Pre-Raphaelite & Victorian Illustrated Books
The Pre-Raphaelite collection contains many first editions, including works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, Maria Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais,
Ford Madox Brown and Edward Burne-Jones, as well as primary works from other authors, illustrators and designers of the period, including William Morris, Algernon Swinburne and John Ruskin. In addition, the collection holds many association copies, special editions and reprints, exhibition, auction and booksellers' catalogues; memoirs of the Pre-Raphaelite's associates and affiliates; the books and periodicals to which the Pre-Raphaelites contributed illustrations; and numerous secondary books on the far-reaching manifestations of the movement in literature, painting, sculpture, illustrations, photography and design.
Among the collection's Victorian illustrated books are fine and well-known examples of colour-printed books for children, including those designed by Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenway, and printed by Edmund Evans. As well, the collection contains some of the most sumptuous colour-printed books of the period, often issued in equally lavish bindings. Among these are books designed or illustrated by Henry Shaw, Henry Noel Humphreys, Owen Jones and William and George Audsley, Birket Foster, Laurence Houseman and Beatrix Potter, to name a few.
Complementary collecting principles guided Dr. Roger Peattie as he amassed the collection over a period of thirty years. In collecting Pre-Raphaelite literature Dr. Peattie set out to create a scholar's library, to "acquire as complete a collection of the printed sources for a comprehensive history of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement as availability, finances, space, and time....would allow." Aesthetic principles, excellence and innovation in design, binding or illustration, guided Dr. Peattie in his selection of Victorian illustrated books; in Dr. Peattie's own words he selected only those books which he found to be "either aesthetically satisfying or amazingly inventive."
The collection highlights the many connections between Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian writers, artists, illustrators, binders, typographers, printers and book designers. Dr. Peattie notes considerable overlap between the multifarious field of Victorian book design, illustrations and binding and the more contained Pre-Raphaelite achievement in woodblock illustrations and, in the hands of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris, in book and book cover design. The collection also provides ample evidence of the influence of Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite writers, artists and artisans on subsequent literary and artistic movements of the twentieth century.
Access to the Roger and Marlene Peattie Collection
The Collection came to the Libraries as two deposits: an original donation in the year 2000 and a second donation in the year 2013.
The 2000 donation: The more than 3000 titles donated in 2000 have been fully catalogued. The collection may be searched online by using the Memorial University Libraries' Catalogue. To find items in the Roger and Marlene Peattie Collection: enter your search term(s), and, when the results appear, limit by Local Collection > Roger and Marlene Peattie Collection. To view a bibliography of the titles held in this portion of the collection click here.
The 2013 donation : Material donated in 2013 has not yet been catalogued. A bibliography of the donated titles may be viewed here. The bibliography follows the same structure as that used for the original donation: Section I (Pre-Raphaelites) and Section II (Victorian Illustrated Books and Bindings). The 2013 donation adds about 1000 titles to Sections I and II. A new Section III (Miscellaneous nineteenth and twentieth century books) has been added, containing a further 550 titles.
To see physical copies of items in the collection, or to find out more about the collection, please contact Special Collections Librarian, Patrick Warner, at pwarner@mun.ca.