Heritage et AL

The great exploring expeditions of the 19th century often published accounts of their voyages in a series of large illustrated atlases. This particular atlas is part of the account of a French expedition, published as Voyage autour du monde : exécuté pendant les années 1836 et 1837 sur la Bonite commandée par m. Vaillant . It was acquired recently by Auckland Libraries and is currently on display in the exhibition Old & New: recent additions to Sir George Grey Special Collections together with another recent atlas purchase: An account of a voyage in search of La Perouse . Ref: Auguste Nicolas Vaillant. Voyage autour du monde : exécuté pendant les années 1836 et 1837 surla Bonite commandée par m. Vaillant. Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, Printed 910 V13. In 1836 French naval officer Auguste-Nicolas Vaillant was given instructions for a voyage through the Pacific on the former troopship La Bonite. The main aim of the voyage was political – Vaillan...

The theme for school holidays events this April is storytelling – the perfect excuse to look at one of the all-time greatest hits of children’s literature, the Arabian Nights , known in Arabic as Alf Layla wa Layla – The Thousand and One Nights . Their Chief in a low but distinct voice uttered the two words, “Open Sesame”.  Ref: Plates from Stories from the Arabian nights / retold by Laurence Housman; with drawings by Edmund Dulac. New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1907, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, IL: 1907 DULA. Storytelling is one of the repeated themes of the Nights , with the collection well-known for its ‘stories within a story’ framing device. In most full editions the Nights begin with the tale of the jealous king Shahriyar, who is a serial killer of wives – marrying daily and executing his brides the next morning. Into this deadly situation steps Scheherazade, the vizier’s daughter and an expert storyteller.

100 years ago this Sunday, 24 January, the Featherston Military Training Camp officially opened its doors to men from around the country. Ref: Auckland Weekly News, New Zealand's latest training centre for recruits, 10 February 1916, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19160210-43-1. As part of our ongoing commitment to the New Zealand’s First World War centenary commemorations Auckland Libraries have recently a digitised a small but important resource for understanding life in New Zealand during the First World War, specifically life in the Featherston Camp. In and around Featherston Camp  by Sir Alfred Hamish Reed is a small volume written in a calligraphic hand with medieval-style ornate initials and illustrated with photos pasted on. Ref: AH Reed, In and around Featherston Camp, title page, c1917, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, NZMS 1827.

Today, October 25, marks the 600 year anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, a major English victory in the Hundred Years’ War won by King Henry the Fifth. This gives us a great excuse to have a look at a couple of our editions of Shakespeare’s Henry V. The play Henry the Fifth as we now know it first appeared in 1623 in what is known as the First Folio . Ref: William Shakespeare, First Folio Mr. William Shakespeares comedies, histories & tragedies, pp.68-69, 1623, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 1623 SHAK.

All the recent publicity for Anjalee, Auckland Zoo’s newest elephant , has inspired a series of posts about elephants. Heritage & Research team members here at Auckland Libraries have taken this opportunity to explore some elephant related items in our collections, as well as some other famous Auckland elephants. Today we are featuring elephant images from rare books held in Sir George Grey Special Collections . These first two colour plates are from the most recent publication we’ve selected, The Arabian nights: tales from the Thousand and one nights / illustrated by E.J. Detmold . Both plates illustrate the story of Sinbad the sailor. In this version of the story Sinbad is pictured riding on the back of an elephant during his seventh voyage. Ref: The Arabian nights, p. 80, E.J. Detmold, 1924, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, IL:1924 DETM.

There are  a number of Shakespearean treasures in the Sir George Grey Special Collections at the Central City Library. Many of these are from the founding collections donated by Sir George Grey in 1882. The First Folio was the first edition to collect together 36 of Shakespeare's plays and is a highly prized publication. Without it, Shakespeare's plays would be lost to us. The publication was edited by the actors John Hemminge and Henry Condell and only about 1,000 copies were originally printed. The library's First Folio is one of just three in the Southern Hemisphere and one of only 228 remaining copies in the world. Thanks to Grey's donation, we are also the only library in NZ with a rare First Folio and a contemporary quarto of one of the plays (Pericles, 1619). The library also hold many publications by Shakespeare's contemporaries, such as Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser and John Donne. Dr. Emma Smith of Hertford College, University of Oxford University...

The photography material in  Sir George Grey Special Collections  is made up of 500,000 images from the 1840s to the present day. Items in the collection include glass plate and film negatives, cartes de visite ,  daguerreotypes , postcards, watercolour paintings, drawings and original prints. The 250 individual photograph albums the library holds are a lovely but sometimes trickier-to-stumble-upon part of the collection. The photograph albums date from 1859 to the present day. Predictably, the subjects covered in the albums vary widely and include: tourist snaps, war time scenes, images of family, friends, animals, buildings, cities, landscapes, vehicles, forests, beaches, vessels, tangi/funerals, celebrations, parades, expeditions, council activities and royal visits. Some of the photograph albums have an entry on the Heritage Images database and only a selection of the images in the albums have been digitised. Ref: The inside cover and first page, with a dr...

Central Auckland Research Centre is currently displaying work by award-winning picture book writer and illustrator Robyn Kahukiwa. Ref: Robyn Kahukiwa display in the Central Auckland Research Centre, February 2014 Kahukiwa illustrated her first children’s book in 1981 - 'The Kuia and the Spider: Te Kuia Me Te Pungawerewere', a collaborative project with writer Patricia Grace, which won the Children’s Picture Book of the Year. She also worked with Joy Cowley on 'Grandma’s stick' and 'Hatupatu and the birdwoman' before writing her own picture books, often drawing on Māori myths and legends which she also includes in contemporary settings. Ref: Robyn Kahukiwa display in the Central Auckland Research Centre, February 2014

AA Milne (1882-1956), the author of the much beloved children's classic ' Winnie the Pooh ' was born on Sunday 19th 1882. The Aberdeen Journal published a glowing review (see below) of  'Winne the Pooh' when it first came out in 1926, referring to it as 'a book that all children will adore, and that their elders will pick up by stealth and read zestfully to the very end'. Ref: Article entitled 'Pooh Bear: A Delightful Milne Fantasy', The Aberdeen Journal, 1926, from The British Newspaper Archive As well as the wonderfully delightful tales by Milne, it is the evocative illustrations by the talented illustrator EH Shepard (1879-1976), which make Winne the Pooh such an enduring read. Auckland Libraries holds a number of different versions of Winnie the Pooh in the heritage collections and other related Pooh and friends stories illustrated by Shepard .You can also find out about the Bear Garden in Devonport, North Shore, which never contained ...

'Flowers, Fruit and Foliage', the latest exhibition from the Sir George Grey Special Collections has opened. The exhibition features botanical illustrations from the collections and runs from 29 November 2012 to 17 March 2013 at the Central City Library, 44 Lorne Street, Level 2. While pictures of plants in books are often produced as a practical guide for identifying useful, or common, or newly discovered species, the resulting illustrations can be beautiful works of art in their own right. The books in this exhibition were all chosen for their illustrations and date from 1578 through the great age of botanical illustration in the 18th and 19th century, to the wood engravings of the 1930s. The earliest book on display is a herbal printed in 1578, but there are many beautiful hand-coloured engravings from the 18th century, and very rich colour printed illustrations from the 19th.  Ref: 7-C1955, Sir George Grey Special Collections