Notable Acquisitions

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 28, 1 January 1995, Page 95

Notable Acquisitions

A long-standing gap in the Library’s holdings of early editions of Milton’s prose works was filled with the acquisition of the 1649 Articles of Peace, one of only 12 known copies of the first edition, purchased from the Fairfax Collection. Other Milton acquisitions included the first edition of Paradise Lost in Swedish, translated by J. Oxenstiema (1815).

Additions to the collection of early voyages and travel accounts included the rare French tribute to Cook, P-E. Lemontey’s Eloge de Jacques Cook (1792), and the first edition of Pierre Sonnerat’s Voyage aux Indes Orientales ... (1782), with 140 engraved plates.

The late Brian Salkeld’s bequest to the Library included more than 40 volumes of rare English and printed music, ranging from fragments dated 1499 and 1543 to an early nineteenth-century reissue of Handel’s oratorio Esther.

The Library recently acquired the splendid collection of musicologist Dr John M. Thomson. Of national and international significance, the collection comprises approximately nine metres of material dating from ca. 1945 to 1995. Included is a rich collection of correspondence relating to music and the arts from a wide range of New Zealand and overseas musicians. There are also subject files on topics covering the wide range of Dr Thomson's activities. His founding of the international journal Early Music and subsequent editorship are reflected in the collection, as is his interest in the history of music printing. In April 1995, pop star Dinah Lee, New Zealand's 1960 s 'Queen of the Mods', donated her collection to the Library. The occasion was celebrated by a lively function at the Library, attended by the Hon. Roger McClay, Associate Minister Responsible for the National Library. There was wide media coverage of the ceremony and of Dinah Lee's visit to Wellington, which included her giving a lecture at the Stout Research Centre as part of its seminar series on Popular Culture in Postwar New Zealand. Dinah Lee's collection at this stage consists mainly of her scrapbooks and photograph albums, which reflect her international career and influences in the area of fashion as well as rock music. The 'Notes on Accessions to the Drawings and Prints Collection', Turnbull Library Record 27 (1994), 103-04, listed a volume by an unknown artist with the title New Zealand and Pacific Sketchbook, 1848-49. Subsequent research has established that the sketchbook is the work of Henry Hume Turnbull, surgeon aboard HMS Havannah, and that the sketchbook is therefore closely linked with the illustrated journal of Philip Doyne Vigors, held by the Library's Manuscripts and Archives Section, and currently being edited for publication in England by Jane Samson. Henry Hume Turnbull's career was as a naval surgeon, and he was killed in the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1858. He served in the Pacific from 1846. The 64 sketches include views of Wellington, Porirua, and the Bay of Islands in the 1840 s; Tasmania; and many Pacific Island scenes, including Fiji, with a portrait of Thackembow (Cacobau) Tui Viti, King of Fiji. The sketchbook was found in a trunk in an attic in England, and was donated to the Library by Mrs Kate Kavanagh. There have been many significant accessions to the Oral History Centre, too many to describe in full. Two will have to serve as examples. 'Cappuccino: The Rise and Fall of

New Zealand's Coffee Bar Culture' is a fascinating exploration of a remarkable phenomenon at its peak in the 1950 s and 19605: European immigrants provided dimly-lit, European-style 'candle chambers' with good troubadours, good coffee, delicious food, and an atmosphere irresistible to poets, writers, and songmakers, and to the not-so-openly-creative Kiwi. The nine interviews with some of the most significant of these foreign 'impresarios' and songsters, together with the observations of Sir Robert Jones, then a travelling salesman, capture the moods of the era and offer an insight into the shaping of the New Zealand psyche. 'Hiruharama' is a vast project, including both audio and video cassettes, in which Monty and Steven Soutar have recorded the recollections of almost 50 Ngati Porou from Hiruharama and the East Cape area. Interestingly, the team recording the memories not only used formal interviewing techniques but also captured members of Te Whanau-a-Rongo-i-te-kai speaking naturally at the Penu Marae, Hiruharama. This is a rich archive containing memories of Maori rural life from the 19205, experiences with the Maori Battalion, and Maori insights into education and many other aspects of life. In both Maori and English, it will also be of great value linguistically.