Watt was written ‘in dribs and drabs’ in Roussillon (south-eastern France) during WWII, while Beckett was hiding from the Gestapo. Long thought unpublishable, Watt emerged in 1953, in a hideous magenta cover and riddled with typographical errors, from the Olympia Press. Other ‘unusual’ books from Olympia included Fanny Hill, The Debauched Hospodar, de Sade’s Justine and Nabokov’s Lolita. This 1958 Traveller’s Companion retains the original errors, which took scholars sixty years to correct. Watt, travelling by train to the abode of Mr Knott, encounters Mr Dum Spiro, editor of Crux (‘the popular Catholic monthly’). Spiro ponders the rat that swallows a consecrated wafer: what happens to the Real Body? He cites theological authorities, but Watt, listening to voices that constitute an imperfect paradigm (challenge: find the anomaly), understands little. Many readers (including J.M. Coetzee) consider Watt their favourite Beckett text. The ugly duckling has turned into that rara avis, a black swan.
(Chosen by Chris Ackerley, Emeritus Professor, Department of English and Linguistics, Otago)]]>
Samuel Beckett]]> 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]]> (Chosen by Dr James Beattie, History, Waikato University)]]> Basil Hall Chamberlain]]> 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]]> The Tower, with its striking green and gold cover, depicts the restored Norman tower, Thoor Ballylee, once the home of poet W.B. Yeats. The book contains several of Yeats’ greatest lyric poems, including ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War,’ ‘Among School Children,’ ‘Leda and the Swan,’ and ‘Sailing to Byzantium.’ If ‘given a month of Antiquity,’ Yeats would have chosen to spend it in Byzantium, where the early Byzantines achieved a perfect union of ‘religion, aesthetics, and practical life’ (A Vision). In ‘Sailing to Byzantium,’ Yeats travels there in his imagination, and art transforms him into a golden bird, singing a song of ‘unaging intellect’ and beauty. The tower on the cover of this book is not only a representation of Thoor Ballylee, but also a symbol of an aristocratic order which created art even in the most turbulent of times.
(Chosen by Dr Lisa Marr, Research Fellow, Department of English and Linguistics, Otago)]]>
W. B. Yeats]]> Books]]>
The Phoenix and the Turtle [by Shakespeare], and twenty-six years later, for a New Statesman competition in 1960, Brasch has captured a different ‘essence’ of Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ with a summary of it in ten words: ‘Lovers / On jug / Never / Can hug. / – Men not, / Pots not.’ This copy was bought by Brasch in London in 1934.
(Chosen by Alan Roddick, Poet and Charles Brasch's literary executor)]]>
John Keats]]> Books]]>
History of St Paul’s Cathedral in London was one of my personal discoveries when I began investigating Otago’s Special Collections. Although the work was catalogued, reference to the significant topographical artist, Wenceslaus Hollar, one of my favourite printmakers, was missing. The site where St. Paul’s now stands has a long history; a church has supposedly been on site since 604. Dugdale’s work is an important book on many levels. It was part of a growing antiquarian movement that recorded and preserved information on the medieval past. Produced during Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate, when so many churches were threatened by puritan zealotry, it marked a nostalgia for a royalist past. The book includes details of the cathedral in 1658, before its destruction in the Great Fire of London in 1666. It is also important because it is the first book on a particular building to contain so many illustrations of architectural views and monuments. It was ‘crowdfunded’ with subscribers paying for individual prints.
(Chosen by Dr Judith Collard, Department of History and Art History, Otago)]]>
William Dugdale]]> Books]]>
Mappa Mundi map contains three elements: 1.) Geographic information, such as borders between countries, names of countries, regions, mountains, rivers, and oceans; 2.) Historical information, such as images and text relating to events that occurred in a previous time; and 3.) Spiritual information, such as events and scenes from the Bible. Around the border is an image of Christ, and the letters M O R S (Latin: death) as a visual reminder of the world’s temporary existence. It is likely that mappae mundi were used for instructional rather than functional purposes. I use the Special Collections's facsimile of the Hereford Mappa Mundi for teaching 4th year geo-visualisation and cartography surveying students about how maps reveal our world-view, both in the past and today.
(Chosen by Dr Simone Marshall, Department of English and Linguistics, Otago)]]>
Scott D. Westrem]]> Books]]>
Harvard Library Bulletin New Series Vol. 14, No. 4 (Winter 2003).
(Chosen by Dr Brian McMullin, Monash University, Melbourne)]]>
John Lightfoot]]> Books]]>
The Gentleman’s Magazine was the first publication to use the term ‘magazine’ (‘a storehouse, commonly an arsenal or armoury’: Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, 1755) in its now customary sense of ‘a miscellaneous pamphlet’. It was first published in 1731 by the printer Edward Cave (who edited it under the name Sylvanus Urban, i.e., ‘town and country’) and it came out monthly. It evolved from being a digest of news from European papers, to being a trusted and original source of news and features on politics, science, the arts, society, the stock market, and scholarship. It was immediately much-imitated. It included poetry and accounts of the proceedings of parliament, which from 1741 were written by Samuel Johnson, a regular contributor. It ended publication in 1922. Special Collections has a full run of the journal from 1731 to 1866. Even now, this unique resource has only been haphazardly digitised, so the best way to use it is to come and look at the real thing. Every page has something interesting or curious, and once you start browsing, it’s very hard to stop…
(Chosen by Dr Paul Tankard, Department of English and Linguistics, Otago)]]>
Sylvanus Urban]]> Magazines]]>
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]]>
(Chosen by Dr Elaine Webster, Director, Summer School, Otago)]]> Auguste Racinet]]> Books]]> Transcribed, translated and edited by John K. Hale and J. Donald Cullington]]> Books]]> Erebus, for what was the last ever sail-only voyage of discovery. Hooker’s role was to collect and describe the plant and algae species encountered as they sailed south through the Atlantic to the Southern Ocean to confirm the existence of Antarctica. Today, a botanist taking this journey would arrive home with memory cards full of digital images of plants with scientific names. Back then, Hooker was faced with largely undescribed and unfamiliar plants. The Flora of Antarctica is a monumental achievement. It still underpins the scientific names in use today, and for me its most impressive feature is the manner in which Hooker’s detailed observations capture the biology of the plants he discovered. His illustrations are exquisitely beautiful, and they are also botanically accurate to the tiniest detail. Importantly, Hooker’s Flora of Antarctica is a reminder that the discipline of accurate objective observation is a requirement of scientific understanding.
(Chosen by Dr Janice Lord, Department of Botany, Otago)]]>
Joseph Dalton Hooker]]> 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 Associate Professor Alison Cree, Department of Zoology, Otago)]]> Augustus Hamilton]]> 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]]>
(Chosen by Ralph Lawrence, designer, Dunedin)]]> Larry Kent [Don Haring]]]> Book covers]]> 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]]>
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]]>
Baxterianae). Matthew Sylvester (c.1636-1708) was Baxter’s literary executor, and he compiled Baxter’s autobiographical narrative of some 645,000 words. Reliquiae Baxterianae challenged the prevailing view that the Puritans were to blame for England’s Civil War. I am part of a team of editors who are now preparing a critical edition of Reliquiae Baxterianae. While I cannot miss the element of self-justification, Baxter’s account of 17th century England is one that historians should take very seriously indeed. Baxter claims that he and his colleagues should not be blamed; I think he is basically right.
(Chosen by Associate Professor Tim Cooper, Department of Theology and Religion, Otago)]]>
Matthew Sylvester]]> Books]]>
(Chosen by Dr John Holmes, Hon. Clinical Senior Lecturer, Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, Otago)]]> Lewis M. Allen]]> Books]]> Obadiah Walker]]> Books]]> Cultivating Myths, I used original sources to show that the layout and planting of formal fruit and vegetable gardens was for maximum productivity, not elaborate display. Johannes Kip’s volume of plans for country estates provided me with invaluable evidence to dispel this myth.
(Chosen by Helen Leach, Emeritus Professor, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Otago)]]>
Johannes Kip]]> Books]]>
Architectural Centre]]> Periodicals]]>