Turnbull Library Takes Significant Autographs

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30715, 2 April 1965, Page 18

Turnbull Library Takes Significant Autographs

The Alexander Turnbull Library, which already holds several collections of autographs, would welcome further collections of significant autographs covering more recent times.

This information was given by Mr A. A. St. C. M. MurrayOliver, public relations officer for the library, in reply to a letter to the editor of “The Press.” The correspondent, “Scribe,” asks whether any section in a museum or library is interested in famous autographs? “I have quite a collection, which include Sir Winston Churchill’s and that of Clementine Churchill,” says the correspondent. “As I have no interest in such things as autograph-collecting now, I thought someone might like to have the writings of some celebrities.” Mr Murray-Oliver says the most extensive collection of

autographs in the Alexander Turnbull Library was that of Dr. Gideon Algernon Mantell (1790-1852), the first important English geologist. His son, W. B. D. Mantell, arrived in Wellington in 1840 to become the first postmaster and subsequently a minister of the Crown. The Mantell collection contains autographs of Napoleon, Shelley, Sir Robert Peel and Thomas Carlyle. “Charles Heaphy (1820-81) came to New Zealand in 1839 as an artist and draughtsman to the New Zealand Company,” says Mr Murray-Oliver. “In the course of a long career of distinguished public service, he won the V.C., carried out extensive exploration and became an M.P. In his autograph book in the Turnbull Library there are signatures of Sir George Grey, Edward Jemingham Wakefield, Sir Donald McLean, Major von Tempsky, Tamati Waka Nene and many other well-known personages. Further autographs are to be found in other lesser collections and in many letters preserved in the manuscript holdings.” Dr. R. S. Duff, director of the Canterbury Museum, to whom “Scribe’s” letter was also referred, says that although its early donations included autographs of prominent men in Victorian Britain, the museum has for many years now limited its policy to the preservation of New Zealand manuscripts and archives.”