New acquisitions

Information about notable new additions to the University of Reading Special Collections will be posted here. Please contact us to arrange an appointment to see any of these items.

 

For information about recent additions to the library of the Museum of English Rural Life, which include a number of rare book items, please visit the new acquisitions page.

2010

 

• The little school : a posy of rhymes, by T. Sturge Moore. London : The Eragny Press,1905.

This beautiful example of an Eragny Press publication (example of page shown right) is a little book of poems for children by Thomas Sturge Moore, illustrated with wood-engravings by the poet.

 

Thomas Sturge Moore (1870-1944) was a poet, a critic of art and of literature, a wood-engraver and a dramatist. A pupil of the artist Charles Ricketts, Sturge Moore collaborated with the poet W.B. Yeats, and designed a number of book covers for his published works. The Eragny Press was one of a number of important private presses of the English Arts and Crafts Private Press movement championed by William Morris in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This new acquisition will complement the Eragny Press edition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poems, entitled Christabel, Kubla Khan, Fancy in nubibus, and Song from Zapolya (1904) (PRINTING COLLECTION--821.72), which is held in the Printing Collection. The University Special Collections also holds a collection of papers of Thomas Sturge Moore (MS 165), and there are also a number of related items, including a number of books designed by Sturge Moore, within the rare book collections.

 

• Clothes : an essay upon the nature and significance of the natural and artificial integuments worn by men and women, by Eric Gill. London : Jonathan Cape, 1931.

Eric Gill (1882–1940) was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker. This first edition, illustrated with wood-engravings by the author, will complement other writings by Gill held in the rare book collections, including Clothing without cloth : an essay on the nude (GIBBINGS COLLECTION--K170), also published in 1931. This copy bears the ownership signature of the British architect Austen St. B. Harrison (1891–1976), and his bookplate designed by Gill.

 

• My Miss Nancy : Nancy Astor's Virginia "Mammy" tells why "her littl' mistis ain't neber gwine lose her 'sition ober dar in Inglan'" by Ruby Vaughan Bigger. Macon, Ga. : The J.W. Burke Company, 1924.

Nancy Astor spent her childhood at her grandfather's estate in Hanover County, Virginia, USA, surrounded by his loyal family servants. In this little book, Nancy's black nanny 'Mammy Veenie' tells of Nancy's somewhat tomboyish and tumultuous childhood.

 

• Dorset : Shell Guide. Compiled and written by Paul Nash. London, Faber and Faber, 1935.

Paul Nash (1889-1946) was an English landscape painter, surrealist and war artist. Between 1934 and 1936 Paul Nash lived near Swanage in Dorset, and produced a considerable number of paintings and photographs during this period. At the invitation of John Betjeman, he compiled this Shell Guide to Dorset. The book includes numerous illustrations and photographs by Nash, including reproductions of four of his watercolours. 

 

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