held by Memorial University Libraries.

Pages from the Past: History of the Written Word (No. 10 of fifteen numbered portfolio sets) consists of 157 original leaves and artefacts, including a Babylonian clay tablet, a Babylonian cylinder seal, an Egyptian scarab seal, and several papyrus pieces. There are parchment leaves from medieval manuscripts, and pages from incunables, including a leaf each from the Nuremberg Chronicles (Koberger, 1493) and Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools (Bergmann, 1498). The Collection also contains a wide range of pages from the hand-press period, including a leaf printed by Wynkyn De Worde (1516), a sample from Munster’s Cosmographia Universalis (1559), a leaf from Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible (1584), as well as samples of fine calligraphy. There are early printed pages from Ireland, Mexico and the USA, one of the latter being a fragment of a Cotton Mather sermon printed by his sister in Boston in 1685. This leaf book concludes with fragments from some of the best late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century printers, including William Morris and Bruce Rogers.

For more information, please contact librarian Patrick Warner at the QEII’s Archives and Special Collections.

Now showing in the mail lobby of the Queen Elizabeth II Library, this exhibit highlights book formats from folio to miniatures. The exhibit will be on view for approximately six weeks (posted Sept 13, 2016)

Our new exhibit is up! Come visit from May 15 – June 30, 2016, at the Queen Elizabeth II Library (3rd Floor). The exhibit also will run from July 5 – August 15, 2016 at the A.C. Hunter Public Library, Arts & Culture Centre, St. John’s. For more information, see the Memorial University Libraries’ Spotlight. Also, see our Flickr page for pictures of the exhibit.