Heritage et AL

Image:  The Don Smith Symposium panel – Mark Houlahan, Jack Ross and Shef Rogers (seated) with panel chair Sophie Tomlinson. Emeritus Professor Don Smith (1934-2023) and his wife Jill first visited the library in 2018 to assess the Heritage Collections holdings and the synergy of the early modern titles in Don’s working library. Don had taught English literature at the University of Auckland and was seeking a suitable research library in Auckland for the substantial library he had built during his career in the United Kingdom, North America and New Zealand.  Don was born and educated in Auckland, at Auckland Grammar School and the University of Auckland, before his post-graduate study at Merton College Oxford. His doctoral thesis ‘ An edition of The rehearsal transpos’d by Andrew Marvell, with introduction and commentary ’ (1963) is now represented in the Heritage Collections as a monograph published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford (1971) alongside his early pre-1801 editions ...

Awekura is a blog and podcast series that highlights treasures within Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. In this series, library specialists provide a window into the world of these special collections.  We kick off the series with Renée Orr, rare book specialist and Curatorial Services Team Leader here at Auckland Council Libraries. The spotlight today is on a rare book recently donated to the library: The Memorable Works of a Son of Thunder and Consolation: Namely, that True Prophet, and Faithful Servant of God, and Sufferer for the Testimony of Jesus, Edward Burroughs, who Dyed a Prisoner for the Word of God, in the City of London, the Fourteenth of the Twelfth Moneth, 1662.  It’s a bit of a tongue twister of a title, but 17th century people really knew how to name their books, highlighting the premise and value in under 50 words. This book was printed in 1672 in London and is a collection of the writings of a man called Edward Burrough. Find the book on the  lib...

Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections gained an important collection in 2024 with the gift of 183 titles collected by the late Professor Emeritus Donal Ian Brice Smith (Don). The collection of early modern books published before 1801 comprises several hundred volumes. The collection is now housed in archival boxes, each with a label which features Don’s signature, to show the provenance from the library of Professor Smith. Image: Don’s signature on the fly leaf of ‘An account of popery and arbitrary government in England’ 1677 MARV, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. Every title brings new possibilities. To honour this significant collection Auckland Libraries has invited academics from across the country to talk about books in this collection.  Rare Book Librarians Jane Wild and Renee Orr have enjoyed looking at the collection and note that books of this age all have stories to tell in terms of their ownership (provenance) and condition. Many have annotations from for...

The Atrium display in the Central Library Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero (6 November 2024 to 5 February 2025) features six exceptional works ranging from outsize folios to a modest volume, similar that seen in the portrait of James Tannock Mackelvie painted at his home in Hyeres, France in 1884, a year before his death. Image: James Tannock Mackelvie by George Halkett, 1884. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Mackelvie Collection M1885/1/32. Following a 2024 stocktake and Heritage Cataloguer Ian Snowdon’s cataloguing enhancements for the Mackelvie Collection, there are new opportunities to showcase aspects of the extraordinary Victorian library the philanthropist and collector James Mackelvie built for us. See it here. The recent talk ‘Ex Libris JT Mackelvie’ was an opportunity to showcase books from the Mackelvie Collection. The visually arresting pattern books are a good way to sample the collection. In the mid-19th century colour lithography was being developed and there was a growing an awar...

Ngako: The Collections Talk is a documentary film and podcast series showcasing taonga in Auckland Libraries’ heritage and research collections.  Explore the whole series in our current exhibition , on until 2 March 2024 at Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero, the Central City Library. This audio playlist contains all the episodes from Ngako: The Collections Podcast, where we explore items and stories from Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections. Wanderlust - the war years In this episode we find meaning and history in the Auckland Tramping Club’s newsletter Wanderlust.  Archivist Sharon Smith shares insights gleaned from reading the Wanderlust magazine in the period of publication during the Second World War.  We are also joined by current Auckland Tramping Club members, Ian, Anna and Dennis, on the Club’s programme of tramps and their preparation for the upcoming Club centenary celebrations. Listen to the track here . Ava, kava, kawa In this episode we explore the world of ava...

Image: Mephistopheles appears to Faust in his study, Faust / by Goethe ; translated by Abraham Hayward ; with illustrations by Willy Pogany, London : Hutchinson, 1908, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections IL:1908 POGA.    The idea of making a deal with the devil has a long history in popular imagination. Robert Johnson made a deal with a devil at the crossroads for his otherworldly guitar playing abilities while Faust was after unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasure. The Faust legend was first dramatized by famous Elizabethan playwright and spy Christopher Marlowe in the late sixteenth century in his play Doctor Faustus . Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (1749-1832) interpretation of the Faust legend was his life’s work – began in 1772 when he was in his twenties and returned to again and again until he completed Part Two a year before he died. The long play, mostly written in rhyming verse, is divided into Faust, Part One and Faust, Part Two - the first dealing with Fau...

In 2023 the world is celebrating four hundred years since the publication of Shakespeare’s plays in the volume now called the First Folio . Auckland Libraries is proud to care for the First Folio (1623) and the subsequent 17th century folios two, three and four. All but one were gifted to Auckland by Sir George Grey whose founding bequest established the Auckland Free Public Library in 1887. The story of the provenance of the Third Folio is an interesting one. The Third Folio is a rarer volume than either the Second (1632) or the Fourth (1685), probably because unsold copies perished in the Great Fire of London in 1666. Our copy was purchased from the Lush Family some time after 1951. It came to New Zealand some hundred years earlier when the Reverend Vicesimus Lush, his wife Blanche and four children arrived here. It had been owned by a forebear of Mrs Blanche Lush nee Hawkins, the Reverend Thomas Hawkins, Chaplain of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1754-1772 whose bookplate is in the vol...

Dorothy Quentin - the novelist you have never heard of who set her romances in New Zealand and on the high seas. We now have a guide to Auckland Libraries' formed collection of Rowan Gibbs’ Dorothy Quentin novels. The “bibliographical romance” described by Rowan Gibbs in his 1998 work (published by Cultural and Political Booklets of Te Aro, Aotearoa, sets out the considerable publication history of Madeleine Batten whose primary pen name was Dorothy Quentin. This guide is now available in the Reading Room in Special Collections, at Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero | Central City Library, to assist readers navigating the Quentin oeuvre. The redoubtable Rowan Gibbs has made a career collecting New Zealand fiction. This amounts to over 200,000 titles collected since 1977. Image:  Cover of 'The Singing Hills' by Dorothy Quentin. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections.  New Zealand libraries and book collections are richer for Rowan Gibb’s assiduous collection, particularly in fiction, ...