Recently added to the Anne and Kevin Major Collection

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. engravings by Barry Moser, [West Hatfield, Massachusetts] Pennyroyal Press, 1982

The finest Pennyroyal Press edition of this modern press books. On Pulegium paper made especially for the Pennyroyal Press and signed by the artist, this is #203/350.

Printed in black with the sub-titles, chapter numbers and titles all printed in blue and the calligraphic title (designed by G.G. Laurens) and marginal glosses all printed in red, Barry Moser’s wonderful wood-engravings throughout the text, a number full-page, and one (an engraving of Alice) a folding tipped-in plate printed on a tinted ground, 2 of the wood engravings printed in the outer margins in blue and red and an engraving of the key printed in gold, on the opposing page is an engraving of the bottle with the `Drink Me’ label printed in black, blue, green and red, the large initial `A’ at the beginning of the text designed by Laurens and engraved and hand coloured in gold by Barry Moser.

With a portfolio of the engravings, being an extra suite, each printed on a separate sheet measuring 425 x 280 mm and initialed in pencil by Barry Moser, together with the note to the reader concerning the cracking of the wood blocks; all enclosed in a pale grey canvas portfolio.

Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Illustrated by Barry Moser. Foreword by Henry Nash Smith. West Hatfield, [Massachusetts]: Printed by Harold McGrath. , 1985.

Centenary Edition. Limited to 350 numbered copies signed by the artist, this being number 62. Printed on Mohawk Letterpress, accompanied with an additional unsigned suite of the prints by Barry Moser, all encased in a linen chemise. Large quarto. xxii, 419 pp. Forty-nine wood engravings by Barry Moser. Publisher’s full green morocco gilt by E. Gray Parrot. Triple gilt-rule borders on covers, with the dates 1885-1985 stamped in gilt within roundel in center of upper cover. Spine lettered in gilt, with paste paper endsheets by David Bourbeau. The text used for this project was taken from the Mark Twain Project at the Bancroft Library.

The one-hundred-and-thirty titles in the Robert D. Denham Collection include books, broadsides and keepsakes produced by the Gauntlet Press, the private press established by Canadian poet Richard Outram and Canadian artist Barbara Howard. The Collection also holds trade editions of Outram’s work as well as works by Richard Outram and Barbara Howard that do not bear the mark of the Gauntlet Press. Many of the items in the Collection are presentation copies, inscribed by Outram for Professor Robert D. Denham and his wife. The Collection also contains Gauntlet Press and other titles that were originally Barbara Howards’s personal copies, several of which bear an inscription in Richard Outram’s hand.

T he Lubrano Collection of Broadside Ballads is a collection of 580 English ballads from the nineteenth century, the last great period of broadside ballad production. The ballads in this collection are typical examples of nineteenth century broadside printer’s art with most sheets containing two ballads, many with a woodcut at the top and displayed title underneath it, and often with another decorative cut at the bottom of the sheet. The same woodcut is often used with different ballads. Digital facimiles of all 580 broadsides may be viewed here. The original paper copies may be viewed by visiting the Queen Elizabeth II Archives & Special Collections Reading Room.

Paul, the Deacon. Pauli Diaconi ecclesiae aquilegiensis historiorgraphi percelebris de origine et gestis regum Langobar doru libri VI : cum indice et argumentis. [Parisiis] venudãtur ab Joanne Paruo et Iodoco Badio Ascensio, 1514.

25cm x 19cm. The binding is parchment over pasteboard with an armorial stamp in gold leaf on the front and back covers. The armorial stamp is identical to that of Jean L’Evesque de la Cassiere, Grand Master of the Order of Malta, 1572-1581.

Wear on the front cover indicates the copy may have had clasps at one time. The fore edge and top and bottom edges are speckled in blue. The front pastedown bears the ex libris label of Mr. W.C. Baert de Waarde, most likely the jurist Wilhelm Cornelis Baert de Waarde (1864-1951). The title page verso bears the stamp of the Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie in The Hague.

Title page: the title sits within ornamental border and shows the mark of Parisian bookseller Iehan Petit. The title page bears the following inscription, “Sum Ex Libris Gothofredi, Dalij/ Anno 1611.” Professor Alain J. Stoclet believes this to be Gothofredus Dalij, i.e. Godfrey or Geoffrey Daly or O’ Daly, who may have been a member of a prominent Irish bardic family, traditionally attached to the kings of Munster, and who fled to the continent following the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland. The book is annotated and underlined in several places in what appears to be the same hand.

Special thanks to Professor Alain J. Stoclet of the Université Lyon who provided much of the information above.

Noungme [Godthaab, Greenland: Printed at the Inspectorate Press by L. Møller], 1859-1863. Volume 1. [8],136,[2]pp. plus eight lithographed plates of music, twelve woodcuts and coloured title page vignette.

Edited by the leading Greenland expert of the day, Danish Geologist and administrator, Henry Rink (Hinrich Johannes Rink), this set of collected folk tales of Greenland was printed on the first real press to operate in the region. There are four volumes in the set, of which volume one was recently donated to Memorial University Libraries. Many of the stories in the first volume describe the clashes between the Norse and the Inuit.

The illustrations in volume one were supplied by an Inuit named Aron of Kangeq, a sealer and walrus hunter who lived at the Moravian mission at the small trading station of Kangeq. Aron was stricken with tuberculosis (which was epidemic in Greenland in that era) and confined to bed. Having heard of his raw artistic talent, Rink supplied him with “paper, coloured pencils, and the necessary tools for woodcutting.”

More information about this work can be had at the William Reese Company website or in Knud Oldendow’s , The Spread of Printing…Greenland (Amsterdam, 1969), see especially pp.39-44.

A temporary Archives and Special Collections reading room has been set up on the third floor of the QEII Library. The room is located immediately behind the Centre for Newfoundland Studies service counter (see map below). Access to the collections is subject to Archives and Special Collections reading room hours, though additional access can be provided outside regular service hours upon request.

BOOK OF HOURS, use of Utrecht, in Dutch, decorated manuscript on vellum [Haarlem, c.1455-65] 

165 x 117mm. 179 leaves, 19 lines written in a gothic bookhand in black ink between two verticals and 20 horizontals ruled in grey, justification: 83 x 59mm, rubrics in red, text capitals touched red, one-and two-line initials alternately in red or blue, three-line initials alternately in red and blue with flourishing in purple or red to side margin, six large puzzle initials in red and blue with extensive flourishing in red and purple to upper and side margins. Binding: contemporary brown calf stamped in blind with a panel of the Lamb of God in a roundel within a mandorla framed by “Siet dat lam Goedes dat boert die sonnen d[er] verl,” the symbols of the four Evangelists in the corners, within a triple fillet, two metal clasps and catches.
Provenance: 1. The Calendar includes saints especially revered in the County of Holland, part of the diocese of Utrecht, with St Bavo, patron of Haarlem parish church in red (2 October). 2. Charles Aldenburg Bentinck (1810-1891) of India House, Bovey Tracy, Devon: his name with note ‘bought at Exeter 1832’. 3. Major J.R. Abbey (1894-1969): his gilt stamped armorial leather book plate inside upper cover; his name and addresses and date of purchase, January 1943.

Contents: Calendar, for the diocese of Utrecht, with saints especially revered in the county of Holland: Cyriacus (8 August), Hippolytus (17 August) and Jeroen in red (17 August); Office of the Virgin, use of Utrecht; Hours of Eternal Wisdom; Hours of the Cross; Hours of the Holy Spirit ; Penitential Psalms; Litany, with Jeroen, Adalbert, patron of the Abbey at Egmond; prayers before and after receiving the sacrament; Office of the Dead, use of Utrecht.

Decoration: The fine penwork is a splendid example of the inventive patterning developed particularly in the northern Netherlands, where proponents of the Devotio moderna argued against excessive luxury and display. The flourishing is a mixture of styles that include ‘fountain’ and ‘thorn and stitch’ motifs and that of the ‘Haarlem-Canons-Regular-Missal’, written in 1447. The ‘thorn and stitch’, typical of the northern part of the county of Holland, is named from the spiky decoration concentrated around the initial and from the short parallel strokes laid over the longer curving lines. The ‘beardmen’ (e.g. ff. 39v, 47, 59v, 66v, 166v, and on f.63v with a more conventional man’s face) and the dog’s head on f.70 are also typical for this area. The large leaf motifs and are very like those in a Psalter localised to Haarlem c.1450, while the ‘fountains’ of curving lines and ‘treble clef’ forms, as f.36v or f.114v with triplet ‘beardmen’, are characteristic of Haarlem penwork of the third quarter of the 15th century.

Dutch Missal (Major Feasts (Christmas, Easter, etc.), Proper of Saints, Canon, and some Masses for the Common),manuscript on vellum, the Netherlands, ca. 1475.

Manuscript on vellum, 96 folios, the Netherlands, ca. 1475: 293 x 210 mm (written area 202 x 140 mm). Double columns, 24 lines. Modern foliation, some quire signatures. The Canon is tabbed (one tab has survived). Restored medieval binding, probably original, of blind-stamped tooled calf over bevelled oak boards with brass clasps (straps missing) and corner mounts.

Provenance: Two stamps, one apparently locating the book at Cologne Cathedral, the other placing it in a Jesuit provincial library.

Contents: Text and music for mass Prefaces for ferial days and for major feasts, including the Nativity, Epiphany, Easter, etc. Sasses for the first Sunday of Advent, SS Andrew, Barbara, second Sunday of Advent. Christmas Eve, dawn mass for the Nativity, Nativity Mass, St Stephen Protomartyr, John the Evangelist, Innocents, Circumcision, Chair of St Peter, Matthew Apostle, four Sundays of Lent, Pope Gregory, Passion, St Ambrose, Epiphany, Purification of BVM, Annunciation, Easter Sunday, Ascension, St. John Baptist, SS Peter and Paul, Visitation, Vigil of the Assumption, Assumption, St Augustine, Nativity of BVM and Office of the Conception, St. Michael Archangel; Prefaces for the Octave of the Lord’s Nativity and other Feast days; Canon of the Mass, including a Creed. masses for the Apostles Phillip and James, Invention of the Cross, Exaltation of the Cross, Pentecost, Holy Trinity, St Barnabas, Mary Magdalene, De divisione apostolorum, Apostle James, Laurence and his Octave, Helena, dedication mass; Office of Holy Trinity, masses for Holy Ghost (and Office), Holy Cross, Commemoration of BVM, Purification of the BVM, Office pro necessitate; Orationes; Offices and Masses for the Dead; various special masses and prayers, and an Office for St Mark; Eleven Thousand Virgins, Office for All Saints, Bishop Martin, Katherine, followed by the Common of Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, Abbots, Virgin Martyrs, masses for Cosmas and Damian, Dionysius and Companions, St. Luke, Severinus, Simon, St Anne;

Decoration: Scores of Lombard initials in blue and red, with typical rubrication. Over fifty decorated initials, two- to four-lines or even larger, in blue or red with red penwork infilled with green and with penwork extensions. Some stray marginal annotations, additions, and corrections. Two quires were rubricated in a bright blue ink and have no decorated initials.

Memorial University’s Irving Layton Collection was acquired in 2010 from Canadian writer and critic John Metcalf. The Collection contains approximately 260 items, including every English Language edition of Layton’s work, among them the important early editions from First Statement Press and Contact Press. As well as first editions and early editions, there are also foreign language editions, reprints, scarce limited editions, broadsides, anthologies (trade and workshop), and books owned by Layton, some of which have been annotated or corrected by him. In addition to personalized copies, several works in the Collection contain poems hand written by Layton, either on the endpapers or on loose leaf that was subsequently laid into the book; a number of these poems have not been collected. Finally, the Collection also contains Layton’s prose works, books that he edited or contributed introductions or forewords to, collected letters, books about Layton, as well as a number of periodicals, photographs and audio recordings.

For more information, please visit the Special Collections Irving Layton Collection Web Page.

Works produced by Canada’s Locks’ Press, England’s Circle Press and The U.S.A.’s Janus Press make up the bulk of this collection of 42 fine press/artists’ books donated by Anne and Kevin Major in 2010. The collection also holds a variety of works from other fine presses, including an edition of Aesop’s Fables, Elizabethan love songs, as well as contemporary poetry by Michael Crummy, Anne Michaels, Kevin Major and Charles Simic. There are also books designed and made by Newfoundland-based artists Tara Bryan and Anita Singh.

For more information, please visit the Special Collections Anne and Kevihttps://www.library.mun.ca/asc/specialcollections/collections/major/n Major web page.

The image above is taken from the William of Poitiers Poem About Nothing (Locks’ Press, 1995).