(Chosen by Dr Christopher de Hamel, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, England)]]> ___]]> Manuscripts]]> (Chosen by Moira White, Curator, Humanities, Otago Museum, Dunedin)]]> ___]]> Books]]> Mirabilia was the most influential guide for medieval travellers to Rome. This 1511 printing is the oldest edition in the Collection; another is dated 1550. I used these, along with other guidebooks, for a course on the Classical Tradition that I taught from the late 1980s to the 2000s. The Mirabilia presents both true and inaccurate identifications of ancient monuments in Rome. One example is the ‘Horse of Constantine’ in the Lateran, which is in fact an equestrian statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (it now stands on the Capitol in Rome). The Mirabilia has it as a statue of a squire who saved Rome from an attack. The horse’s forelock is mistaken for an owl, which provided a warning against the said attack.
(Chosen by Professor Robert Hannah, Waikato University)]]>
___]]> Books]]>
Magna Carta in the process; and Lord North (with a sash) looks on ineffectually with the equally plump bishops, who are kept quiet with jobs and honours. Even the devil is included, making off with the national credit.]]> ___]]> Books]]> (Chosen by Ralph Lawrence, designer, Dunedin)]]> [Alan Hopgood]]]> Book cover]]> (Chosen by Ralph Lawrence, designer, Dunedin)]]> [Alan Hopgood]]]> Book covers]]> (Chosen by Dr Elaine Webster, Director, Summer School, Otago)]]> [Auguste Racinet]]]> Books]]> (Chosen by Dr Elaine Webster, Director, Summer School, Otago)]]> [Auguste Racinet]]]> Books]]> (Chosen by Dr Thomas McLean, Department of English and Linguistics, Otago)]]> [Joanna Baillie]]]> Books]]> Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1643. This version represents the 1644 reissue. It carries an abridged translation in English using an Old English typeface (designer unknown) that was first used in a 1641 volume of University verses. This volume was published with the additional support of the London bookseller Cornelius Bee. This book is of considerable interest to me because I am producing a new edition of the Old English Bede. In addition to its intrinsic value as the first edition of the text, Wheelock’s version contains readings from a manuscript of the text subsequently all but destroyed in the 1731 fire in the Library of antiquarian and MP Sir Robert Cotton (1570-1631). This copy once belonged to Thomas Campbell, first rector of Otago Boys’ High School, who tragically drowned along with his family the day after (4 July 1863) their arrival in Dunedin. His library was sold at auction.
(Chosen by Dr Greg Waite, Department of English and Linguistics, Otago)

 

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[The Venerable Bede]]]> Books]]>
Return to My Native Land was in London, 1980. I had been researching John Berger for an MA thesis. Although impressed by Césaire’s poetry, I didn’t grasp the significance of this translation for Berger’s work. Revolutionary claims in the Translators’ Note seemed excessive and naive. Last year, when asked to write an essay on non-Western approaches to Berger, I was delighted to find this edition of Return to My Native Land in the Brasch Collection. I finally realized that Berger’s statements about Black Liberation as a form of revolutionary freedom provide a context for understanding his donation of half his Booker Prize money to the British Black Panthers. They are also central to his theories about the revolutionary nature of Cubism and the theme of revolutionary freedom in his novel G. (1972). Now, these claims seem utopian, not naive.
(Chosen by Dr Rochelle Simmons, Department of English and Linguistics, Otago)]]>
Aimé Césaire (Translated from the French by John Berger and Anne Bostock)]]> Books]]>
Le Lutrin (1672–1683), this book always provides an impressive example of the talents of hand-press typesetters and highlights the complex bibliographical codes already established among early modern readers. And it derives its comic force from making fun of scholarly pretensions, something that always pleases students.
(Chosen by Dr Shef Rogers, Department of English and Linguistics, Otago)]]>
Alexander Pope]]> Books]]>
The Art Workmanship of the Maori Race in New Zealand for her research into reptiles. The culmination of her research was this book, published in 2014.]]> Alison Cree]]> Books]]> Design Review was the country’s first journal of its type, which lasted for only six years, from 1948 to 1954. I first encountered it in the library of the Auckland Institute and Museum in the early 1980s where I was employed to work on an index of New Zealand designers and craftspeople. I learnt that the magazine was a project of the Architecture Centre, set up by Wellington students of the Auckland School of Architecture and various influential architects and artists including Ernst Plischke and E. Mervyn Thompson. Charles Brasch collected the Design Review; he had a good eye for such things. My PhD research focuses on the search for sophistication in architecture through travel between 1880 and 1950. Design Review is a window into the thinking of young design professionals of that time.
(Chosen by Michael Findlay, Professional Practice Fellow, Design, Division of Sciences, Otago)]]>
Architectural Centre]]> Periodicals]]>
Architectural Centre]]> Periodicals]]> Survey of Persian Art edited by Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman on the open shelves of the University Library. These volumes of text and images comprehensively cover architecture, ceramics, metal work, carpets and textiles, calligraphy, and the art of the book. For me, the valuable inclusion by Phyllis Ackerman of detailed drawings of the complex structures of woven textiles and carpets have been particularly helpful. These books are now housed in Special Collections.
(Chosen by Margery Blackman)]]>
Arthur Upham Pope]]> Books]]>
The falling dew lies thick upon it.
There was a man so lovely,
Clear brow well rounded.
By chance I came upon him,
And he let me have my will.

The oldest collection of verse from China, The Book of Songs contains 305 poems written between the 11th and 7th centuries B.C. Centuries of moralistic Confucian interpretation had smothered the poetry and translations failed to convey their beauty. Arthur Waley cut through that edifice of moralistic scholarship and gave us the poetry in the songs. Not many knew of Waley’s genius; fortunately Charles Brasch did.
(Chosen by Professor Brian Moloughney, Department of History and Art History, Otago)]]>
Arthur Waley]]> Books]]>
(Chosen by Dr Elaine Webster, Director, Summer School, Otago)]]> Auguste Racinet]]> Books]]> (Chosen by Associate Professor Alison Cree, Department of Zoology, Otago)]]> Augustus Hamilton]]> Books]]> (Chosen by Dr James Beattie, History, Waikato University)]]> Basil Hall Chamberlain]]> Books]]> it was impossible to discover anything new in the anatomy of muscles because Albinus was sure to have found it already.’ Albinus permitted local engraver Jan Wandelaar (1690-1759) sufficient artistic license to add Baroque backdrops to the ‘mannikins’. One of the symbols used to reflect their ‘new’ anatomy was the image of a travelling European Asian rhinoceros called Clara. Wandelaar had the privilege of drawing Clara after visiting the animal in the Amsterdam Zoo in 1741. This image was already so iconic that it appeared in shops in Leiden five years before publication of this unique book.
(Chosen by Professor Andrew Zbar, Department of Anatomy, University of Melbourne)]]>
Bernhard Siegfried Albinus]]> Books]]>
Alexandria: A History and Guide gave me my first grownup insights into the history of my birthplace.
Published in 1922, the maps of Alexandria in Forster’s History and Guide depict the city as my parents and grandparents would have known it. They show the location of the Greek schools and churches we attended, the National Bank of Egypt where my father worked, the beach at Aboukir and park at Nouzha where I played, and the harbour where my father took me sailing.
(Chosen by Dimitri Anson, Research Fellow, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Otago)]]>
E. M. Forster]]> Maps]]>
Guide.]]> E.M. Forster]]> Books]]> Laster und Leidenschaft; others included Lynd Ward’s Gods’ Man: A Novel in Woodcuts (1929) and Wild Pilgrimage (1932). More examples are being added as opportunity arises.
(Chosen by Gary Blackman)]]>
Frans Masereel]]> Books]]>
Lebanon: A History, 600-2011 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Sandys visited Sidon, Fakhr al-Din’s ‘capital,’ in April 1611. He assessed the emir both as a person and a de facto ruler, in realistic description that buttresses and supplements the other sources. Sandys characterizes Fakhr al-Din as ‘small of stature but great in courage and achievements … subtle as a fox, and not a little inclining to the Tyrant. He never commenceth battle, nor executive any notable design, without the consent of his mother.’
(Chosen by Professor Bill Harris, Department of Politics, Otago)]]>
George Sandys]]> Books]]>