[James Stewart]]]> Books]]> [James Stewart]]]> Books ]]> Hans Weiditz]]> Broadsheet]]> Le Festin de Pierre but now known by its original sub-title, Dom Juan, was first performed in Paris in 1665. Accused of impiety and blasphemy, it was soon withdrawn from the company’s repertoire, and when first published, in 1682, the text was so heavily censored that in three crucial scenes it was unfaithful to Molière’s original intentions. Meanwhile, an Amsterdam publisher had acquired a copy of the play as it must have been first performed, and issued it in 1683. Publishers and translators elsewhere soon preferred it to the Paris edition, and modern scholars have followed them in recognising the Amsterdam edition as the basis of any serious study of the play. Special Collections’ copy of this play is bound with other individually published Molière plays. The volume was presented to the library by Dr Esmond de Beer in 1973.
(Chosen by Dr Roger Collins)]]>
Molière]]> Books]]>
Edited by E. W. Bovill]]> Books]]> Marianne Colston (née Jenkins, 1792-1865) married the wealthy Bristol merchant, Edward Francis Colston. Almost immediately, they set off on their Continental tour, with servants in tow. Marianne recorded their travels in her Journal of a Tour, which sadly Special Collections does not own. However, we do have the 50 folio lithographs that accompanied her two-volume set. Marianne was also an amateur painter and sketched her way through Europe. In the hope that her pencil supplied the deficiencies of her pen, she sketched picturesque sights that always appear grand. When people are placed within the scene, they are always small-scale. Here, Marianne is at Marignac, near St. Beat Haute, Garonne, sitting quietly with pencil and pad in hand. Perhaps, it is her husband shading her with the umbrella.]]> Marianne Colston]]> Drawing]]> [James Stewart]]]> Books]]> English Ceramic Society]]> Pamphlets]]> Joseph W. Mellor]]> Drawing]]> A Spectator [Jane Porter]]]> Periodicals]]> North and South, a serial of life in industrial Manchester, appeared over 20 weeks in Dickens’s Household Words from September 1854 to January 1855. Dickens and Gaskell frequently clashed over editorial matters, so much so that both swore never to work together again. However, Dickens realized Gaskell’s talent and popularity, and lured her back to serial publication with generous remuneration and promises of greater creative freedom.]]> Elizabeth Gaskell]]> Periodical]]> Bentley’s Miscellany (1837-1868) offered an assortment of serial fiction, short stories, historical writing, reviews (musical, culinary, and literary), and other snippets of information. Charles Dickens served as the journal’s inaugural editor, although he soon severed ties with its owner, Richard Bentley, whose interventionist approach to editing infuriated the up-and-coming novelist. This instalment of Dickens’s Oliver Twist features George Cruikshank’s famous illustration of Oliver asking for more. William Harrison Ainsworth succeeded Dickens as editor in 1839, and his serialized novel, Jack Sheppard, was even more successful than Dickens’s classic tale.

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Charles Dickens]]> Periodical]]>
Nicolette Gray]]> Books]]> babies’. In 1908 they started a newspaper column in the Otago Daily Times called ‘Our Babies’ in which, under the pen-name ‘Hygeia’, they wrote advice for mothers on topics such as babies’ bowel movements, dummies, prams, weaning and breast-feeding. Bella usually wrote the column; Truby maintained editorial control. The column was syndicated, appearing in over 50 newspapers nationwide and exported to Australia, Britain and America. Although Bella died in January 1927, the column continued to appear, possibly written by King himself.]]> Hygeia, Otago Witness]]> Otago Witness]]> Newspapers]]> Manuscript & Inscription Letters for Schools & Classes & for the Use of Craftsmen. Gill attended Johnston’s calligraphy classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in 1901 and was no doubt inculcated into the master’s mantra of a systematic and careful approach towards lettering. The seed, however, had been sown. While at Chichester (1897-1900) Gill became ‘mad’ on lettering, writing in his diary that ‘letters were something special in themselves’… they are ‘things, not pictures of things’. Here is A.E.R. Gill’s ‘Raised Letters’ carved on Hopton Wood stone, a type of limestone which is almost like marble.]]> Edward Johnston]]> Plates]]> Edward Johnston]]> Plates
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Encyclopaedia of New Zealand states that local branches of Plunket always had a ‘large degree of autonomy and responsibility’ despite being ultimately controlled by a central body and ‘it is this distribution of authority and responsibility that has proved to be the foundation of the Society’s strength’. It was not just cookbooks that furnished the Plunket Society branches with funds, the recycling of rags was a nationwide form of fundraising.]]> The Plunket Society]]> Posters]]> ___]]> Photographs]]> Evening Sentinel on 19 May 1932.]]> J. W. Mellor]]> Cartoons (Commentary)]]>
Like Janet Frame, James K. Baxter was Dunedin-born. His parents and extended family still lived in the city and surrounding area. His acceptance as Burns Fellow was a kind of homecoming after 20 years away, and he made the most of his two years. Baxter wrote about 90 poems and numerous plays; he gave lectures and wrote essays; he took part in protests of the Vietnam War, and spoke out against the University’s stance on mixed flatting in A Small Ode on Mixed Flatting. Lectures he gave during his tenure were printed in The Man on the Horse (1967). Here is James Bertram’s review of the work. In his own words, Baxter said ‘on the whole, I think I made an exemplary Burns Fellow.’]]>
James Bertram]]> The New Zealand Listener]]]> Periodicals]]>
The New Monthly Magazine (1814-1884) was an early production of Henry Colburn, one of the century’s most important publishers. Each issue included an engraved portrait of a well-known figure. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge thought the drawing from which this engraving was made ‘the most striking likeness ever taken’ of him. This issue includes ‘Anecdotes of Lord Byron’ by a still unidentified writer, who offers some colourful details (Byron ‘never went to sleep without a pair of pistols and a dagger by his side’). Readers were also treated to the first printing of ‘The Vampyre’, supposedly written by Lord Byron but in fact the work of his doctor and friend, John William Polidori.

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Edited by Alaric Alexander Watts]]> Periodicals]]>
]]> ]]> ___]]> Uncle Joe’s Nonsense (1934) depicts the story of a competition between Mellor and his sister Agnes. The aim was to make the best pudding based on Mrs Beeton’s recipe ‘No 754,629,831,429’. Agnes accidentally (on purpose?) left a bit of dough in the cookbook which caused two pages to be stuck together. Agnes made a good pudding while Mellor made an ‘addled pudding’, concocted from the first half of one pudding recipe and the second half of another. Mellor then suggested that Agnes ‘ought to drink my pudding and I eat hers.’ Mellor’s father was the judge and he declared the contest a draw.]]> J. W. Mellor]]> Books]]> S.R. Wing, et al.]]> Journal article]]> The Press]]> Newspapers]]>