An Unmatched Devotion The 50th anniversary of the Colbeck acquisition is a reason to celebrate, explains GREGORY MACKIE.

THE NORMAN COLBECK of 19th- by the Pre-Raphaelites, writers associated with century and Edwardian poetry and belles Aestheticism and Decadence, and major fgures letres, which is housed in the University of in British and Irish Modernism. Te collection British Columbia ’s Rare and is also very strong in unique presentation and Special Collections, is one of the world’s most association copies of books by and about its 450 comprehensive collections of 19th-century and representative authors. Te catalogue of the col- Edwardian English and Anglo-Irish literature. lection, A Bookman’s Catalogue (UBC Press, 1987), Tis year marks the 50th anniversary of its arrival remains a vital work of reference for scholars, at UBC, along with the British bibliophile and collectors, and members of the trade. collector Norman Colbeck. Te collection’s To celebrate this indispensable research and acquisition was the brainchild of William teaching asset, the library, in conjunction with E. (Dick) Fredeman, professor of English the English department, will mount a major and a major fgure in Pre-Raphaelite studies. exhibition in the Irving K. Barber Leaning Colbeck came with the collection, moving to Centre on the Vancouver campus from October Vancouver to catalogue its extensive holdings. 23 to December 20, 2017, titled An Unmatched Te collection comprises some 13,000 Devotion. Te exhibition’s scope is ambitious. volumes and includes rare frst editions of works It will be distributed across multiple sites throughout the learning centre, including the Rare Books and Special Collections room and the Community Concourse. A one-day symposium on October 25, devoted to scholarship and research related to the Colbeck collection, coincides with the exhibition.

LITERARY JEWELS EXHIBITED Choosing items to display from this vast repository will inevitably be an idiosyncratic exercise, but I am reassured by the fact that the collection is in many ways idiosyncratic itself. It contains (almost) nothing by William Wordsworth, for instance, because Colbeck apparently hated Wordsworth. Indeed, in the catalogue entry for a frst of Romanticism’s seminal collection Lyrical Ballads (1798), whose famous preface and all but one of whose poems were Wordsworth’s, Colbeck wrote that “the frst poem in this book is ‘Te Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, in Seven Parts,’ which must be an acceptable excuse for puting Wordsworth’s book William Wordsworth, Lyrical ballads: in a Coleridge collection.” Tat ’s with a few other poems (1798). reputation in English literary history certainly

19 William Morris, Te Roots of the Mountains (1890). makes it a highlight of the exhibition, but of the later’s novel Te Edwardians (1930) for many other gems have equal lustre. publication at the Hogarth Press. It was presented Colbeck’s collection contains a high num- to UBC, along with a frst edition of the novel, ber of association and presentation copies, by Sackville-West’s son Nigel Nicolson in 1979. including the frst edition of Dante Gabriel Rosseti’s Poems (1870), which he inscribed FIRST EDITIONS D MANUSCRIPTS to the poet Robert Browning. Tis volume’s Splendid frst editions of important literary critical notoriety (many contemporary critics works abound in the Colbeck collection, such were shocked by its eroticism) is matched by as an extremely scarce large-paper copy of its extraordinary pre-publication history, as Oscar Wilde’s controversial novel Te Picture several of Rosseti’s manuscripts had to be of Dorian Gray (1891), signed by Wilde with exhumed from the grave of his wife Elizabeth a characteristic fourish. Te exhibition also Siddal, where, grief-stricken, Rosseti had gives us the opportunity to present literary lef them wrapped in her fowing red hair. history in less fnished forms. For example, the Other notable association items on display Colbeck collection includes some unique literary include William Morris’s romance Te Roots of manuscripts, such as two sonnets from D.G. the Mountains (1890), said to have inspired J.R.R. Rosseti’s sequence “Te House of Life.” Te Tolkien, which is bound in Morris-designed Colbeck’s manuscript holdings of Pre-Raphaelite fabric and inscribed to “Georgie” Burne-Jones, poet and artist William Bell Scot (1811–1890) the wife of Edward Burne-Jones and a friend of are also extensive. Tey are augmented by a the novelist George Eliot; and Tomas Hardy’s bound and corrected proof copy of Scot’s poetry collection Time’s Laughingstocks (1909), Poems (1875). What makes this artifact all the which he inscribed to his creative collaborator more astonishing is that the engraved steel Florence Henniker. Another marvellous associa- plates that Scot had made for his illustrations tion item on display is the leter Virginia Woolf accompany it, which allows us to display the wrote to her friend (and sometime paramour) entire process of the book’s transmission Vita Sackville-West, accepting the manuscript from manuscript and illustration to print.

20 Leter fom Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, fom the Norman Colbeck fonds.

Te exhibition is divided into eight thematic potential for research, teaching, and the cultiva- areas representing the particular strengths of tion of knowledge that the collection represents. the collection: Poetry, the Pre-Raphaelites, the We invite readers of Amphora to visit the revival of and the fne press movement, exhibition and to have a look. Tey will be feast- literary and artistic periodicals, belles letres, ing their eyes at a veritable banquet of Victoriana. Aestheticism and Decadence, association copies, and unique archival materials. In commemorating F Gregory Mackie is an assistant professor this anniversary, we celebrate past achievements of English at the University of British Columbia while looking towards the future. Te library in Vancouver, B.C., and curator of the exhibition aims to showcase the enduring legacy of Norman An Unmatched Devotion. Colbeck’s contribution to UBC as well as the

Engraved steel plates of illustrations to W. B. Scot)s Poems (1875).

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