The Queen's College Collection -- Theology and Ecclesiastical History
The Queen's College Collection consists of the theological and ecclesiastical history collections of Queen's College, a Church of England college associated with Memorial University of Newfoundland. The
collection, containing non-circulating and circulating items, is currently housed at the Queen Elizabeth II Library.
The Circulating Collection
The circulating collection of approximately 4,650 items is integrated with the main library holdings and may be searched by using the Libraries' Catalogue. To find items in this collection, enter your search term(s), and, when the results appear, limit by Local Collection > Queen's College Special Collection.
Rare and other non-circulating materials
The non-circulating Queen's College Collection includes over 4000 works published between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. The majority of the works are in English, though there are works in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and Gaelic. There are a number of Hexaglot bibles. The collection holds works in theology and ecclesiastical history, including many Church of England publications, as well as devotional literature, sermons (several large sets), sacred allegories, biblical commentaries, concordances to scriptures, hymns, memoirs, books on church law, church antiquities and works about other religious traditions (Islam and Buddhism). The Collection also contains works in psychology (pastoral and general), biography, general history, poetry, postmodernism, philosophy, language and literature, including a 1793 edition of the Complete Works of Shakespeare. There are many nineteenth-century editions of the works of classical authors, including Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, Homer, Lipsius, Ovid, Pliny and Virgil, to name a few. Among the editions are some very rare items, including an edition of the Bishop's Bible from 1585, a Geneva Bible from 1608, and a Scottish Book of Common Prayer from 1637 (first edition). Other bibles of note include a second edition of the first translation of the bible into Italian 'La Sacra Bibbia' (1641), as well as a bible in Greek, Latin and German published in Hamburg in 1596. There is a New Testament (1633) from the famous Harleian Library, bearing the signature of E. Harley (dated 1715). There are many ornate pulpit bibles from the 18th 19th centuries, some of them bearing interesting inscriptions. Finally, the Collection holds an important subset of titles identified with Thomas Bray (1658-1730) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
Access
Rare and non-circulating items from the Queen's College Collection are not yet catalogued; however, a bibliography of the holdings may be viewed on the Digital Archives Initiative website. The Collection is not open for browsing. 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.