Recent RBSC acquisitions now on display

You are heartily invited to come and discover some new additions to RBSC’s collections.

Before new RBSC acquisitions arrive to the shelf, they pass through many hands. The last stop is almost always the desk of Raynald Lepage, who verifies that everything is as it should be, and enjoys “the privilege of seeing them all.”

In the last weeks, Raynald has selected a number of the year’s acquisitions that particularly caught his attention and that form, among themselves, some interesting intellectual or visual sub-groups. They give a taste of what has come in, and we hope they will whet your appetite to see more.

Fanny Anne Burney (Mrs. Wood), Her album of pastel sketches: manuscript. 1835.

Fanny Anne Burney (Mrs. Wood), Her album of pastel sketches: manuscript. 1835.

This pastel sketch of a coastal scene is just one of the many items on display. Made by Fanny Anne Burney (or Mrs. Wood, 1812-1860), the great-niece of eighteenth-century author Frances (Fanny) Burney (1752-1840), it adds to McGill’s strong holdings on the author and her family. For more on Frances Burney see the work of McGill’s Burney Centre.

The display in our central reading room is open during regular opening hours.

News on the William Colgate Collection

Established in 1954 from a gift of several hundred titles of typographical interest, the William Colgate Collection has prospered over more than half a century from new acquisitions and collection development policies and has become one of the most comprehensive collections of its kind in Canada.

Read more on the founder and donor William Colgate

Read more on the founder and donor William G. Colgate

Today, the Colgate Collection covers the full spectrum of the history of printing: typography, the presses, papermaking, book design, illustration, and binding, amounting to more than 12, 000 books, supplemented by sample books and specimens related to book history.  A large part of the collection is focussed on fine and small press publications from Europe and North America, dating from the late 19th century, including the Kelmscott Press of William Morris. 

To find out more about the donor and the collection, we invite you to consult the Spring 2014 issue of Amphora, a journal specialized in a wide range of topics related to the book published by the Alcuin Society, available on our newsstand in Rare Books and Special Collections.

We hope that this initial profile will attract additional researchers and help further define McGill Library’s history of the book collections.