Vellum sheet showing printed extracts of ‘Lamia’ and ‘Isabella, or The Pot of Basil’ from Lamia; Isabella; The Eve of Saint Agnes & Other Poems

1928

Special Collections Z250 GL33. Reproduced by permission of the Robert Gibbings Estate and the Heather Chalcroft Literary Agency

Waltham St Lawrence, Berkshire: The Golden Cockerel Press

This vellum sheet, a page from GCP’s Lamia, is one of five given to Special Collections by former University Librarian, friend and bibliographer of Robert Gibbings, John Harris. Harris was born in Oamaru, graduated from Oxford University in 1929 and was the University Librarian at Otago from 1935 until 1948. Gibbings gave the sheets to Harris when he visited Dunedin in 1947. It is not clear how Harris and Gibbings came to be friends; perhaps they became acquainted when Harris was at Oxford. In any case, Harris left Otago in 1948 for Africa, where he taught library studies in Ghana. He later became known as the ‘Father of West African Librarianship’. Page 18 (above) is part of the poem, Lamia, while page 31 features lines from the poem Isabella, or The Pot of Basil.