The Roger and Marlene Peattie Collection
The Roger and Marlene Peattie Collection contains over 3000 titles in the areas of Pre-Raphaelite literature and the Victorian illustrated book and is regarded as the best single public collection of Pre-Raphaelite literature in Canada.
The Pre-Raphaelite collection contains many first editions, including works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, Maria Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Ford Madox Brown and Edward Burne-Jones, as well as primary works from other authors, illustrators and designers of the period, including William Morris, Algernon Swinburne and John Ruskin. In addition, the collection holds many association copies, special editions and reprints, exhibition, auction and booksellers' catalogues; memoirs of the Pre-Raphaelite's associates and affiliates; the books and periodicals to which the Pre-Raphaelites contributed illustrations; and numerous secondary books on the far-reaching manifestations of the movement in literature, painting, sculpture, illustrations, photography and design.
Among the collection's Victorian illustrated books are fine and well-known examples of colour-printed books for children, including those designed by Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenway, and printed by Edmund Evans. As well, the collection contains some of the most sumptuous colour-printed books of the period, often issued in equally lavish bindings. Among these are books designed or illustrated by Henry Shaw, Henry Noel Humphreys, Owen Jones and William and George Audsley, Birket Foster, Laurence Houseman and Beatrix Potter, to name a few.
Complementary collecting principles guided Dr. Roger Peattie as he amassed the collection over a period of thirty years. In collecting Pre-Raphaelite literature Dr. Peattie set out to create a scholar's library, to "acquire as complete a collection of the printed sources for a comprehensive history of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement as availability, finances, space, and time....would allow." Aesthetic principles, excellence and innovation in design, binding or illustration, guided Dr. Peattie in his selection of Victorian illustrated books; in Dr. Peattie's own words he selected only those books which he found to be "either aesthetically satisfying or amazingly inventive."
The collection highlights the many connections between Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian writers, artists, illustrators, binders, typographers, printers and book designers. Dr. Peattie notes considerable overlap between the multifarious field of Victorian book design, illustrations and binding and the more contained Pre-Raphaelite achievement in woodblock illustrations and, in the hands of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris, in book and book cover design. The collection also provides ample evidence of the influence of Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite writers, artists and artisans on subsequent literary and artistic movements of the twentieth century.
Physical Exhibits: Pictures & Patterns
Pictures & Patterns: Victorian Illustrated Books and Bindings from the Peattie Collection, an exhibit to mark the gift of the Roger and Marlene Peattie Collection to the Queen Elizabeth II Library ran from January 12 to March 5, 2001. The exhibition catalogue, Pictures and Patterns, with text prepared by Dr. Roger Peattie, may be viewed at Memorial University's Digitital Archives website.
Virtual Exhibits: Nineteenth Century Decorative Trade Bindings
Nineteenth century decorative trade bindings from the collection have been photographed, catalogued and added to the Memorial University's digital archive. To view the exhibit, please click on the following page.
Access to the Roger and Marlene Peattie Collection
The collection may be searched online by using the Memorial University Libraries' Catalogue (to limit the search to the Roger and Marlene Peattie Collection choose "advanced search" and include the phrase "Roger and Marlene Peattie Collection" in the 'search everything' search box). The collection is not open for browsing. Items from the collections do not circulate but can be viewed at the Archives and Special Collections reading room (located immediately behind the Centre for Newfoundland Studies service desk). To view a bibliography of the titles held click on Roger and Marlene Peattie Collection.
Contact:
For more information about the collection, please contact librarian Patrick Warner at the QEII's Archives and Special Collections.
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Archives and Special Collections Queen Elizabeth II Library Memorial University of Newfoundland St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador Canada A1B 3Y1 Telephone:864-4349 Fax: 709-864-2153 E-mail: archives@mun.ca |
March 1, 2011
