Happy Birthday, Mr Pepys

Portrait by John Hayls, 1666
National Portrait Gallery, London

Today's date marks the 380th birthday anniversary of famed diarist, naval officer, and bibliophile Samuel Pepys (1633‒1703).

Pepys's carefully arranged and indexed library included incunabula, medieval manuscripts, naval records, contemporary publications, over 1,800 printed ballads and, most importantly, the six manuscript volumes of his personal diary. In addition, Pepys also collected maps and atlases, music, prints, and calligraphy.

After the death of his nephew and heir, John Jackson, in 1723, Pepys's library was transferred to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where it is housed in its twelve original oak bookcases. The collection remains one of the most important surviving seventeenth-century private libraries held by an institution today.

The Heritage Collections, Dunedin City Library, is fortunate to own a book inscribed by Pepys late in life. It is a copy of the sixth edition of Richard Knolles's The Turkish History, from the Original of that Nation to the Growth of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1687; ESTC R179506).

According to the inscription, Pepys presented this copy of Knolles's Turkish History to Thomas Thoroton as a gift in 1690. 'Armig' is an abbreviation of 'Armiger' ‒ one entitled to wear a coat of arms. The remaining words signify Pepys's role as Secretary to the Admiralty during the reigns of Charles II and James II.

Thomas Thoroton (1663‒1721) was a barrister of the Middle Temple, the son of a citizen and salter of London and, at the time he came into possession of the book, about twenty-seven years of age. Thoroton's bookplate is found on the verso of the title-page.

Dr Richard Luckett, who recently retired as Pepys Librarian, informed me by email that the fact of the gift is particularly interesting as other evidence for the friendship between Pepys and Thoroton is lacking (though Thoroton was a close friend of Pepys's intimate friend, the antiquary Thomas Gale, Dean of York).

The reason behind the gift remains unknown. There is a copy of Knolles's Turkish History in the Pepys Library (PL 2739), so Pepys may have found himself in possession of a second copy and thought it a fitting gift for Thoroton. One possibility is that the young lawyer offered legal advice during Pepys's brief period of imprisonment in mid-1690 on suspicions of treason (Pepys was imprisoned in June, released in July, and completely vindicated in October), and presented the book as a mark of his esteem. Though the year of Pepys's imprisonment corresponds with the date of the inscription, without any documentary evidence this hypothesis remains pure speculation on my part.

2013 also marks the 310th anniversary of Pepys's death on 26 May 1703.

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The Dunedin copy of Knolles's Turkish History was purchased by Sir Alfred Hamish Reed (1875‒1975) from Thomas Thorp, Guildford, in February 1926, and was included in his 1948 Deed of Gift to the Dunedin Public Library.

For details on Pepys's library, see E. Gordon Duff's Bibliotheca Pepysiana, 4 vols. (London, 1914‒), reissued by Cambridge University Press in 2009.

Newly Discovered Work by Katherine Mansfield

Dr Gerri Kimber, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Northampton, has uncovered a previously unknown story by Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923). Called Sumurun: An Impression of Leopold Konstantin, the work was found along with poems and fragments of other stories among the Mansfield papers acquired last year by the Alexander Turnbull Library.

For more on the story, see the announcement made by the National Library of New Zealand and related TVNZ coverage. 

The Hillside Railway Workshops Library

[First, an apology to subscribers who received my previous 'post' that was nothing but a string of letters and numbers in the title. It was part of Technorati's blog verification process.]

In April 2012 KiwiRail announced that it was putting Dunedin's Hillside Railway Workshops up for sale. Seven months later, staff redundancies were made and part of the business was sold. The rest of the plant is to close with the loss of ninety jobs.

This is a sad end to an enduring and historic company, and sadder still for the people out of work. Established in 1874, Hillside was once the largest railway workshop in the South Island of New Zealand, employing more than 800 workers by 1935. Its men were well looked after. The company encouraged its employees to further their education by subsidising night classes at the Dunedin Technical School (est. 1889), later named the King Edward Technical College. Hillside had its own ambulance division, a sporting team, a Sick and Benefit Society, and a social and dining hall. There was also a substantial library.

From The New Zealand Railways Magazine 3:4 (Aug. 1928)

Opened in 1884 with just two boxes of books, the Hillside Railway Workshops' Library grew to 15,000 volumes by 1928.* The library was more than technical manuals, engineering books, and related trade journals. In fact, according to a copy of the 1913 Hillside library catalogue held by the Dunedin City Library, just 208 of the 13,005 entries fell under the heading of 'Engineering (&c)' at the time.

Late nineteenth-century and contemporary fiction formed the largest portion of the collection, accounting for just over 11,000 entries; clear evidence that the library was for the leisurely enjoyment of the employees and their families, rather than a working library for consultation. In addition to works of fiction and books on engineering, the catalogue records titles in a variety of other subjects, from astronomy, biography, and electricity, to mining, poetry, and travel.

There is also a section headed 'Miscellaneous Subjects', which includes a diverse range of books from Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and F. D. Maurice's Religions of the World, to Margaret Sangster's Winsome Womanhood and A Shorter Working Day by R. A. Hadfield and H. D. Gibbin. There are other titles on workers' rights and interests besides A Shorter Working Day listed in the miscellaneous sequence, which suggests a rather progressive atmosphere.

An Uncertain Fate
What happened to the Hillside collection?

Some books were dispersed, for a few titles found their way into the Dunedin City Library collection, such as a copy of Fergus Hume's The Lonely Church (1904) complete with the Hillside library label and stamp.

Other titles found so far with the Hillside label and now held by the Dunedin City Library are: A Double Blindness (1910) and A Maid of Mettle (1913) by Mrs L. Baker published under the alias 'Alien'; Louis Becke's By Reef and Palm (1896), Breachley, Black Sheep (1902), 'Neath Austral Skies (1909) and Under Tropic Skies (1905); and A Colonial Reformer (1891) by Rolf Boldrewood (the occasional pseudonym of the Australian writer Thomas Alexander Browne). There are also five further books by Fergus Hume: The Mystery of Landy Court (1894), The Red Bicycle (the 1916 first edition and the later 'cheap edition'), The Red Window (1904) and The Vanishing of Tera (ca. 1900).

Whether specific books such as these were intentionally deselected, possibly sold in order to raise funds for newer purchases, or were part of a much larger dispersal of the entire collection remains unknown. Enquiries made with Hillside Engineering, Archives New Zealand, and other major archival repositories have shed no light on the Hillside library's fate. I will post an update should my continued research uncover any further information.

In the meantime, the related evidence—the catalogue, book label, and article noted below—does at least raise the wider question of what other factory libraries existed in New Zealand? The 1 May 1912 issue of the Otago Daily Times mentioned the Sarbon Library, which was available to the more than 160 employees of the Dunedin based manufacturing firm of Sargood, Son and Ewen Ltd. Kā Taoka Hākena: Treasures from the Hocken Collections (2007) notes an early Mills & Boon romance from the Employees' Library of the New Zealand Wax Vesta Co. Ltd., Caversham, Dunedin, which had a largely female workforce (102). Such bibliographic clues are certainly worthy of further investigation and research into this hitherto little explored, yet fascinating, area of New Zealand's library history. Should any readers know of other New Zealand factory libraries, please post a comment below.

*A description and history of the Hillside Railway Workshops Library was published by D. H. Hastings in The New Zealand Railways Magazine 3:4 (August 1928). It is available on-line through the NZETC.

Edward Wakefield's Annotated Copy of Dieffenbach's Travels in New Zealand

The Dunedin City Library is fortunate to hold three first edition copies of Ernst Dieffenbach's two-volume Travels in New Zealand (London, 1843), possibly the most reliable early book on New Zealand's natural environment and Māori culture written not long after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (Wattie 140). One copy belonged to the Stamford Institution, Stamford, Lincolnshire. The second copy was owned by Robert McNab (1864–1917), who, in late 1913, donated his collection of 4,200 books to the Dunedin Public Library. The third copy was purchased by another of the Library's major benefactors, Sir Alfred Hamish Reed (1875–1975), whose bookplate is affixed to the front pastedown.

'Presented to Mr E. Wakefield'
The Reed copy provenance, which has remained unknown for decades and gone unrecorded until now, links the book to one of the most important and controversial families active during the early years of New Zealand's colonial period: the Wakefields.

Inscription on front free endpaper

'Presented to Mr E. Wakefield by the Director of the New Zealand Company. April 1843'.

Originally established in London in 1837 as the New Zealand Association, the New Zealand Company's expressed aim was the systematic colonising of Aotearoa. A founder, and the Director of the Company in April 1843, was the politician and colonial promoter (not to mention convicted abductor), Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796–1862), a principal figure behind much of the early colonisation of South Australia and New Zealand.

E. G. Wakefield's father, Edward Wakefield (1774–1854), was a philanthropist and land agent. During the 1830s and 1840s, Wakefield, Sr. became what the ODNB describes as 'a warm advocate of Edward Gibbon Wakefield's colonization schemes, writing many letters to newspapers and lobbying the cabinet'. He became in some way an agent, which no doubt accounts for Dieffenbach's Travels having been presented to him by the Company rather than by his son personally.

'The Opinion He Has Given ... Seems Extraordinary'
In addition to being owned by Edward Wakefield, there are no fewer than 216 pages with some form of annotation or marginalia by him.

The sections most heavily marked up are Dieffenbach's general remarks (with attention paid mainly to New Zealand's natural resources), and his chapters on whales and whalers, geological features, Māori customs and language, and the nature and impact of disease on Māori. Nearly all of Wakefield's annotations do not comment on the text or record his thoughts about it, but serve rather as handy reference points to paragraphs or sentences of particular interest.

Wakefield's lone comment related to Dieffenbach's thoughts on the alteration of Polynesian dialects due to the influence of foreign countries, which he believed caused local traditions to be forgotten, and the impact of English (specifically through the Bible in translation) upon Pacific languages. 'New conceptions, new ideas, are pouring in upon these simple and interesting islanders, which importantly affect their language. Every day diminishes ... the chance of recording the different dialects in their purity' (2:304). Dieffenbach's astute (if somewhat condescending) observations struck Wakefield, who wrote on the opposite page:

'The opinion he has given at p. 304 seems extraordinary[.] If the dialects are now so altered then the traditions are forgotten . as a proof none but the old can give an account on the meaning of songs &c'[.]

There is one annotation of particular immediacy (in relation to the date of the gift) and poignancy. On page 94 of the first volume, Wakefield underlined, 'Up to the present time, nearly three years since the purchase, there has not been a single serious misunderstanding between the natives and the European settlers'. In the margin he wrote: 'Natives and European settlers on friendly terms'.


Two months after being given the book, one of Edward's sons, Captain Arthur Wakefield, was killed on 17 June 1843 in the first serious engagement between Māori and the British settlers after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Known as the Wairau Affray, the clash centred around the attempted arrest of the Māori chief Te Rauparaha (ca. 1760s–1849), and left four Māori and twenty-two British dead.

We cannot know for certain when Wakefield read and annotated the text, whether it was before or after Arthur's death. News of the event would not have reached him for months afterwards. The evidence, however, does suggest Wakefield had a specific interest in Te Rauparaha. The first appearance of his name is underlined and is so elsewhere. The names of the Māori chiefs Te Hiko Piata Tama-i-hikoia and Te Werowero are simply noted in the margins, but we find written next to the corresponding printed text in volume one, pages 98 and 99, 'extermination of a tribe by Rauparaha' and 'an account of Rauparaha'.

Te Rauparaha could of course be singled out because he was a well known Māori figure at the time, or perhaps Wakefield wished to learn more about the man he held responsible for the death of Arthur. Either way, these and the other annotations are evidence of careful reading of one of the important early New Zealand books by the father whose sons and grandson are so intertwined with the country's early colonial history.

The Author & Text

Born in Giessen, Germany, Johann Karl Ernst Dieffenbach (1811–1855), was the first trained scientist to live and work in New Zealand. Earning a medical degree in Zurich before being expelled from Switzerland for political agitation and duelling, Dieffenbach sailed for England in 1837 where he changed his name to 'Ernest'. There he befriended such eminent scientists as Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell and Richard Owen. In 1839 Dieffenbach, along with E. G. Wakefield's brother William (1801‒1848), and son, Edward Jerningham (1820‒1879), set sail for New Zealand as naturalist to the New Zealand Company.

Working in a time before science was split into narrow specialisations, Dieffenbach recorded natural features, wrote of the Māori people, their language, customs and beliefs, with insightful understanding. For example, though Dieffenbach found the act of cannibalism and certain other customs detestable, he suggested that 'If one were to reckon up the crimes and gratuitous cruelties ... which civilized men have committed against the savage, the balance of humanity, and of other virtues too, would probably be found on the side of the latter' (2:131)  

Dieffenbach was not embroiled in land purchases from the Māori, and regretted as a theorist and as a man the possible extinction of a native people. Because of his non-alignment with the Company (his contract expired in 1841), missionaries or Government, Dieffenbach was able to suggest ways to protect the Māori from colonisation in his chapter 'How to Legislate for the Natives of New Zealand' (v.2 chap. 9). With remarkable foresight he also realised what the impact could be of introducing alien flora and fauna to the colony: 'what a chain of alterations ... takes place from the introduction of a single animal into a country where it was before unknown' (2:416). An environmental issue New Zealand struggles with to this very day.

In 1845, Edward Jerningham Wakefield, who became an MP in the first New Zealand Parliament, published his own account of New Zealand as Adventures in New Zealand From 1839 to 1844. The historian E. H. McCormick compared the reporting styles of Dieffenbach with that of the young Wakefield in his Letters and Art in New Zealand (Wellington, 1940). He described Wakefield's work as 'all animation and colour and youthful prejudice', which could not have been more different from Dieffenbach who was 'sober, rather heavy-handed in narrative, judicial in his views and statements and possessed of that stability and depth of character which Jerningham so entirely lacked' (McCormick 24).

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Nelson Wattie. 'Dieffenbach, Ernst or Ernest (1811‒55)' in The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature edited by Roger Robinson (Melbourne; Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998).


For a full account of the Wakefield family, see Philip Temple's A Sort of Conscience: The Wakefields (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2002).

The text of Dieffenbach's Travels in New Zealand and E. J. Wakefield's Adventures in New Zealand are available on-line through the University of Auckland's Early New Zealand Books project:

Dieffenbach: Volume 1 | Volume 2

Wakefield: Volume 1 | Volume 2

Exhibitions into the New Year

My first post of 2013 highlights some of the Australasian rare books and special collections exhibitions that opened late in 2012 and carried over into the New Year.

'Art in the Service of Science: Dunedin's John Buchanan'
Hocken Library, Dunedin
22 November 2012 to 9 February 2013

'Flowers, Fruit and Foliage: A Bouquet of Botanical Illustrations'
Sir George Grey Special Collections, Central City Library, Auckland
17 November 2012 to 17 March 2013

'From Pigskin to Paper: The Art and Craft of Bookbinding'
University of Otago, Special Collections, Dunedin
20 December to 22 March 2013

'Labels: Travel in Europe'
Monash University, Special Collections, Melbourne
14 September 2012 to 23 February 2013

'Mai i Rangiatea: The Portrayal of Maori Myth & Legend in Print'
Dunedin City Library, Heritage Collections, Dunedin
14 December 2012 to 10 March 2013

'Things: Photographing the Constructed World'
National Library of Australia, Canberra
24 November 2012 to 17 February 2013

A dynamic PDF with links to each image can be found here.

'Time in Motion: 50 Years of The Australian Ballet'
State Library of New South Wales, Sydney
10 November 2012 to 10 February 2013

'To the Ends of the Earth" Bibles in the Alexander Turnbull Library'
National Library of New Zealand, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington
26 November 2012 to 19 January 2013

Ruth Lightbourne, Curator of Rare Books and Fine Printing, has added two insightful posts related to the exhibition on the NLNZ blog: 'To the ends of the earth' and 'All things to all men'. Both are well worth a read.

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Know of an interesting exhibition that opened towards the end of last year and not listed above? If so, please leave a comment.

Recent Acquisitions III: Boswell to the South Pole

[With Christmas just around the corner, my final post of 2012 highlights some of the year's notable purchases made by the Heritage Collections, Dunedin City Library. I'll be back in 2013 with more Antipodean bibliographic news.]

James Boswell. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Dublin: Printed by John Chambers for R. Cross, W. Wilson, [et al], 1792; three volumes.
The first Dublin and second overall edition of James Boswell's classic biography of Samuel Johnson. The text was produced quickly by having a separate printer print each volume in an effort to undersell the genuine edition, which appeared in London the previous year. The second London edition published in 1793 followed the Dublin three-volume octavo format.

According to Frederick Pottle, while a number of typographical errors found in the 1791 first London edition were here corrected, others were introduced (Pottle 80).

Purchased from Blackwell's, Oxford, December 2012.

F. A. Pottle. The Literary Career of James Boswell Esq.: Being the Bibliographical Materials for a Life of Boswell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967 reprint).

Breviary leaf, Latin. Bohemia, ca. 1420 to 1450.
This single, illuminated leaf with a five-line initial 'D' containing a bearded figure dressed in a green tunic, is the first example of Bohemian manuscript production to be added to the Reed manuscripts collection.

The design was influenced by manuscripts illuminated for the court of King Wenceslas IV (1361–1419), with its use of silver to heighten the border decorations, and acanthus leaves extending into the margins with angles marked in gold.

Fitting for this time of year, the text is from the first Sunday in Advent.

Purchased from Maggs, January 2012.

Alan Loney. RISE: Governors Bay Sept / Nov 2000. Newark, VT: Janus Press, 2003.
The Library has been collecting private press books since the 1980s. Today new acquisitions focus mainly on New Zealand private presses, and books produced overseas with New Zealand content.

This poem by the New Zealand poet-printer Alan Loney may be read as paginated, but it is also intended for random browsing – and so was bound with two spines and three panels, so the alternating pages can be accessed from either direction.

In the centre of the book is a colour photographic illustration of Governors Bay, Canterbury, New Zealand, taken by Claire Van Vliet, founder of the Janus Press. According to Ruth Fine's catalogue raisonné The Janus Press, Fifty Years (2006), Van Vliet made the translucent tan paper fly-leaves 'from abaca pulp prepared with seawater by Bernie Vinzani', a master paper maker based in Maine. The binding was inspired by New Zealand bookbinder Elizabeth Steiner's Gioia II (2002) and executed by Audrey Holden.

An unnumbered copy out of 150 printed, this particular copy is from the library of Andrew Hedden, notable collector of press books and livres d'artiste.

Purchased from Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts, November 2012.

Robert McNab. Murihiku and the Southern Islands. [Invercargill: William Smith, Printer, 1906].
Described by T. M. Hocken as 'a mass of old history', Robert McNab's Murihiku tells the early history of New Zealand's South Island and the adjacent islands.

Murihiku was continually reworked by McNab. It initially appeared in 1904 as Murihiku: Some Old Time Events, a collection of twelve articles originally published in the Southern Standard. These were reprinted along with an additional thirteen articles the following year. In 1906 McNab was ready to publish a new edition. Mcnab, however, had gathered so much new material from a research trip to America that he decided to scrap the edition. Ending on page 144, all but six of the 600 copies in mid production were destroyed (Bagnall M568). A replacement edition of 1,000 copies covering the years 1770 to 1829 was produced in 1907, followed in 1909 by an expanded edition covering 1642 to 1835 produced in a smaller run of 515 copies (fifteen on hand made paper).

Not listed in Bagnall, the 210-page Murihiku recently bought by the Library is described in the National Library of New Zealand catalogue as a 'printer's advance copy', presumably for the 1907 edition. The National Library of New Zealand and Dunedin City Library copies are the only copies presently known. The Dunedin copy is inscribed by the author to Thomas Mackenzie, an explorer and politician who served briefly as the 18th Prime Minister of New Zealand in 1912.

Purchased from Art+Object auction, Auckland, 6 December 2012 (item 35).

A. S. Bagnall. New Zealand National Bibliography to the Year 1960, 4 vols. in 5 (Wellington: A. R. Shearer, Government Printer, 1970–1980; supplement and index 1985).

Robert Maunsell. Grammar of the New Zealand Language. Auckland: J. Moore, 1842-1843; four parts.
Maunsell's Grammar was described in my 25 July post for Maori Language Week. Its entry reads:

This grammar was written by Robert Maunsell in 1841–1842, encouraged by the support of prominent figures including the Governor’s private secretary (James Coates), Sir William Martin, the first Chief Justice of New Zealand, and George Augustus Selwyn, first Anglican Bishop of New Zealand. This support resulted in the work being printed in Auckland by the printer contracted to the government, rather than by the Church Mission Press at Paihia.

Freed from the influence of the Northern District, which controlled mission printing and translating, Maunsell took tentative steps at reforming Maori orthography and adopting (in preference to the northern Ngapuhi dialect) the conventions of the Waikato dialect, which was widely understood and had retained its purity.

3,000 copies were printed at Maunsell’s expense and issued in four parts. At the time of my July post the Library held only two of the four parts, and we are delighted to now have a full set in the collection.

Purchased from Art+Object auction, Auckland, 6 December 2012 (item 271).

South Polar Times. Facsimile edition produced by the Folio Society, 2012; thirteen volumes.
The South Polar Times is a remarkable publication that was produced aboard the Discovery when it wintered over in the Antarctic 1902–1903, and on the Terra Nova in 1910–1913. It was produced as a monthly journal, partly to relieve the boredom and monotony, and presumably also to aid in keeping the men disciplined. Contributions, which were made anonymously or under noms de plume, included poetry, puzzles, scientific articles, observations, mock interviews, reports on events, satires and song parodies. Some contributors, most notably Edward Wilson, provided their own illustrations.

A bound, three-volume reproduction was published in 1907–1914 after the expeditions returned to England, and was intended for the expedition members and their families as a record of and an insight into life in the Antarctic. The recent Folio Society facsimile was produced in the monthly journal format from the original issues held by the Royal Geographical Society, British Library and Scott Polar Research Institute, and include material not found in the 1907–1914 reproduction.

Purchased from the Folio Society, June 2012.

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Wishing you all the very best for the Christmas season and a joyous New Year.

The Oldest English Binding in New Zealand

The oldest English binding in New Zealand has been identified by Donald Kerr, Special Collections Librarian, University of Otago, and reported in the Otago Daily Times. The binding by Rood and Hunt, Oxford, dates to 1482, and covers a volume of Nicholas de Lyra's commentary on the Bible printed in Venice by Johannes Herbort de Seligenstadt the previous year. At some point in its history, much of the binding's spine and spine edge were damaged and replaced.

The book is also notable for another reason: the fragments of indulgences printed by William Caxton (Westminster, after 9 August 1480) and John Lettou (London, after 1480), which were used as sewing guards. These were identified by Christopher de Hamel, who first reported his findings to the Oxford Bibliographical Society in 1982 and included them as part of his 2009 Lyell Lectures.

Courtesy of Special Collections,
University of Otago

The book (and many others) will be on display in the exhibition 'From Pigskin to Paper: The Art and Craft of  Bookbinding', Special Collections, de Beer Gallery, University of Otago, scheduled to open on 20 December.