This is an entertaining book about popular Victorian era conceptions of noses and pseudoscience of physiognomy.
Notes on Noses is available for consultation from our Rare Books and Special Collections reading room during regular opening hours or you can download the digital version from our catalogue.
Title page of “Notes on noses”
Pamphlets published in 1832 by the New York Board of Health and the Philadelphia Sanitary Board contain interesting reports that investigated the cholera epidemic in Montreal, Quebec, and the rest of Canada.
Report of the commissioners employed to investigate the origin and nature of the epidemic cholera of Canada and Report of the Commission appointed by the Sanitary Baord of the City Councils, to visit Canada, for the investigation of the epidemic cholera, prevailing in Montreal and Quebec are available for consultation from our Rare Books and Special Collections reading room during regular opening hours or you can download the digital version from our catalogue.
Title page of “Report of the commissioners employed to investigate the origin and nature of the epidemic cholera of Canada published by order of the Board of Health July 31 1832.”
Title page of “Report of the Commission appointed by the Sanitary Board of the City Councils to visit Canada for the investigation of the epidemic cholera prevailing in Montreal and Quebec.”
Cream cheese is NOT a way to my heart but it may work for some!
Front page of The Ingersoll Cream Cheese Co pamphlet “11 ways to a man’s heart.” from between 1920 and 1950?
Back page of The Ingersoll Cream Cheese Co pamphlet “11 ways to a man’s heart.” from between 1920 and 1950?
The original pamphlet is available for consultation from our Rare Books and Special Collections reading room during regular opening hours or you can download the digital version from our catalogue.
To learn more about Ingersoll you can check out this virtual exhibition about Mammoth Cheese and the History of Cheese Making in Oxford County.
Page 1 of A journal of a voyage up Great Britain’s west coast and to Iceland by Joseph Banks (1743-1820)
This handwritten primary source is a recent addition to our digital catalogue. It is the original account of a natural history expedition Sir Joseph Banks lead from July 12 to Sept. 6, 1772 up the coast of Britain to Iceland.
The title for this holograph was supplied by cataloguer, based on heading in the printed ed. edited by Roy A Rauschenberg, 1973. It was purchased by Casey Wood for the Blacker-Wood Collection from Wheldon & Wesley Ltd., Codicote, Hertfordshire in 1924 (cf. Rauschenburg, p. 194).
Bound in red morocco with gilt double-fillet border, spine with gilt lettering and gilt fillet trim, gilt turn-ins, gilt edges. You can consult the original in the Blacker-Wood Manuscripts collection by visiting the Rare Books and Special collections department during regular hours.
Digitization at the McGill library is provided as a research service so it’s always a pleasure to see our work in scholarly publications. Recently a special collaboration between the Rare Books and Special Collections librarian Ann Marie Holland and our own digitization administrator Jennifer Innes helped get over 20 images from our collection into the beautifully illustrated Destination Québec: Une histoire illustrée du tourisme by Marc H Choko, Michèle Lefebvre & Danielle Léger.
To give you a peak at some of our contributions I’ve posted a small subset but it’s worth picking up the book for the almost 350 images they have pulled together from diverse collections. All originals are available for consultation from Rare Books and Special Collections reading room during regular opening hours.
Cover of Weldon, W. S. (1905). The Windsor Hotel, Montreal. Montréal: International Railway Pub. Co. Rare Books/Special Collections – McLennan Bldg, 4th floor. FC2947.62 W56 1905
Front cover of ‘Enjoy historic and gay Montreal’ pamphlet published by the Montreal Tourist & Convention Bureau in the 1950s. Rare Books/Special Collections – McLennan Bldg, 4th floor. Uncat 0461.
Cover of Highlights of Montreal: The graphic digest for travellers. (1948). Montreal: Travel Publications. Rare Books/Special Collections – McLennan Bldg, 4th floor. FC2947.18 H54 1948
Page 2-3 of La province de Québec: Parcs et réserves = parks and reserves. (1962). Québec: Office du tourisme. Rare Books/Special Collections – McLennan Bldg, 4th floor. Uncat 0504.
Cover of Montréal and the Laurentians. (1935). Québec (Province). Rare Books/Special Collections – McLennan Bldg, 4th floor. Uncat 0454.
Cover of Montréal: The Paris of the New World. (1937). Montréal: Montréal Tourist & Convention Bureau. Rare Books/Special Collections – McLennan Bldg, 4th floor. FC2947.18 M657 1937
Cover of Direct to the Laurentians from Montreal tunnel terminal. (1926). Montreal: Canadian National Railways. Rare Books/Special Collections – McLennan Bldg, 4th floor. Uncat 0480.
Map of the city of Montreal : prepared expressly for Lovell’s Montreal Directory for 1898-9 by Charles E Goad.
If you’d like to zoom in on an even bigger version you can download the full size PDF from our catalogue and export a 7.7MB JPG that measures 10004 × 7876 pixels.
At that size you can really zoom in and get some detail.
Map of the city of Montreal 1898 – zoom into McGill University
The original map is available for consultation from our Rare Books and Special Collections map room during regular opening hours.
The cover of the Brodie Tailoring Company’s catalogue featuring “tailored-to-measure” clothes entitled What Well Dressed Men Will Wear.
Creator: Brodie Tailoring Company
Date: 1929
Commercial and Industrial Catalogue Collection. Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill Library.
Excerpt of a text from the digital exhibition Art Deco and the Decorative Arts of the 1920s and 1930s.
Montreal Leisure – Consumer Society
Art Deco was a style that one could wear: luxurious furs, long gowns, three piece suits, and accessories for women and men were just a few of the means to display one’s sense of taste and fashion. Eaton’s was one of Montreal’s leading department stores and catered to a wide clientele. It operated a successful catalogue service through which orders could be placed by telephone or sent by mail. Other stores catering to Montreal’s elite were a block away from Eaton’s on Phillip’s Square; Henry Birks and Sons specialised in fine jewellery and table wares and Henry Morgan and Co. (now The Bay) featured fine goods from Europe.
Montreal Leisure – Travel & Leisure
Travel for both business and pleasure became far easier with the increased speed of transportation and the introduction of new modes of travel. Headquartered in Montreal, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) built on its nineteenth-century dominance of the Canadian railway service by establishing shipping lines. Following the coordination of the schedules of the transcontinental trains and transatlantic ocean liners, the volume of business at Montreal grew to be second only to that of New York City. By 1930, the CPR operated 14 first and cabin-class ocean liners, including the British Empire’s largest and fastest, the Empress of Britain, out of Montreal and Quebec City. These brochures depict the leisure activities of pleasure outings in the newly accessible countryside. Menus and views of interiors provide a glimpse of a few of the opportunities for fine dining in Montreal in the 1920s and 1930s. Theatre programmes participate in depicting the era in terms of society sensibilities.
This exhibition was organized to celebrate 10th World Congress being held in Montreal, Quebec, May 24 – 30, 2009 and put together by the staff from Rare Books and Special Collections and the Blackader-Lauterman Library.
Just in time for spring I wanted to post about some beautiful zoological illustrations that came across our v-craddle scanner last week. These original watercolours are a part of four volume collection in the Blacker-Wood Illustrations collection and originally published between 1766-84. To see the rest of the volumes you can visit Rare Books and Special collection during their opening hours.
Original water-colour paintings on the natural history of St. Domingo : with mo. notes. (1766) de Rabié. McGill Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. Blacker-Wood Illustrations. folio M9725 R11 cutter V.4 (FRUITS).
Original water-colour paintings on the natural history of St. Domingo : with mo. notes. (1766) de Rabié. McGill Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. Blacker-Wood Illustrations. folio M9725 R11 cutter V.4 (FRUITS).
Original water-colour paintings on the natural history of St. Domingo : with mo. notes. (1766) de Rabié. McGill Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. Blacker-Wood Illustrations. folio M9725 R11 cutter V.4 (FRUITS).
Original water-colour paintings on the natural history of St. Domingo : with mo. notes. (1766) de Rabié. McGill Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. Blacker-Wood Illustrations. folio M9725 R11 cutter V.4 (FRUITS).
Original water-colour paintings on the natural history of St. Domingo : with mo. notes. (1766) de Rabié. McGill Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. Blacker-Wood Illustrations. folio M9725 R11 cutter V.4 (FRUITS).
Original water-colour paintings on the natural history of St. Domingo : with mo. notes. (1766) de Rabié. McGill Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. Blacker-Wood Illustrations. folio M9725 R11 cutter V.4 (FRUITS).
Original water-colour paintings on the natural history of St. Domingo : with mo. notes. (1766) de Rabié. McGill Library. Rare Books and Special Collections. Blacker-Wood Illustrations. folio M9725 R11 cutter V.4 (FRUITS).
Front piece of The Canadian brigands: An intensely exciting story of crime in Quebec thirty years ago. (1867).
According Aurélien Boivin in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography this short 30 page work was originally written in french by Francois-Réal Anders and published in 1837. This translation from 1867 was serialized in at least three newspapers before being published by R. Worthington.
This volume is from our Lawrence Lande Collection of Canadiana and is available for consultation during Rare Books and Special collection opening hours or read it online via our catalogue.
R. Worthington book list on page 12 of The Canadian brigands: An intensely exciting story of crime in Quebec thirty years ago. (1867).
References
Aurélien Boivin, “ANGERS, FRANÇOIS-RÉAL,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed April 24, 2014, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/angers_francois_real_8E.html.
A summary in numbers
Les Cartes À Jouer Du Xiv Au Xx Siècle by Henry René Allemagne was published in Paris by Librairie Hachette et cie in 1906. This french text covers the history of the playing card from the fourteenth to the beginning of the twentieth centuries.
This two volume set is in our Saul Shapiro Collection of Anglo-American Judaica in Rare Books and Special Collections and available by consultation during opening hours. The full colour illustrations are worth seeing in person!
To view the digital reproduction you can download each volume from our catalogue.
Allemagne, H. R. (1906). Les cartes à jouer du XIV au XX siècle. Volume 2
Allemagne, H. R. (1906). Les cartes à jouer du XIV au XX siècle. Volume 1, page 163.
Allemagne, H. R. (1906). Les cartes à jouer du XIV au XX siècle. Volume 1, page 167
Allemagne, H. R. (1906). Les cartes à jouer du XIV au XX siècle. Volume 1, page 29.
Allemagne, H. R. (1906). Les cartes à jouer du XIV au XX siècle. Volume 1, page 195.