The Friends and Their Library
Graham N. Dudley, President, Friends of the Baillieu Library
The Friends of the Baillieu Library was founded in 1966, seven years after the Baillieu Library was opened, with the expressed aim to ‘provide a fund for the purchase of books, manuscripts or prints required by the Library’. This aim still remains at the core of the Friends’ activities, but, over time, these have broadened to include funding conservation and cataloguing of materials, assisting with publications and events for members. Of more recent date is the active lobbying of the University on matters affecting the Library in the broadest sense.(1)
Since 1966, at least 262 items have been added to the University’s collections with the Friends’ assistance. Most have been purchased outright, though in some special cases, partial funding was provided to assist with the purchase of particularly important items.
The compass of these purchases has been broad. A very important purchase was made in 1974 — an illuminated manuscript produced in England around 1350, a breviary according to the use of Sarum (Salisbury). This is one of the undisputed treasures of the Baillieu Library and was once part of a larger breviary (a book containing the texts for the celebration of Divine Office), the other part of which is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It is one of only 40 known English breviaries from the first half of the 14th century.(2) Several individual leaves from manuscripts were also purchased in the Friends’ early years.
The purchase of original mediaeval manuscripts is now well beyond the resources of the Friends. However, funds over the years have been used to purchase fine facsimile versions of important manuscripts, including several produced for the Court of Berry in France. Other facsimiles of manuscripts held in collections in Italy, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the United States have also been bought. In 1997, for example, the Friends’ major purchase was Der Kreuzritterbibel (The Morgan Crusader Bible). This superb facsimile of a medieval manuscript was produced as a close copy of the original manuscript in a limited edition of only 980 copies. A very different facsimile, but equally fascinating, was the 1999 purchase of the Li Mingzhong Ying zao fa shi: 36 juan by Jie Li (1035–1110), a very rare 1925 facsimile, with colour plates, of a 12th century Chinese building manual. As a work of fine printing alone, it is significant. Its place in the history of architecture is even more important.
Works which fall within the broad category of ‘the art of the book’ have been a notable feature of the Friends’ purchases for many years. The Friends were instrumental in completing the University’s collections of two major English private presses: the Golden Cockerel Press and the Kelmscott Press. The first Golden Cockerel titles were purchased in 1972, and the final one 20 years later. In all, 21 titles were purchased, along with several items of ephemera from the Press. The Golden Cockerel Press, founded in 1920, produced 214 titles before its closure in 1960. It produced limited editions of classics and contemporary works to the very highest standards and using well-known artists and typographers.
The Kelmscott Press was founded by William Morris in 1891, with the aim of producing fine books designed within the framework of the Arts and Crafts movement. The first Kelmscott Press titles were acquired by the Friends in 1975, and in recent years the completion of the collection was a major priority. Finally, only the great 1896 Kelmscott edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer was wanting. This was acquired in 2005 with substantial funds coming from the Library Endowment Fund as well as more modest contributions by the Friends and the Ivy May Pendlebury Estate. That the University was prepared to provide substantial funding for this purchase was a most welcome reinforcement of the importance of the Baillieu Library collections.
The subject of voyages and travels has always been of particular interest to the Friends and, over the years, at least 15 titles have been added. Most have dealt with Australia and the South Pacific, but have ranged as far afield as Iceland. In 1979, the Friends enabled the acquisition of Francois Peron’s Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes execute ... pendant les annees 1800–1804, published in Paris between 1807 and 1816. These volumes are of great importance to the history of European discovery in Tasmania, and the expedition took back to France a very important collection of natural history specimens as well as much geographical information.
In 1996 the Friends made one major purchase to mark the retirement of Mr Rodney Davidson as President of the Friends, a position which he had held for 18 years. The book was A Second Voyage Round the World (1776). This work is commonly known as the ‘Cambridge Cook’ because of the widely held view that the anonymous author was a Cambridge University student. It appears to be a surreptitious account of Cook’s second voyage from the journal of one of the officers, published anonymously, a year before the official account. This purchase was particularly pleasing since it was the only significant contemporary work on James Cook’s voyages not held in the Baillieu Library’s Australiana Collection, and was on its list of ‘most wanted’ items. The addition of this book adds greatly to the research value of the collections of Cook and of voyages within the Library.
In earlier years, the Friends purchased a considerable number of works in the area of the sciences — botanical, physical and zoological as well as medical history. Many of them are of great importance, especially the work acquired for the Friends’ ‘coming of age’ in 1987: Pierre Bulliard’s Herbier de la France, ou, Collection complette des plantes indigenes de ce royaume (Paris, 1780–1809). This important work was probably the first botanical work completely colour-printed without retouching by hand. Each plate was colourprinted using a separate plate for each colour.
Our most recent purchase, in late 2008, was the first official publication of the Royal Society, published in London in 1664. This adds to the already impressive holdings of the Baillieu Library of early imprints of the Royal Society. Entitled Sylva, or, a Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the Propogation of Timber in His Majesties Dominions, it is by John Evelyn, better known as a diarist but also a founding Fellow of the Royal Society.
A major decision taken about ten years ago was to provide funds to assist the Library with the conservation of its collections. Projects funded include the conservation of some early newspapers and an important early edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles, and an important heraldic manuscript from the Gorman Cambridge Collection — The Foundations of the Universitie of Cambridge (1662).
Funding was also provided for the cataloguing of historical maps of the University, Melbourne and Victoria. A total of 168 maps were catalogued, including 77 which were not recorded as being held by any other library. As a result of this project, all the Library’s historical maps of the University are now catalogued, as are the majority of the historical maps of Melbourne.
In 2008, the Friends funded a new and revised catalogue of the Gorman Collection, Cambridge in Books: The university, the town and the country, held by the Baillieu Library and formed by the late Dr Pierre Gorman CBE, a major benefactor of the Library and a stalwart Friend over many years. The first edition of the catalogue was compiled by Dr Gorman in 1998, since when the collection has doubled in size to over 2,500 items.
Over its first 40 years, the Friends group has made a significant contribution to the holdings of rare and fine works in the Baillieu Library. The funding of some recent projects has recognised the importance of conserving and cataloguing works, besides simply purchasing them. This combination can be expected to continue in the coming years. The Friends of the Baillieu Library is committed to pursuing its aims within the resources available to it. The steady state of its membership numbers remains a matter of concern and work remains to be done in attracting new members.
Notes
1 For a more extensive history of the Friends of the Baillieu Library, see Graham N. Dudley, ‘Friends of the Baillieu Library’, in University of Melbourne Collections, issue 1, November 2007, pp. 14–19 and the references cited there.
2 This manuscript is discussed in detail by Margaret Manion and Vera Vines in Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australian Collections, Melbourne: Thames and Hudson, 1984, pp. 98ff, and Merete Smith, ‘Sarum breviary’, in Chris McAuliffe and Peter Yule (eds), Treasures: Highlights of the cultural collections of the University of Melbourne, Carlton: The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne University Publishing, 2003, p. 152.