Please note that this blog post contains some historic uses of language, which are outdated, offensive, and discriminatory. The language is retained in its original context and does not represent views of UCL Special Collections. We are committed to contextualising and addressing dated and harmful languages in our collecting practice, collection documentation, teaching, and engagement activities. You can read about some of our work in this area as part of UCL’s Liberating the Collections programme here.   

To mark this year’s Deaf Awareness Week, we explore the complex histories of sign languages and changing attitudes to their usage, through UCL’s rich collections documenting histories of d/Deaf communities and associated institutions. This blog showcases a few items. 

There are over 150,000 users of British Sign Language (BSL), approximately half a million of ASL – the American Sign Language. Yet widespread, and unsanctioned use of sign languages is a relatively new phenomenon.  Although awareness of sign languages and their uses among d/Deaf communities has a long and established history, little to no  record of their languages exists before the 16th century. There is evidence of manual signs as communication systems among European monastic communities who practiced vows of silence, but these are not linked, of course, to histories of deafness. It was, however, a Spanish Benedictine monk, Pedro Ponce de Leon who was the first to educate d/Deaf children through early forms of sign language.  

Gerald Shea notes that those early attempts to teach d/Deaf to speak were economically motivated. “A central problem for aristocratic families in Europe, as in Byzantium,” Shea writes, “was that Deaf offspring had to be able to speak in order to inherit. These […] considerations led to the growth and influence of teachers of speech and lipreading” who first appeared in Spain, at the height of its global power, followed by similar practices in England and Holland in the 17th c., and emerging in France and Germany in the 18th c., favoring the so-called oralism and attempts to ‘cure’ deafness over manual communication systems.[1]  

The first known work on teaching the d/Deaf, published in 1620 by Juan Pablo Bonet, described the d/Deaf as “inferior […] monsters of nature and human only in form.” Although a proponent of oralism, Bonet did concede the need to teach a manual alphabet in order to assist with spelling and pronunciation. His book offers one of the early printed records of sign language.

Title page of Juan Pablo Bonet’s
Reduction de las letras, y arte para enseñar a ablar los mudos, published in Madrid in 1620. UCL Special Collections reference: ACTION HC SPA BON / 1.

A page from Bonet’s Reduction de las letras, y arte para enseñar a ablar los mudos, showing one of the earliest recorded depictions of sign language.

Armstrong observed that the mid-17th century saw the rise of sign-language education for the d/Deaf, which coincided with the emergence of modern science and Enlightenment’s education philosophies. Sign language was, in fact, seen by the French Enlightenment philosophers as ‘natural’, more ‘natural’ than spoken language, and uncorrupted by language’s uses for political oppression.[2] The period saw a proliferation of new theories and language systems, based on signs and gestures. George Delgano’s Didascalocophus or the Deaf and Dumb man’s tutor (1680), which proposed a totally new linguistic system for the d/Deaf, was one prominent example.  

Didascolocophus or The deaf and dumb mans tutor, : to which is added A discourse of the nature and number of double consonants. Both which tracts being the first (for what the author knows) that have been published upon either of the subjects. By Geo. Dalgarno (Oxford, 1680). UCL Special Collections reference: STRONG ROOM OGDEN A 822. 

An English doctor and philosopher, John Bulwer (1606 – 1656) saw gesture as the only form of speech inherently natural to mankind. In his Chirologia, or the Naturall Language of the Hand alongside a companion text, Chironomia, or the Art of Manual Rhetoric, he attempted to record hand gestures intended for an orator to memorise and perform while speaking. And although Chirologia and Chiromania did not focus on gestures as a form of d/Deaf communication – Chirologia  makes only a brief mention of deafness – Bulwer’s work became an important foundation of his long-standing commitment to and advocacy for d/Deaf education. He became known as one of the first people in England to propose education for the d/Deaf.  

John Bulwer’s Chirologia: or The natvrall langvage of the hand (1644). UCL Special Collections reference: STRONG ROOM OGDEN A 534.

Frontispiece detail from Bulwer’s Chirologia.

“An index to the following Alphabet of naturall Gestures of the Hand” from Bulwer’s Chirologia.

And what is known as the modern tradition of d/Deaf education and its uses of sign language originated with the foundation of the Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris, the National School for the Deaf, set up in the mid-18th c. by a French priest, Abbe Charles-Michel de l’Épée. He is also credited with initiating a movement that led to the spread of sign language learning in dedicated schools in Europe and North America.  

Institution des sourds et muets, par la voie méthodiques : ouvrage qui contient le projet d’une langue universelle, par l’extremise des signes naturels assujettis à une méthode / [By C.M. de l’Épée.], first published in Paris in 1776. UCL Special Collections reference: STRONG ROOM OGDEN 109.

A page from The invited alphabet; or address of A to B : containing his friendly proposal for the amusement and instruction of good children / by R. R., published in London in 1809, one of many resources offering guidance on uses of sign language to children published in the 19th c. UCL Special Collections reference: ACTION HC ENG RR.

Residential schools for the d/Deaf which followed the l’Épée model were popular in Europe and North American in the 19th c., fostering rich signing communities which developed around them. But following the controversial International Congress of the Education of the Deaf held in Milan in 1880, sign language education was internationally suppressed, often actively banned, in favour of oralism, i.e. speechreading and vocal training as the preferred education method. This dramatic shift in attitudes inevitably led to fragmentation of communities and subsequent development of small, highly localised dialects. It wasn’t until the mid-20th c. that significant moves towards greater visibility and acceptance of sign languages took place. BSL was only formally recognised as a language in 2003! And it wasn’t until 2010 the 21st International Congress on the Education of the Deaf, held in Vancouver, Canada that the motion declaring sign languages inferior to oralism, passed in Milan in 1880 was finally rejected.  

Première contribution pour le dictionnarie international du langage des signes : terminologie de conference = First contribution to the international dictionary of the language of signs / C. Magarotto, D. Vukotic. (Rome, 1959). UCL Special Collections reference: ACTION HC FRE MAG / 5.

Sample pages from First contribution to the international dictionary of the language of signs, showing their past use!

A selection of postcards from RNID archive. UCL Special Collections reference: RNID/4/18.

A selection of postcards from RNID archive. UCL Special Collections reference: RNID/4/18.

A selection of postcards from RNID archive. UCL Special Collections reference: RNID/4/18.

A selection of postcards from RNID archive. UCL Special Collections reference: RNID/4/18.

A poster produced as an educational resource, Gallaudet pre-school signed English project. Held by RNID archival collections at UCL Special Collections.

Many items highlighted in this post are part of our RNID Rare Printed Collection and RNID archives, transferred to UCL Special Collections in 2020 from the UCL Ear Institute Library. To learn more about the collection and access to it, see our brief guide.  

[1] Gerald Shea, The language of light: a history of silent voices (Yale University Press, 2017), 12. 

[2] David F. Armstrong, Show of Hands: a natural history of sign language (Gallaudet University Press, 2011), 33.  

This post was written by Katy Makin and Kaja Marczewska

Today, on Karl Marx’s 207^th birthday (Happy Birthday Karl!), we look at a couple of his prominent works in our collections, and explore their fascinating histories.

Karl Marx, Le Capital (Paris: Lachâtre, 1872. Traduction de M. J Roy)

Beesly Papers,

UCL Special Collections Reference: BEESLY/48-64/63

Perhaps the most significant item in our collection with a Karl Marx connection is the French translation of his seminal work, Capital, part of Beesly Papers.

Edward Spencer Beesly (1831-1915) was professor of History at UCL from 1860-1893 and Principal of University Hall, a UCL student residence in Gordon Sq, from 1859-1882. A Positivist and trade union activist, he was a friend of Karl Marx and acquainted with other members of Marx’s circle including Friedrich Engels. Despite some philosophical differences they collaborated for many years, with Beesly helping Marx to place his writings with various English publishers and periodicals. During Marx’s later life, he was often a dinner guest of the Beesly’s at University Hall.[1]

UCL Special Collections holds a small archive of Beesly’s papers which were gifted by Beesly’s grandchildren in 1960. They contain some correspondence, lecture notes and a variety of printed material. Included in the latter category are books written or owned by Beesly, such as his copy of the first edition of Le Capital, the French translation of Marx’s Das Kapital.

Title page of the first French edition of Das Kapital, with inscription by Beesly.

Frontispiece as seen in the first, French edition of Das Kapital.

On the title page is the inscription “Given to E S Beesly by Karl Marx. The corrections were made by K. M. himself”. Its source is unclear, but the hand is possibly Beesly’s own. There are also several small corrections to the text throughout the volume which match known examples of Marx’s writing, supporting the assertion made on the title page.

Examples of Marx’s annotations in the volume.

The French edition of Das Kapital was translated by Joseph Roy and published by Maurice Lachâtre, issued in 44 livraisons between 1872 and 1875. That Marx personally sent the French translations to Beesly is confirmed in a 1959 paper by Royden Harrison who had had sight of letters exchanged between Beesly and Marx:

Marx sent the Professor the livraisons of the French translation of Capital. These came in parts and, as they arrived, Beesly acknowledged them with warm thanks, explaining that: ‘I shall take the earliest opportunity of studying it with all the attention it deserves,’ or, ‘I promise myself great interest and pleasure in reading your work as soon as I have finished what I am now busy about –  the translation of Vol. Ill of Comte’s Pol. Positive.’[2]

The letters referenced by Royden were apparently at MELI – the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute – which no longer exists. It was wound up in 1991 and the bulk of its archival holdings transferred to the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, now inaccessible outside Russia.

By the time the French translation was published, Marx had already given Beesly one of a handful of presentation copies of the first German edition of Das Kapital, published in 1867, and asked for his help in having a review of it published in the Fortnightly Review, of which Beesly was a founder. Although Beesly was amenable, the review was ultimately rejected by the editor-in-chief, John Morley.[3]

The fact that the chapters of the French translation arrived in separate pieces explains why there is no dedication from Marx inside this volume of Le Capital; they would have been bound later. Beesly’s copy of the first German edition of Das Kapital, inscribed to him from Marx, was not part of the archive donated by Beesly’s family and was last seen at auction in 2010.[4]

Karl Marx, Capital (London: J.M. Dent, 1930)

Orwell Book Collection

UCL Special Collections Reference: ORWELL N 10 MAR

 Among other works written by Marx held by UCL’s Special Collections is a rather unassuming, later English translation of Das Kapital, published in two volumes as part of the popular Everyman’s Library in 1930. While the first edition of Capital was received poorly, selling only 1000 copies in the first four years of circulation, by the time Dent chose it for its series of reprinted classics, it achieved a canonical status. It was published in response to a new wave of interest in Marx, following the Russian Revolution and related proliferation of political writings. That is, by 1930 Capital – the foundational work of anti-capitalism – turned out to have commercial potential.

Title page of volume 1 of Capital, published by Dent in 1930 as part of Everyman’s Library.

The Everyman’s edition was important in that it popularised the new translation by Cedar and Eden Paul, based on the 4^th German edition of Das Kapital, produced for another publisher, Allen and Urwin two years earlier. But its relative novelty stemmed also from its affordability. The book was promoted as the first truly inexpensive edition of the work, somewhat cynically, perhaps, flaunting the socialist cause as a marketing tool.  It was advertised by Dent as one of the books “hitherto within reach of collectors and the comparatively well-to-do bibliophile…for the first time appropriately issued at a ‘Socialist’ price.”[5]

But our copy is also important because of its unique provenance. It is part of George Orwell’s book collection, consisting of rare and early editions of Orwell’s works, translations of Orwell’s publications, as well as books from his own library, of which we hold ca. 350 volumes. These represent part of Orwell’s library at the time of his death in 1950 and were purchased from Orwell’s executor, Richard Rees.

Richard Rees’ bookplate, as seen in the volume.

Orwell had a complicated relationship with Marxism, but Marx’s writings played a significant role in his own political thinking as well as fiction writing. Predictably, Marx’s works would have assumed a central place in his library. This particular edition offers a glimpse at Orwell’s engagement with Capital. It includes in the first volume two annotations, in pencil – including a brief, but pointed, ‘Unite!’ – which we believe to be by Orwell. The handwriting here is consistent with other samples of author’s hand, as represented in Orwell Papers, also part of UCL’s Special Collections.

“Unite!”, one of Orwell’s inscriptions in the volume.

[1] HARRISON, ROYDEN. “E. S. BEESLY AND KARL MARX (Continued).” International Review of Social History, vol. 4, no. 2, 1959, pp. 208–38: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44581406. Accessed 30 April 2025.

[2] p.226 of HARRISON, ROYDEN. “E. S. BEESLY AND KARL MARX (Continued).” International Review of Social History, vol. 4, no. 2, 1959, pp. 208–38 https://www.jstor.org/stable/44581406. Accessed 30 April 2025.

[3] See: https://www2.finebooksmagazine.com/issue/201007/auction-1.phtml. Accessed 20 April 2025.

[4] See: https://auctionpublicity.com/2010/06/09/world-records-set-at-bloomsbury-auctions-important-books-and-manuscripts-sale/. Accessed 30 April 2025.

[5]  Quoted in Terry Seymour, A Printing History of Everyman’s Library, 1906-1982. AuthorHouse, 2011, p. 182.

The Special Collections Outreach Team has been fortunate to host two students on a placement from the IOE’s BA in Education Studies. As their time comes to a close with us, they’ve written a blog post about their experiences. In this post, Joann Zhang reflects on her experience.

As part of my placement module this term, my colleague Elena Yu and I had the opportunity to work closely with the Outreach team at UCL Special Collections. This experience not only deepened my understanding of how the collections operate behind the scenes but also gave me a new perspective on how historical resources can be used for educational purposes.

This wasn’t my first time engaging with the UCL Special Collections. In Year 1, during the module The Worlds of UCL, Professor Georgina Brewis introduced us to various selected materials from the collection as part of our classwork. As a BA Education Studies student, I also often wonder how these resources could be used in school teaching. So, I was very excited when I knew that I was allocated to the Special Collections team—and even more so when I found out we would be developing a series of GCSE History learning materials.

Selection of photographs from the Worlds of UCL seminar

However, using collection items in a taught class and actually working as part of the team that selects and prepares those materials are very different experiences. In classes, items are pre-selected, but the process behind this is far more complex. First, our topic this year focused on Commonwealth immigration—something I had very little prior knowledge of. Also, I was unfamiliar with archive search engines and didn’t know how to begin locating relevant materials. In total, everything felt new to me at the beginning.

Luckily, with the support of Vicky Price and Sarah Pipkin, Elena and I were able to start with a presentation on the history of Commonwealth immigration, which gave us a basic understanding and helped us set a direction for our research. We then learned how to navigate UCL Library Services and use the archive catalogue to search for materials. Finally, we booked the Reading Room to check items in person and arrange our findings into a spreadsheet.

Viewing items in the IOE and SJRR Reading Rooms

Throughout this process, I was impressed by the diversity of items held in the collection. Beyond published rare books, there were small press materials like magazines and newspaper clippings, as well as personal letters and ephemera. My favourite item among all my findings was a videotape called Motherland, found in the Marina Foster collection. It was a play created by a group of female students at Vauxhall Manor School, based on the real-life stories of 23 Caribbean women who migrated to the UK in the 1950s. It might be particularly inspiring for GCSE students to learn about what students of the same age were creating more than 40 years ago.

Watching the Motherland VHS

This research experience felt like a treasure hunt: starting with almost no knowledge and slowly digging deeper to uncover hidden gems with teamwork and guidance from our supervisors. There were times of disappointment, especially when items didn’t quite match what I was looking for. But there were also rewarding moments brought by unexpected findings. Over the last four months, I was glad to see my confidence grow with each visit to the Reading Room, and I have developed new research skills that I can apply in other contexts.

At the end, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Amy Howe, Becky Sims, Chelsie Mok, Colin Penman, Liz Lawes, Sarah Pipkin, and Vicky Price, who supported me throughout the placement with patience and kindness. I’m truly grateful for this opportunity and hope to see you in the future, both in and beyond the Special Collections.

Thank you so much to Joann for her hard work and her reflection on her placement!

The Special Collections Outreach Team has been fortunate to host two students on a placement from the IOE’s BA in Education Studies. As their time comes to a close with us, they’ve written a blog post about their experiences. In this post, Elena Yu reflects on her experience.

Introduction

I chose the Education Placement Module this term, and it is so lucky for me to spend 50 wonderful hours with warm-hearted staff members in UCL Special Collection team and my classmate Joann Zhang, working on a project around the topic of “Commonwealth Migration”. We hope that our research and work will offer some help for GCSE students’ history study. Our placement started in late January with an initial online meeting with Vicky Price and Sarah Pipkin. Over the following weeks, Joann and I gained insight into the various aspects of the team’s work — including archiving, cataloguing, digitisation, and the outreach efforts related to the collection.

Working as a team   

Illustration of shooting an ancient book in the digitization process

While working through the archives, a number of staff members generously shared their expertise, guidance, and advice—all of which greatly inspired me and contributed to the development of my research. Colin Penman from the UCL Records suggested several useful items from the Records collection. Becky Sims, Liz Lawes, and Chelsie Mok kindly offered valuable advice on locating materials, and Amy Howe patiently demonstrated the digitization process (as shown in the photo). Their support was instrumental in deepening my understanding of archival work and contextualizing it within the scope of my research. 

The most exciting collection item  

Material reference number: GA/9/2/4

After keyword searching in the catalogues of online library and looking at them in the UCL Special Collections Reading Room, GA/9/2/4 is a part of most intriguing material that I found. These colourful leaflets and booklets are from 1970-1987, and perfectly show activities that were done by the Commonwealth Institute to provide better service to both immigrants’ lives. Leaflets included multiple types of activities offered, such as school visits to exhibition art galleries, educational services, quiz pamphlets featuring fun facts or knowledge of commonwealth nations’ culture, teaching packs, workshops and library services. The content of the activities covered wide range of commonwealth nations and communities. They are suitable for assisting students with GCSE History learning, as they used harmless language with easy vocabularies, with interesting illustrations and contents created for children in similar age groups.  

What I have learned   

This placement has provided me with not only practical work skills but also meaningful life experience. As a student who began with little background knowledge in either archival work or the topic of Commonwealth migration, I initially felt overwhelmed and uncertain. Thanks to the helping hands from Vicky, Sarah, and Joann, I gradually developed a clearer understanding of the research topic, along with the ability to navigate specific catalogues to find relevant materials, and it is truly cheerful when I can see my progress. I still remember Vicky’s words: “It’s human instinct to push away from daunting tasks but give yourself the courage to climb over the mountain and take the first step. That’s the hardest part of the process—once you’ve made that move, you’re already making progress.” Her encouragement stayed with me throughout the journey and continued to motivate me whenever I felt discouraged.  

Thank you so much to Elena for her hard work and her reflection on her placement!

Image credit: Howard Kordansky, 2024 Book Prize winner

The Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize celebrates and encourages student book collectors who are passionate about any type of book, printed, or manuscript material. It is open to any student studying at a London-based university who has a collection of printed and/or manuscript material focused on a cohesive theme.  

The winner will receive £600 as well as an allowance of £300 to purchase an item for UCL Special Collections. The prize will also include the opportunity to give a talk on your collection as part of the UCL Special Collections events programme.

Your collection should be based around a theme which has been deliberately assembled and that you intend to continue growing. Past shortlisted and finalist collection themes include post WWI Jewish experiences, transgender authors, and Arabic voices in science fiction and graphic novels.  

Your collection does not need to include items that are valuable, old, or historically important. Instead, your collection can include anything from comic books to postcards, 19th century novels to modern YA fiction. As long as it has a dedicated theme, you are welcome to apply! 

To apply, you must:

• Be a current undergraduate or postgraduate studying for a degree at a London-based university. Both part-time and full-time students are encouraged to apply. 

• Have a cohesive collection of at least 8 items.   

• Fill out our online application form by April 25th.  

• Shortlisted applicants will be asked to present their collection to the prize judges on May 19th. 

Below are several resources that can help you plan your application. However, please feel free to contact library.spec.coll.rarebooks@ucl.ac.uk with any specific questions you might have about the prize. 

Collection of Emma Treleaven, 2023 Book Collecting Prize winner

To apply or to learn more about the eligibility criteria: 

• The Anthony Davis Book Prize webpage. 

 For advice on what a collection can look like: 

• How to be a student book collector (and apply for the Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize) 

• Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize: Collecting with Intention 

• Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize: Interview with LSE Library 

 Conversations with previous winners and finalists: 

• Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize: Interview with Emma Treleaven (2023 winner) 

• Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize: Books that built a zoo 

• Q&A with Erick Jackaman, 2021 Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize Runner Up  

Announcements of previous winners: 

• 2024 Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize Winners announced! 

• Winners of the 2023 Anthony Davis Student Book Collecting Prize 

• Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize 2022: results announced 

• Announcing the winners of the 2021 Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize 

• Results announced for Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize 2020 

written by Kathryn Hannan and Kaja Marczewska 

At UCL, we actively develop our Special Collections through acquisitions, by donation, bequest, transfer, and purchase.  We add to our collections regularly, across our collecting priorities, to enhance, complement, and diversify our existing holdings for research and teaching.

This blog is part of a new series, showcasing selected new additions to our collections from across UCL’s archives, records, and rare books. We hope you will enjoy learning a little bit about them!

White Lion Street Free School, Papers of Nigel Wright.  

Imagine a school with no compulsory lessons and no strict timetable, where pupils shop for and help prepare school lunches, take part in building maintenance, cleaning and tidying, and where decisions are made at a weekly meeting where teachers (known as workers), parents, and children all have an equal voice. This is how the White Lion Street Free School in Islington, London operated from 1972 – 1990. The school was free to attend with non-selective admissions, based on a local catchment area. 

We recently received an exciting donation of archival papers about the White Lion Street Free School, now part of the Institute of Education Archives here at UCL Special Collections. These papers were collected by Nigel Wright, who worked at the School for four years (1979-1983) and wrote a book about his time there. The papers include his research and reflections on the school, correspondence about the running and funding of the school, copies of School Bulletins, and a publication by the school “How to Set Up a Free School: A Handbook of Alternative Education”. As you can imagine such an experimental school created a lot of controversy and press coverage. The collection also contains press cuttings, both praising and criticising the school. 

Archive collections of material from such radical experiments in education during the 1970s – 1980s are rare as, so often, these experimental schools were short-lived. This adds to the value of this collection for research. And we are also already actively using the collection in our teaching too. Items from the Nigel Wright Papers were used this term in a module on ‘Radical Education’ on the Education Society and Culture BA. The students were fascinated to read first-hand accounts of such an experimental school and see photographs of its everyday life in the school bulletins. 

To find out more about the collection, see the catalogue record for Papers of Nigel Wright. 

NW/7, draft document outlining White Lion Street Free School’s philosophy, C1970s – 1980s, UCL Special Collections, IOE Archives.

NW/4, White Lion Street Free School Newsletters and publication, 1970s, UCL Special Collections, IOE Archives.

 In 2024, we have also so far added over 200 new items to our rare printed collections. Included here is a preview of some of these new additions.  

Two new volumes in our Laurence Housman collection:  

Laurence Housman (1865-1959) was the brother of poet and scholar A.E. Housman, and a versatile artist, scholar, and social reformer. At UCL, we hold a collection of books and periodicals by or with contributions from Housman. The collection was part of the library of Ian Kenyur-Hodgkins, an antiquarian bookseller, which was purchased by the College in 1978. This year, we added two new items to the collection:  

Of Aucassin and Nicolette : a translation in prose and verse from the Old French; together with Amabel and Amoris / given for the first time by Laurence Housman; with drawings by Paul Woodroffe; engraved on the wood by Clemence Housman. 

This new item is a lovely first Housman edition of the anonymous medieval French chantefable, or a ‘sung story’, which traditionally combined prose and verse. Of Aucassin and Nicolette has long been popular among book designers and illustrators and many editions exist. This Housman edition was printed in London, by John Murray, in 1902 and includes 3-full page illustrations – engravings on wood, by Clemence Housman, from the drawings by Paul Woodroffe. It is Clemence’s contribution that makes this item particularly interesting. Clemence Housman (1861-1955) was Laurence Housman’s sister and herself an author, illustrator, and activist in the women’s suffrage movement. Together with Laurence, she was the founder of Suffrage Atelier, an artists’ collective committed to campaigning for women’s suffrage in England, which specialised in printmaking, banner-making, drawing, and stencilling. Clemence and Laurence collaborated often, and we hold in our collection other examples of volumes illustrated by her (e.g. Moonshine & clover).    

While we hold another copy of the same edition, this new acquisition is a presentation copy, given by Housman himself to his friend John Baillie, subsequently regifted by Baillie and passed onto his friend, James Boswell in 1925.  

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue record for Of Aucassin and Nicolette.  

Of Aucassin and Nicolette title page (left) and half-title page with Housman and Baillie inscriptions (right). UCL Special Collections Reference: SC Temp 2024/162.

Palestine Plays by Laurence Housman. 

In his four Palestine Plays, Housman explores the dangers of superstition in interpreting the Bible and offers unconventional takes on the Old Testament. In his reworkings of Biblical narratives about prophecy and social justice, Housman draws on his contemporary political activism and his engagement with radical social movements, including women’s suffrage, pacifism, and socialism.  

The copy we recently added to our collection is the first edition of the Plays, published by Jonathan Cape in 1942. It was Laurence Housman’s own copy of the volume, signed by him, and includes his annotations as well as corrections to the text. The volume also includes an inscription, pasted on the back endpaper which reads, somewhat ironically perhaps: “Please keep this copy very clear, as it is a special edition. L.H.” and a pasted, undated flyer advertising Houseman’s reading from his plays at the New School Hall, King St. Methodist Church in Derby. As is the case with Of Auccasin and Nicolette, we hold more than one copy of this edition of Palestine Plays, but the newly acquired item offers a rich and unique insight into Housman’s writing and editing practice and the circulation of the book.  

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue record for Palestine Plays. 

Palestine Plays: half-title page with Housman’s inscription (left) and a page showing Housman’s corrections to the text (right). UCL Special Collections reference: SC TEMP 2024/9.

Palestine Plays inscription: “Please keep this copy very clean, as it is a special edition. L H”

Twelve Original Woodcuts by Roger Fry 

This item includes 12 plates of woodcuts by Roger Fry, hand-printed by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at Hogarth Press, in their Richmond home in 1921.   

Fry was, alongside Virgina Woolf, a member of the famous Bloomsbury Group, a Bloomsbury-based collective or artists, writers, and intellectuals active in the early 20th c. He founded the Omega Workshop in 1913, a design enterprise which brought together members of the Bloomsbury Group, set up to break what he considered to be a false division between decorative and fine arts, and to encourage the expression of Bloomsbury Group aesthetics in graphic and product design. Fry also had links with UCL, having taught art history at the Slade. And while he is today considered one of the most important art critics of his time, he was also a painter and a skilled printmaker in his own right. He printed many woodcuts in the early 1920s, mostly inspired by the modernist aesthetics of the German Expressionism.   

Twelve Original Woodcuts is a wonderful example of many different areas of Fry’s practice coalescing. The volume is an expression of Fry’s keen interest in printmaking and in woodcut as a printing technology as well as a statement on his place in the Bloomsbury Group community, and its often collaborative and collegial approach to artistic practice and production. Here, Fry doesn’t print the work himself, but rather relies on the Woolfs printing press and distribution channels of Hogarth Press to produce and promote his work.  

In a letter of 2 December 1921, Virginia Woolf noted that “the first edition of Roger’s woodcuts sold out in two days, and another [is] to be printed, folded, stitched and bound instantly” (Letters, II, p.495). The first printing to which Woolf referred, included 150 copies only. The second impression, which we hold at UCL, was printed on superior paper stock and without the titles of the woodcuts. The size of the second printing is unknown, but very few examples can be traced today. This was also the last book to be printed by the Woolfs to incorporate original woodcuts.   

Our copy of Fry’s Woodcuts was part of Albert Ronald Morris’ library. Morris was a former Slade School student, and the item was donated to UCL by Romilly R. Morris, his son. 

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue for Twelve Original Woodcuts.

One of the woodcuts from Roger Fry’s Twelve Original Woodcuts. UCL Special Collections reference: ART RARE PA 10.

 The Ojibway Conquest: a tale of the Northwest by Kah-ge-gah-bowl or G. Copway, chief of the Ojibway nation. 

Kahgegahbowl, also known as George Copway was born in 1818 in Upper Canda, to Mississauga chief. Although brought up in a Native American community, Kahkakakahbowh’s parents were converted to Christianity in 1827. Copway went to a church school in Illinois and later became a Methodist missionary in Canada. Following an embezzlement scandal, he was expelled from the Canadian conference of the Methodist Church and moved to the United States, where he enjoyed an extraordinary carried. His autobiography, considered to be the first book by a Canadian Native American, was published in 1847 and proved an immediate hit. The Ojibway Conquest, the copy of which was recently acquired by UCL Special Collections, followed in 1850.  

Published under Copway’s name, the work wasn’t in fact written by him. Julius Taylor Clark claimed in 1898 to be the author who had allowed Copway to publish it under his own name in order to “raise fund to aid him in his work among his people.” A later, 1898 edition includes Clark’s preface which outlines the book’s publication history.  

The copy we hold is the first, 1850 edition, published in New York and includes Copway’s portrait. Interestingly, it is a presentation copy, which was gifted by Copway himself to Dudley Arthur Mills, the British Conservative MP, in 1850.   

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue record for The Ojibway Conquest. 

The Ojibway Conquest: a frontispiece portrait of George Copway (left) and a presentation copy inscription (right). UCL Special Collections reference: SC TEMP 2024/16.

 Dialogo della bella creanza della donne, dello Stordito Intronato.  

Also known as La Raffaella, this volume was a popular 16th century work on women, social life, youth, love, and desire, considered quite scandalous in its day. Dialogo was written by Alessandro Piccolomini (1508 – 1578), but published under the pseudonym Stordito Intronato. Piccolomoni, very well known in his time for both his comic and scientific writing, was an active member of the Academia degli Intronati, an important meeting place for the aristocracy in the Republic of Siena. On entering the Acadmia in 1531, he took a name of Strodito, under which he published. His Dialogo was written as ironic, provocative, and playful entertainment for his fellow members of the Academia, but revealed also a wealth of detail on Renaissance women’s social lives, and often problematic modes of their representation in literatures of the period.  

First published in Venice in 1539, the volume was republished many times during the 16th century. UCL holds its 1560 edition from Milan. There are only two other copies of this edition recorded in the UK; Universal Short Title Catalogue identifies only four additional copies internationally. That is, this is a very rare item, and the UCL copy is made even more special as it retains its original 16th c. full soft pigskin binding with black lettering on spine. 

This item was part of the collection of Professor Charles Randolph Quirk, the Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at UCL from 1968 and 1981. His collection was donated to UCL by his widow Gabriele Stein, lady Quirk, and is now part of UCL Special Collections.  But our copy also includes traces of its other owner, the costume historian and British Museum curator John Lea Nevinson. Both an inscription and Nevinson’s playful bookplate are present in the volume, alongside a leaf inserted at the end with notes on edition of this work, in what looks like Nevinson’s handwriting.   

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue record for Dialogo. 

Dialogo della bella creanza delle donne (1560), title page.

John L. Nevinson’s bookplate, as seen in our copy of Dialogo (1560).

 All our collections and collection items mentioned in this blog are available to all and can be viewed in our reading rooms. More information about what we hold and how to book an appointment is available on our website.  

We often work with donors and accept new acquisitions, where these supplement and enrich our existing holdings and speak to our collecting priorities. If you have an item or a collection, no matter how big or small, which speaks to our collecting remit and might need a new home, please contact us on spec.coll@ucl.ac.uk to discuss a possible donation to UCL Special Collections.   

Please note that this blog post contains historic uses of language which is outdated, offensive, and discriminatory. The language is retained in its original context and does not represent views of UCL Special Collections. We are commitment to contextualising and addressing dated and harmful languages in our collecting practice, collection documentation, teaching, and engagement activities. You can read about some of our work in this area as part of UCL’s Liberating the Collections programme here.  

In 1969, the USA publishing market saw “increasing numbers of reprints of old volumes by and about black Americans […] pouring off the presses,” as one review put it in the February issue of Negro Digest. Presses such as Arno Press, Negro Universities Press, Dover Publishing, and the book division of Johnson Publishing Company, the publisher of Ebony, a popular African American magazine, emerged in the 1960s to republish significant, out-of-print works of Black American history. Developed at the backdrop of the civil rights struggles and the new civil liberties – as well as disappointments – of the Black Power era, these presses positioned their work as a restorative and reparative effort to recover the work of and on Black American experience. The Crisis described this boom in reprints as a “revolution,” and an important new means of making Black American history visible and accessible.

At UCL, we hold examples of, among others, the Negro University Press (NUP) publications. An imprint of Greenwood Publishers, an educational an academic publisher which specialised in reprints, NUP produced an extensive list in its “The Black Experience in America” series. Among NUP’s most notable publications was a history of slavery in the USA, published as a 125-volume series of reprinted books which were originally published between the late 19^th c. and the 1930s. And while monographs constituted NUP’s principal specialism, the press also reprinted notable African-American periodicals, including the Crisis, and National Anti-Slavery Standard. And this is perhaps where their work proved most impactful, often recovering full periodical runs of otherwise hard to find publications.

Figure 1: Examples of Negro Universities Press publications from UCL’s collections.

NUP’s reprints, both books and periodicals, tended to be published as facsimile editions with no additional content or editorial interventions. In fact, facsimiles, rather than new editions, were very common among the publishers contributing to this Black publishing revival of the 1960s. The facsimile reprints were a practical choice; they made possible quick, efficient, and relatively cheap means of reproducing existing works – all important considerations for the heavily profit-driven reprints market. But this particular approach to bringing out-of-print works back into circulation also played into the contemporary desire for recovering the ‘authentic’ African American experience, here mediated through a historically significant text. And it was this desire for authenticity that was captured in and through the facsimile, a type of reproduction which “aims to invoke the virtual presence of the source, so the bond between reproduction and source is not only graphical and material but is also defined by a retrospective relationship between two points in history, the then and the now.” The sources of the reprint were typically acknowledged in all NUP volumes, further reaffirming the connection with the original.

Figure 2: A copyright page from a NUP reprint publication.

Many of the reprint publications were aimed at academic audiences and libraries. Their arrival was made possible by significant changes in the library practice in the first half of the 20^th century, and especially the work of African-American bibliographers, including W.E.B. Du Bois, and librarians such as Dorothy Porter of the Howard University whose  transformative work on library classification systems not only placed Black writing centre stage in many collections, it also created demand for more publications by Black authors. As Laura E. Helton notes, by the early 1930s there was a growing set of the so-called New Negro Libraries in the USA which held collections on and by African Americans. But existing library classification systems lacked vocabularies for their effective description. “For librarians of ‘Negro Collections,’” Helton writes, “the marginality of blackness […] politicised every instance of numbering, naming, and filing.” According to Helton, the period roughly between 1900 to the end of World War II was “compulsively documentary,” marked by collective efforts of building collections for the study of Black history and literature, of addressing their historic lack, and developing systems for their organisation and description, that is, of “making a field.”

By the time the NUP and other reprint publishers emerged, that landscape looked very different. The larger project of the 1960s reprints was a direct consequence of the work of librarians and bibliographers like Du Bois and Porter, and a response to the transformed conditions of Black writing, reading, and research. NUP was, in fact, set up, as its 1969 catalogue explained “to be an easily accessible publishing medium for […] American Negro colleges.” It run a dedicated ‘Standing Order Plan’ to aid library acquisitions and was to be “a complete, profession publishing organisation.” That is, the press positioned itself as serious scholarly endeavour; it presented acceptable, institutionalised, now increasingly canonised Black history.

Characteristically, NUP and other reprint publishers of the period also explicitly distanced themselves from the radical, small, independent publishers of the Black Liberation Movement and the Black bookshop networks which distributed them (one example is the Detroit-based Broadside Press, whose publications we also hold in our collection). As Joshua Clark Davis explains, “for many Black Power activists, reading works by black authors represented a fundamental step in political awakening, a central prerequisite of the intellectual and ideological transformation from Negro accommodationism to radical Black Power.” And the activist Black bookshops which emerged in the 1960s USA were the place of such radical reading. They were at once places to buy books, unique information centres, and important Black public spaces for community organising, explicitly supporting causes of black nationalism and Pan-Africanism.

Figure 3: A selection of Broadside Press pamphlets, part of UCL Special Collections Poetry Store collection.

Presses like the NUP represented crucial antiracist work always integral to cultures of Black print. But in rejecting their contemporary Black print activist networks, the reprint publishers also inevitably limited the horizon of 1960s Black prints’ radical possibilities. The politics of the reprints represented a characteristic position of the liberal centre and its narratives of diversity, inclusion, and assimilation – of one American history – rather than that of Black struggle for radical Black liberation. The reprint revolution was both transformative in making accessible and ‘legitimising’ Black history on an unprecedented scale, and at the same time, it was a means of controlling and containing the types of Black histories made available and their impacts on the American reading public.  “What if,” to borrow from Fielder and Senchyne, “print and infrastructures surrounding it might more often be constraining rather than freeing? The book form itself […] might actually be inextricable from the history of antiblack racism.”

This turn to reprints in the 1960s was not a new phenomenon. I wrote earlier in this short series of our Black History Month posts about the important role that reprinting played in popularising the abolitionist message of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (and in turning the novel into an international bestseller too). And like the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, reprinting African American books in the 1960s was good business. Porter, in fact, bemoaned this popularity of reprinting, which she saw as “largely characterised by white publishers’ insatiable desire for ‘putting [into circulation] everything [Black] that they could get their hands on.” The history of the reprints is, then, as Autumn Womack explains, “a question about how and why […] Black literary production gets circulated.” The reprint boom of the 1960s is a marker of the lasting history of Black publishing shaped by complex ecologies of reuse and reproduction, and tensions between constant struggle for freedom and profiteering. Simultaneously liberating and regulating, the gesture of reprinting is more than a mechanism for reproducing content; it is a complex technology long associated with radical fight for voice, representation, and visibility.

This blog post is the last instalment in the UCL Special Collections Black History Month series exploring black histories through histories of print and publishing. 

Other posts in the series:

Reprinting Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Kaja Marczewska

Independent Black Publishing and UCL’s collecting practices, by Liz Lawes

This post was written by Liz Lawes, Subject Liaison Librarian: Fine Art, History of Art, Film Studies and Collection Manager: Small Press Collections, UCL Special Collections.

UCL’s Small Press Collections, held by UCL Special Collections, are globally important holdings of independently produced and distributed literary little magazines, experimental poetry, avant-garde artists’ and countercultural publications, and supporting bibliographic and archival material.

Established in 1965 by Geoffrey Soar, then the UCL English Librarian, in response to a burgeoning international culture of self-publishing, it was one of the first institutional collections of small press publications anywhere in the world. It was developed despite the myriad challenges presented by such unpredictable, often ephemeral, and bibliographically challenging material.

The collection was intentionally global in scope from the outset with acquisitions being made from across Europe, the Commonwealth, and the United States. As a result, UCL can boast enviable holdings of mid-twentieth century titles published in all corners of the globe, including many originating from Africa and the Caribbean, alongside Black publishers located in the UK and the United States. This includes iconic African titles of the post-independence era such as Black Orpheus, an influential Nigerian literary journal founded to provide a platform for the emerging, independent, West African arts scene. It featured poetry, fiction, and visual art by African and African diaspora writers and artists alongside criticism, commentary and reviews. Black Orpheus was distributed internationally and is considered one of the most important formative influences in Modernist African literature. Transition was published in Kampala, Uganda, as an alternative to the Eurocentric publications that had dominated up to that point. It provided an opportunity for young East African writers to be published for the first time and quickly became the leading intellectual magazine of immediately post-colonial Africa.

Amongst the lesser known titles are Okike, an African journal of new writing published in Nigeria and edited by novelist, poet, and critic Chinua Achebe; Okyeame, found by the Ghana Society of Writers in 1960 as a showcase for Ghanaian poetry, including traditional oral works translated by leading contemporary poets; Busara, an influential Kenyan literary journal; and  Zuka: journal of East African creative writing, affiliated to the University of Nairobi.

The Caribbean is also well represented by titles such as Bim, a pioneering literary journal established in Barbados in the 1940s to provide an opportunity for new writers to appear in print alongside established Caribbean writers, and Savacou (Jamaica), the journal of the Caribbean Artists Movement. US titles such the Journal of Black Poetry, a San Francisco little magazine of the Black Arts era, were also acquired.

A selection of Moor’s Head Press pamphlets, one of our recent acquisitions.

In addition to the literary serials, pamphlets, and books, Soar enhanced the collections by including contemporary underground newspapers with a political and counter-cultural emphasis.  We hold, among others, London-based titles such as Black Liberator: theoretical and discussion journal for Black revolution and Black Voice, the journal of the Black Unity and Freedom Party. Black Voice was printed in the form of a tabloid newspaper with pictures and articles documenting British and international political developments from a party perspective. Topics considered included police brutality, apartheid, and the education of African-Caribbean children in British schools. Seen alongside the literary material, these titles provide a synergistic overview of Black cultural and political activity in the second half of the twentieth century.

UCL continues to develop these collections to represent the diversity of the current independent publishing scene. Recently acquired titles include those of New York based BlackMass, an independent press publishing material by Black artists and cultural producers that combines archival photographs and found print material with poetry and jazz music, the Moor’s Head Press On the Blackness of BLACKNUSS pamphlet series, and Blackity: black black black, a poetry zine by queer Black authors published by Cassandra Press.

If you have any suggestions for further additions to the collections, please get in touch!

This blog post is the second instalment in the UCL Special Collection Black History Month series exploring Black histories through histories of print and publishing. 

Other posts in the series:

Reprinting Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Kaja Marczewska

The ‘reprint revolution’ and cultures of 20th c. Black publishing, by Kaja Marczewska

Please note that this blog post contains historic uses of language, which is outdated, offensive, and discriminatory. The language is retained in its original context and does not represent views of UCL Special Collections. We are commitment to contextualising and addressing dated and harmful languages in our collecting practice, collection documentation, teaching, and engagement activities. You can read about some of our work in this area as part of UCL’s Liberating the Collections programme here.   

Writing for the Tribune in 1945, George Orwell described Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as “the supreme example of the ‘good bad’ book.” The “good bad book,” Orwell explained, “was the kind of book that has no literary pretensions but which remains readable when more serious productions have perished.” For Orwell, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is both “unintentionally ludicrous,” “full of preposterous melodramatic incidents,” and at the same time a “deeply moving” serious representation of real-world struggles; an account of the cruelty of slavery in mid-19th c. America.  

Orwell’s exploration of “good bad books,” such as Uncle Tom, was prompted by a project of his contemporary publisher to produce reprints of minor or partly forgotten novels – “a valuable service in these bookless days,” as he put it. Interestingly, the history of Stowe’s novel is a history of 19th century reprint culture. Its unprecedented publishing success is in no small part a result of burgeoning mass market publishing, lack of international copyright regulations, and complex cultures of media production of the period. This blog, part of our short Black History Month series, explores the publication history of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and its significance to histories of slavery, through UCL’s Special Collections holdings.  

The passing of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 became a major catalyst for Stowe’s antislavery writing. This new legislation required all citizens to return runaway slaves to their owners. Its impacts were felt particularly acutely in places like Cincinnati, a border city of the free state of Ohio, where Stowe’s family lived, across from the slave state of Kentucky. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, while a fictional account, was an attempt to document the dichotomies of slavery and freedom Stowe witnessed. Its contribution to the abolitionist cause was notable, but its subject was only one reason for the novel’s bestselling success. It is the unique publishing ecology of the time that enabled its rapid international circulation and resulting widespread engagement with Stowe’s anti-slavery stance. Political sentiment and growing capitalist impulse came together in this unique phenomenon of the 19th c. publishing culture.  

The novel was first issued in a book form in March 1852, released as a two-volume edition by an American publisher, J.P. Jewett. That first edition followed a highly successful serialised publication in The National Era, an abolitionist newspaper, which printed it in 41 weekly instalments between June 1851 and April 1852. It was hugely popular as a serial and Jewett expected a major commercial success. Claire Parfait noted, in her study of the novel, that Jewett chose to have the novel stereotyped. A relatively new printing technology at the time, which only appeared in the USA in the 1820s, stereotyping relied on manufacture of stereotype plates, instead of setting type to produce books. While expensive, it enabled much faster reprints – the ready-made plates could be reused multiple times and didn’t call for additional labour needed to re-set type for new impressions of the same publication. Because it required heavy investment, stereotyping was reserved for those publications which were expected to sell well. Jewett clearly knew his market – an instant bestseller, the novel sold 10,000 copies in the first two weeks. It was thanks to this choice of printing technology that Jewett was able to meet demand and issue a second printing of 5,000 copies of the novel as soon as the first printing sold out, only two days after its publication.  

It is interesting to note how rapidly Uncle Tom’s Cabin grew to be translated, published abroad, often pirated too. The first UK edition followed the American publication very quickly; Clarke & Company, a London-based publisher, issued it in May 1852, i.e. only two months after it was originally released. And a boom for UK editions followed, with the novel selling 1,5 million copies in the first year of publication. Katie McGettigan estimates that at least eighteen different publishers issued editions of the novel in its first year on the UK market. No other book had sold as well in as short a time in the UK, and in the USA only the Bible sold more copies. At UCL’s Special Collections, we hold examples of these early UK editions of the novel.  

Title page of the Routledge illustrated edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)

Title page of the Routledge edition, highlighting the inclusion of Carlisle’s preface

One of our copies, part of UCL’s Rotton Collection, is the 1852 UK edition published by Thomas Bosworth as Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Negro Life in the Slave States of America, published in August that year (one of the first to follow Clarke in publishing Uncle Tom on this side of the Atlantic) (UCL Reference: Rotton 24.c.26). We also hold an illustrated edition jointly published by Clarke and Routledge under the same title, also in 1852 (Ogden STO UNC/1), as well as another Routledge edition, published later that year but this time as Uncle Tom’s Cabin; a tale of life among the lowly (i.e. using the title of the first USA edition) (Ogden STO UNC/2). The latter also includes a preface by the Earl of Carlisle (introduced as a friend of Stowe’s, although the connection was exaggerated) and a preface by Stowe herself, both included here as unique selling points. All three were, characteristically, issued by publishers known for producing American reprints for the UK market.  

A common characteristic of these international editions, in the UK and elsewhere, were claims to ‘authenticity.’  The Thomas Bosworth edition, for example, was marketed as ‘the author’s edition.’ It included an ‘Advertisement to this edition’ which notes that Stowe had “a direct interest” in its sale. The Routledge and Clarke edition was published with a notice on author’s editions which read:  

we must do ourselves the justice to announce that Mrs Stowe has a direct pecuniary interest in this extraordinary success. Our editions are the real ‘Author’s Editions;’ we are in direct negotiations with Mrs. Stowe; and we confidently hope that when accounts are made up we shall be in a position to award to that talented lady a sum not inferior in amount to her receipts in America.  

On the market almost instantaneously flooded by a myriad of the novel’s editions, some authorised, many what we would consider today ‘pirated copies’, a credible association with the author became an important means of ensuring better sales of the book.  Neither of these two publishers were, in fact, Stowe’s official UK publishers; seeking out other means to make their editions attractive to the reading public was an important marketing strategy. 

“Advertisement to this Edition” from the Thomas Bosworth edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852

Notice, Author’s Editions (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Clarke & Co. 1852)

Publishing for children formed an important and rapidly expanding part of the publishing market in both UK and USA of the period. Stowe also saw children as the first and main audience of Uncle Tom and there is evidence of the text being read to children in many 19th c. homes. The proliferation of illustrated editions of the novel definitely helped promote it as a publication for young audiences.  In fact, our illustrated Routledge and Clarke edition includes a handwritten inscription: “Presented to Clement Hall, Sept 18th 1852 by his Mamma,” implying, perhaps a similar intended usage of the copy we hold.   

Inscription in the UCL copy of the illustrated Routledge edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (OGDEN STO UNC / 1)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was as controversial as it was popular. The novel was criticised both for reinforcing negative stereotypes of enslaved peoples and widely denounced by advocates of slavery, spurring a unique publication ecology of counter publications too. The so-called “anti-Tom” works typically promoted pro-slavery arguments in an attempt to discredit Stowe’s depiction of the cruelty of slavery. It was in response to the growing criticism that Stowe published in 1853 a Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The work detailed the sources and corroborated facts incorporated into her otherwise fictional account of slave struggles of the period. That work proved an instant publishing success too, and was similarly reprinted widely. It also led to a growing market for related publications. UCL’s copy of the UK 1853 edition of the Key includes, for example, a pasted-in advertisement for The American Slave Code, in Theory and Practice, published by Clarke, Beeton, and Co. as a companion to the volume (Rotton 24.c.25).  

Advertisement of a Companion Volume in The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1853)

Title page of the UK 1853 edition of The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin

The boom in the Uncle Tom’s Cabin reprints was not unique to that title. The novel appeared in the UK in a complex transatlantic publishing landscape which relied on reprints rather than imports for distribution and circulation of works. Starting in the 1830s, reprints of existing titles, often in affordable editions, became popular, aimed especially at the growing middle- and working-class reading publics. Many UK publishers turned to texts published in the USA for that purpose, partly in search of new titles that had potential to sell well, and partly due to costs. The UK and USA copyright laws of the period meant that any US text published first in North America was considered public domain in the UK and so could be reprinted without incurring any additional costs. Republishing in the UK texts which proved popular abroad was a simple business decision; the publication history of Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a perfect example of the mid-19th publishing market logic.  

While UK reprints market of Uncle Tom was able to flourish unrestricted, the local USA regulations limited it somewhat until 1893, when copyright in the work expired, prompting a flurry of new American editions of the work in the mid-1890s. That is, it was the copyright regulation, coupled with a rapidly expanding market for fiction and affordable books, rather than a strong anti-slavery stance in the UK that made it possible for this antislavery fiction to circulate in the UK widely and without restriction.  

This blog post is the first instalment in the UCL Special Collection Black History Month series exploring black histories through histories of print and publishing.  

Other posts in the series:

Independent Black Publishing and UCL’s collecting practices, by Liz Lawes

The ‘reprint revolution’ and cultures of 20th c. Black publishing, by Kaja Marczewska

On April 24th, 1895, the contents of Oscar Wilde’s house at No 16 Tite Street were auctioned off to pay his debt to the Marquess of Queensberry. Included in the sale was Wilde’s library of over 2000 books, alongside drafts, letters, paintings, furniture and his children’s toys. Wilde did not use a personalized bookplate or write his name in all his books, and the auction only provided an incomplete record of his library collection.  

Of Wilde’s library, only about 40 books have been identified. This list is slowly increasing – including the addition of at least two books that are in UCL’s collection. These books were previously unknown to researchers, and while they’ve long been listed in the catalogue as being connected to Wilde, their provenance was not fully researched.  

The Golden Lotus 

Within Wilde’s collection were several presentation copies – or copies of books given as a gift from the author alongside a personalized inscription from the author to the recipient. One such book at UCL is The Golden Lotus by Edward Greey.  

Title page of The Golden Lotus, shelfmark FLS C73 GRE

Edward Greey published several works on Japanese history and mythology. The Golden Lotus includes his retelling of several Japanese folklore stories. Today, it is part of the Folklore Society collection, currently on deposit to UCL.  

The title page includes a large inscription from the author to Oscar Wilde. A new year’s greeting is written in Japanese characters, romanised Japanese, and English. Oscar Wilde was known to be interested in Japanese art and literature, so it is not surprising to find a collection of Japanese folklore on his shelves. This volume is also listed in the Tite Street auction catalogue, making it very likely that this book sat on Wilde’s shelves until 1895.  

Courtesy of the Master and Fellows of University College Oxford: Ross d.216 p.9 cropped.

At the top of the inscription is a note by a second hand: “Bought 27/4/95 from F. Edwards, 83 High St, Marylebone (From sale of Oscar Wilde’s library under Sheriff’s order 23/4/95 by Brooks at Duke St))”.  

Salome 

Also in our collection is the English edition of Salome. This edition includes a printed dedication to Lord Alfred Douglass, Wilde’s lover and son of the Marquis of Queensberry.  

Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley from Salome, shelfmark ENGLISH RARE Q 120

While our copy contains no ownership notes from Wilde, it includes the same note added to The Golden Lotus. It also includes a donation ex-libris plate noting that the donor was F.M.C. Johnson, a librarian for both UCL and the Folklore Society. Because The Golden Lotus has a clear history connecting it back to Wilde’s library, it is likely that our copy of Salome also came from Wilde’s library. The Title Street auction lists at least two copies of Salome, though there is not enough information to absolutely confirm that the copies listed in the auction catalogue include UCL’s copy.  

Inscription from Salome, shelfmark ENGLISH RARE Q 120

Sex. Aurelli Propertii carmin 

UCL is also home to a third book owned by Wilde. Sex. Aurelii Propertii carmina : The elegies of Propertius with English notes include an inscription from Wilde dated March 1874. This book dates to Wilde’s time as an undergraduate studying classics at Trinity College Dublin. While there is no evidence connecting it back to the Tite Street sale, this was at least part of Wilde’s student book collection. 

Wilde’s inscription in Sex. Aurelii Propertii carmina. Shelfmark STRONG ROOM OGDEN 108

It is heavily annotated throughout, with almost every single page having some degree of notes and underlining. Most of the notes are clearly in Wilde’s own hand, though there are several notes by a different person.   

Annotations by Wilde and an unknown former owner. Shelfmark STRONG ROOM OGDEN 108

We are pleased that we can add to the growing list of known books from Wilde’s library. Rebuilding Wilde’s library allows us to better understand the works that influenced his own writing and his relationships with other authors. It is also a reminder of how easily history can be lost. Over a couple of days, Wilde’s entire life was dismantled, sold and spread across the world. Who knows how many of Wilde’s other books sit in libraries and private collections across the world, unrecognized because Wilde never wrote his name in them?  

While we keep an eye out for further traces of Wilde’s library in our collection, there are several other libraries that have identified Wilde’s books in their collection: 

• The National Library of the Netherlands. 
• Ransom Center, University of Texas. 
• Mark Samuels Lasner Collection at the University of Delaware.  

One of five surviving copies of the Tite Street Auction Catalogue is held by University College Oxford.  

Our collections are open to the public, and you are welcome to make an appointment in our reading room to see Wilde’s books and other items in our collections.  

Thanks to Elizabeth Adams, Mark Samuels Lasner, Thomas Wright and Iain Ross for their help and insights in investigating the provenance of these items!  

UCL Library Service’s annual exhibition for 2024, “‘I Planted a Seed’: Childhood, nature, and creativity”, has recently opened in the Main Library!  

This exhibition explores how children’s imaginations are inspired by nature in their storytelling, exploration and creative world. The exhibition starts with the classroom and how nature supports creative learning in children. It then moves on to examine children’s own creative output and how nature is reflected in music, dance, play and textiles.  

On display are items from the IOE Archives and the Folklore Society collection, as well as material from outside of Special Collections including the IOE Rare Books collection and the IOE Curriculum Resources collection.  

A collage sheep, one of the items on display in the 2024 exhibition

‘I Planted a Seed’ is located in the Main Library Stairwell and 1st floor. It is free and open to the public. External visitors can book a ticket on the exhibition webpage. You can also access the exhibition catalogue and digitized collection items online.  

Emma Treleaven, PhD candidate at the London College of Fashion, won the Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize in 2023 with her collection My Own Two Hands: Books and Ephemera About Making Dress and Textiles Before 1975. She also won the Antequarian Booksellers Association’s National Book Collecting Prize in 2023 with the same collection. She spoke to Special Collections about her experience book collecting and applying for the prize.

Emma Treleaven, 2023 Anthony Davis Student Book Collecting Prize winner

Tell us a bit about yourself and your collection!

How did your collection begin? Has it changed over time?

What was your process for discovering and choosing the theme and what to add to your collection?

A portion of Emma’s collection

Did anything surprise you in the process of collecting?

What made you want to apply for the book collecting prize?

Did you encounter any challenges during your application process? How did you overcome them?

Emma’s collection on display at a 2023 Rare Books Club session

What was your favourite part of the application process?

What advice would you give someone hoping to get into book collecting? 

Thank you to Emma for talking about her experiences applying to the Anthony Davis Student Book Collecting Prize! You can read more about her collection at:

• Winners of the 2023 Anthony Davis Student Book Collecting Prize.

• The ABA National Book Collecting Prize 2023 Winner: Emma Treleaven.

• My Own Two Hands: An Interview with Emma Treleaven.

There’s still time to apply for the Anthony Davis Student Book Collecting Prize yourself! Visit the prize webpage to read about the application processes. Applications are open to any student enrolled at a London-based university.

Posted on behalf of Caroline Kimbell, Head of Commercial Digitisation:

In the aftermath of the Covid 19 pandemic, UCL has contributed around 12,000 images of rare books and original documents from our Special Collections to a prestigious new online teaching resource from British Online Archives:  Pandemics, Society and Public Health 1517-1925 launched this month (April 2024).

UCL content from 6 named Special Collections, the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (SSEES), rare books from Stores, and the archive of Edwin Chadwick forms around a quarter of the new resource, alongside records from the National Archives, the British Library and London Metropolitan Archives.

Women wearing surgical masks during the influenza pandemic of 1919, Brisbane.
State Library Queensland

Spurred by an all-too-understandable upsurge in research interest in pandemic history, the project focuses on primary sources relating to outbreaks of 4 diseases in British history – plague, cholera, smallpox and influenza. The academic call-to-arms for the project is summed up by editorial advisor Emeritus Professor Frank M Snowden of Yale: “Epidemic diseases are not random events that afflict societies capriciously and without warning… To study them is to understand [a] society’s structure, its standard of living and its political priorities”.

The online resource starts with documents relating to the first state-mandated quarantine in England, in 1517, but the earliest UCL items in the collection is a 1559 edition of William Bullein’s A newe boke of phisicke called ye gouernment of health. The project ends with the Spanish Flu epidemic which followed the First World War, on which UCL contributes a Ministry of Health Report on the pandemic of influenza 1918-1919 and a 1920 typescript Report on mortality among industrial workers, in relation to the influenza epidemic. UCL sources reflect the university’s preeminent focus on medical history, the development and application of vaccinations, and UCL sources are strong in campaigning, statistical and investigative works. Named Special Collections included in the selection include the Hume and Lansdowne Tracts, London History, Mocatta and Ogden collections, and material from our Medical History, Rare Books and SSEES collections are also included.

The main UCL archive represented is that of Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890), who began his career as secretary to UCL spritual founder Jeremy Bentham and was a lifelong campaigner for public health. He believed strongly that poverty was often the result of poor health, and poor health in turn was the result of poor living and working conditions, in particular sanitation. His lifelong campaigns, many focused on cholera, resulted in the passing of the first Public Health Act in 1848 and the establishment of the Board of Health, which he chaired until 1854. This digitisation programme includes selected reports, memos, statistics and 120 letters from his collection, with correspondents including Florence Nightingale, Lord Palmerstone and agriculturalist Philip Pusey.

The online collection is available now, and UCL library members will have access to the entire collection, which groups source materials into five themes: economics and disease, control measures, international relations, medicine and vaccination and public responses.

If you are a member of UCL Libraries, the new resource can be accessed by visiting our online Databases page and searching for ‘British Online Archives’. 

Post by Daniel Dickins.

The James Joyce Book Collection is a collection of rare books and archival materials in UCL Special Collections. Originally established as part of the James Joyce Centre in 1973 with the help of the Trustees of the Joyce Estate, Faber & Faber, and the Society of Authors, it is the only significant research collection on James Joyce in the UK. Containing around 1400 items, the collection includes multiple editions of all Joyce’s major works (including first editions and translations), alongside criticism and contextual literature. In addition, the collection includes material relating to Joyce’s patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, and to his daughter, Lucia Joyce.

Title page of Shosha by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978)

One item in the collection is a copy of Shosha by Isaac Bashevis Singer. We have a good indication that this book was owned by Lucia Joyce: ‘Miss Joyce’ is written in pen on the front cover and in pencil on the inside cover, and there is another pencilled writing that states, ‘Lucia Joyce Bequest’. There is also a note inside the book confirming that it arrived with ‘the Lucia Joyce papers from St Andrew’s Hospital’, which is the last hospital in which Lucia was institutionalised. This book was printed in 1978, so Lucia would have been at least 71 years old when she purchased this book. This book is useful for research into the later years of Lucia Joyce’s life, but there are many other reasons why the book is worth preserving. It won the Nobel Prize for literature so was considered significant at the time; it can be placed alongside items in UCL’s Hebrew and Jewish collection for research into 20^th century Jewish writing; or it can be considered as an example of a 1970s paperback, or as a book owned by someone in a hospital.

Title page of Irish Short Stories by Seamus O’Kelly (1960s – exact publication date is unknown)

Another item in the Joyce collection is Irish Short Stories by Seamus O’Kelly. O’Kelly was a contemporary of James Joyce; there is no publication date for this book, but the stories were originally written before O’Kelly’s death in 1918. This item therefore contributes to a collection that expands beyond Joyce to look at Irish literature of the early 20^th century. This book was also donated by Jane Lidderdale so it may have been owned by Lucia Joyce, but there are no annotations confirming this so further investigation is needed to determine more details of its provenance. There are, however, two pencil drawings near the back of the book. One is of a plant, and the other is a landscape scene labelled ‘Knocknarea’, in Ireland. If Lucia owned this book, she could be the source of these drawings – as well as being a professional dancer, she was also an artist who produced cover art for at least one James Joyce book.

Last page of Irish Short Stories, with a pencilled drawing of Knocknarea

With the Joyce collection, we can learn about James Joyce himself, but we can also research his daughter, his contemporaries, and 20^th century literature more broadly, allowing us to paint a fuller picture of the worlds surrounding him. The Joyce collection is fully catalogued and is open to the public. To learn more, see our online guide and to browse the collection’s contents, search for JOYCE on Explore.

Daniel Dickins was seconded to UCL Special Collections as Outreach and Exhibitions Coordinator in 2024. When not supporting Special Collections, he works in UCL’s Science Library.

We are delighted to announce the winners of this year’s Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize, which is open to students from any London universities. The prize is intended to encourage students who collect  books, printed and manuscript materials. We received over thirty submissions from a total of nine institutions, with collections ranging from manuals on insect collecting, Penguin editions and books on the Tudors to 1890’s London and theatre programmes.

Results

Because of the high standard of the finalists’ presentations and collections, the panel decided to split the award between the two top-scoring candidates. Emma Treleaven, a PhD candidate at the London College of Fashion, is this year’s winner. Her collection, entitled My Own Two Hands: Books and Ephemera About Making Dress and Textiles Before 1975, focuses on learning materials on making clothes and textiles in domestic settings. Her collection is a way of preserving skills that are at risk of being lost, and she uses her collection to teach herself to make clothing in ways that aren’t taught anywhere outside of these historical printed materials. As the winner of this year’s competition, Emma will represent London at the ABA National Book Collecting Prize 2023.

Items from Emma’s collection on making dress and textiles before 1975

Items from Ben’s collection on the artistic and literary networks of Fitzrovia between 1920-1948

The runner-up candidate is Ben Baker, whose collection Artistic and Literary Networks of Fitzrovia: 1920-1948 impressed the panel with its ambition and clear focus. His collection explores the eclectic concentration of the so-called bohemian authors and artists who lived and worked in the region surrounding Fitzroy Square in London in the interwar period. Benjamin is studying for a BA Classics at UCL.

Items from Ben’s collection on the artistic and literary networks of Fitzrovia between 1920-1948

Tessa Roynon, a MA Library and Information Studies student at UCL, received a special mention for her collection The Formations of Toni Morrison, 1955-1980, which focuses on the pre-celebrity work of the African American Nobel Laureate.

The other finalists were:

• Grant, Jenny – ‘Read this – and tell others’: Inscriptions and the gifting of Polish books to British friends by the Polish Armed Forces, 1939-45
• Gray, Victoria – Prized Possessions: a collection of 19th- and 20th-century school prize books
• Mitra, Sudipto – Barefoot Ballers: Books on Football in India
• Shanker, Louis – My library, after David

Meet the finalists and see their collections

All seven candidates will be presenting their collections to the public in our UCL Rare-Books Club series over the next few weeks.

On Wednesday 5 July, Victoria, Jenny and Ben will present their collections in person at the UCL Bloomsbury campus. Book your place on Eventbrite and drop in any time between 12.30pm and 2pm.

On Wednesday 16th August, Sudipto, Emma, Tessa and Louis will present their collections. This is likely to be a hybrid event, which you can either join in person at the UCL Bloomsbury campus or online on Zoom. Book your place on Eventbrite and drop in any time between 12.30pm and 2pm.

In addition, Anthony Davis, the benefactor of the award, will be presenting his collection of fine bindings on Wednesday 19th July. He will talk about how he started collecting and show a selection of his book bindings, alongside bindings from UCL. This event is taking place in person at the UCL Bloomsbury campus. Book your place on Eventbrite and drop in any time between 12.30pm and 2pm.

We would like to thank all the applicants and wish them good luck and many years of joy in their future collecting. Our thanks also go to the judges for generously giving their time and, most of all, to the benefactor of the award, Anthony Davis, for helping nurture the collectors of the future with his encouragement, expertise and enthusiasm.