NOTES AND COMMENTS

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 10, Issue 1, 1 May 1977, Page 45

NOTES AND COMMENTS

Development of the English Literature Collections Professor Arthur Pollard, Head of the Department of English at the University of Hull, spent two weeks in mid-February in the Turnbull examining the Library’s collections of English literature at the invitation of the Chief Librarian. Professor Pollard was visiting New Zealand and Australia on a lecture tour under the auspices of the British Council and the Library is indebted to the Council for making Professor Pollard available to act as an advisor to the Library in the development of its English literature collections. The original invitation from the Chief Librarian was for an opinion on the strengths and potential of the existing collections of early printed books for growth to support advanced research in English literature and for advice on the formal and informal relationships which should be developed between the Library and the academic community to ensure that New Zealand’s scarce research resources are best used. Professor Pollard was later invited to broaden the scope of his inquiry to an evaluation of the resources in nineteenthcentury English fiction in the National Library with particular emphasis on the General Assembly Library and Turnbull holdings. The Pollard report and recommendations will be discussed in due course by the Trustees’ Committee for the Alexander Turnbull Library and then become available to a wider audience.

Professor Arthur Pollard held academic positions at the University of Manchester before becoming Professor of English at Hull in 1967. His publications include works on English hymns and sermons, studies of Mrs Gaskell, Richard Hooker, Charlotte Bronte, Anthony Trollope and George Crabbe, and editions of Crabbe’s poems and Mrs Gaskell’s letters.

Consultant to Archive of New Zealand Music The Library has been fortunate in securing the services of Mr J. M. Thomson as a consultant to the Archive of New Zealand Music established at Turnbull in 1974. Mr Thomson arrived from England late in 1976 and is expected to spend most of 1977 in New Zealand gathering material for a history of New Zealand music. He has been asked specifically to advise the Library on the future development of the Archive of New Zealand Music, its organisation and staffing, the provision of special facilities for the use of sound recordings and tapes, and the relationships of the Archive to other music collections in New Zealand. Mr Thomson, the editor of Early Music, is a musicologist with considerable experience of research archives. He was responsible for the

sorting and organisation of the Alfred Hill papers and music collection in the Mitchell Library and the Australian Broadcasting Commission in Sydney, the cataloguing of the libraries of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, and has been an adviser on archival matters to the Aldeburgh Festival and the Radcliffe Trust.

Records of Dalgety New Zealand Limited, 1860-1940 During the past few months Turnbull staff have been transferring records from the head office and branches of Dalgety N.Z. Ltd. to the Library. These records reflect the diverse history of the national stock and station agency. They join the minute books of the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Co. which were sent to the Library shortly after it was merged with Dalgety and Company. However, the recent transfer of Dalgety’s inactive records up to 1940 —so far some three hundred linear feet —has added a new perspective for those doing research in the farming sector.

The Library has received records from the head office containing correspondence, financial records and the semi-annual reports submitted by each branch. In addition there are some records of the N.Z. Loan & Mercantile head office. At the branch level there was often an office for each company in a centre and when the merger took place in 1962 only one office was retained. In some cases this was a Dalgety office and Dalgety branch records were retained, in others it was a N.Z. Loan & Mercantile agency. So far the Library has received branch records from Christchurch and Dunedin (Dalgety) and Gore (N.Z. Loan & Mercantile). These contain managers’ reports which often supplement those of head office, correspondence with head office and other branches, ledgers and other financial records.

While such records will do much to illuminate the history of Dalgety and Company and the New Zealand Loan & Mercantile Agency Ltd. as stock and station agencies they are also of considerable value for the study of patterns of farming development for particular regions or even for individual stations. Much remains to be written about the relationship between business and agriculture in New Zealand. With the addition of this large quantity of Dalgety New Zealand records—taken in conjunction with the National Mortgage & Agency records at the Hocken Library—it is hoped that significant new research will be undertaken on agricultural and pastoral developments in New Zealand.

Exhibitions Since the last issue of the Record went to press, two exhibitions have been mounted in the Library. Between December and March the introduction to England of printing with movable type was marked

by the exhibition ‘SOO years of English printing; a tribute to William Caxton’. This combined facsimile examples of Caxton printings (the Library has no originals), a representative selection of books spanning the five centuries and items from the pre printed-book period. Supplementing these were samples of type and printers’ equipment (including the Albion press which was formerly in the old Turnbull House) equipment for a process which changed remarkably little from Gutenberg’s invention of the 14505. Much of the ‘practical’ material was lent by Professor D. F. McKenzie and the Wai-te-ata Press.

‘Aotearoa takes shape’ is the name given to an exhibition of maps and atlases from the Library’s collection on display from March to the end of May. It visually demonstrates the changing theories and growing knowledge of the southern hemisphere, dating from Ptolemy’s secondcentury map showing the mythical southern land mass. The great voyages gradually disproved the theories, culminating in those of Tasman and Cook, which gave New Zealand its cartographic identity.

Specifically New Zealand maps include Admiralty charts dating from 1816 (the earliest known), Tuke Tahua’s manuscript map drawn on Norfolk Island in 1794 and ‘Selwyn’s map’ (see Record 9 (n.s.) (2), 1976, p. 49). The maps are complemented by a display of fine pieces of navigational equipment lent by the Wellington Harbour Board Museum.

The Turnbull Library Prints 1977 The Endowment Trust Board has chosen three Charles Heaphy watercolours for this year’s prints, the subjects being Bream Head, Whangarei, Rangitoto Island and Kakariki from Ship Cove, with a fourth colour print on the folder, Cowdie Forest on the Wairoa River, Kaipara. The text-sheet will bear two illustrations of other watercolours. It is expected that the prints will be released in September. It would be appreciated if orders were not placed until after publication has been announced.

Portraits of the Famous and Infamous After many years of preparation, a fine publication was issued privately in London last year, based upon the Rex Nan Kivell Collection in the National Library of Australia. Portraits of the Famous and Infamous: Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific 1492-1970 was compiled by Rex de C. Nan Kivell and Sydney A. Spence. The handsome folio volume of 332 pages, lavishly illustrated and with many plates in full colour, provides a comprehensive coverage not only of original works and prints in the Nan Kivell collection itself but also of photographs from originals held elsewhere. Like Alexander Turnbull, Rex Nan Kivell has cast his net very widely so that much peripheral material is included, often not elsewhere recorded, and

such an all-embracing list adds even more to the value of the publication. It follows also that so vast a project inevitably has both a few omissions and some errors but it would be churlish to detail these after enjoying so rich a feast. The Library' is indebted to Mr Nan Kivell for the generous gift of a copy of the book, which has already proved of great value to research workers. Moreover, he has also presented a set of 30 large folios containing black and white photographs of the entire Rex Nan Kivell Collection, which are of inestimable value in enabling one to study to some extent any picture listed as being in Canberra. We are indeed grateful to Mr Nan Kivell.

Three new Heaphy Watercolours Some twenty years ago the Library discovered that in the eighteen-fifties Charles Heaphy had sent two watercolours to the Royal Geographical Society. Enquiries made then failed to ascertain what these paintings were and it then seemed that they had been lost in London. Most fortunately, when the Library was purchasing the Gully watercolours from the Society in 1974 routine enquiries elicited the existence of these Heaphys which had meanwhile come to light. It proved possible for the Endowment Trust to purchase them for a total of £935. They are fine studies of the thermal regions in the artist’s typically romantic later style, one of the White Terraces being quite different in approach from the many popular views by Blomfield, Barraud and Hoyte. The second is a useful record of a geyser, also a most attractive work. Both paintings feature Maori and European figures, including Heaphy himself, and they provide an unique addition of much value in any study of the artist.

Last year a third, quite unknown Heaphy watercolour was brought into the Library and was subsequently acquired for the collections. It had been privately owned in this country. In style it appeared midway between Heaphy’s work of the eighteen-forties and his markedly different paintings of the next decade. Michael Fitzgerald, Curator of Colonial History at the National Museum (who is engaged upon a definitive biography of Heaphy) was able to discover that the scene dates from 1871, when Heaphy cruised down the West Coast of the South Island with the famous Burton Brothers photographers; and he even produced one of their views from that occasion which proved the topographical accuracy of the painting. The scene is of Harrison’s Cove in Milford Sound and it is interesting to compare this with a nearby view in that area by Heaphy held by the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. The new acquisition is one of the latest in date as yet known and is a valuable addition to the art collection. The Turnbull’s is the major Heaphy collection, now totalling 57 items: ten of these have been acquired since Mr Turnbull’s death, two by gift in 1963, the rest by purchase between

1922 and 1976. The interest and value of this latest work greatly increase as a result of the information supplied by Mr Fitzgerald.

Historians 3 conference in Wellington

Wellington was the venue in February for the biennial conference of historians convened by the university history departments and the staff of the Library took full advantage of the opportunity to meet with historians and to sample papers over a wide range of New Zealand, Pacific, Asian and European topics. The increasing use of the Turnbull collections by academic staff and graduate students makes it important for the Library staff to be aware of trends in research so that appropriate resources can be gathered and services planned. The papers and discussions provided a useful conspectus of the questions being asked by historians and stimulated Turnbull staff members to consider the kinds of research materials that would be needed to provide answers.

Mr T. P. Wilsted, the Manuscripts Librarian, presented a paper on the comparative development of the National Archives in New Zealand and the United States showing the role played by historians in each country and urged that historians, because they are one of the prime users of archives, should become more involved in questions of archival preservation and access. Following this paper, conference members were invited to a sherry party at the Turnbull Library to meet informally with the staff.

Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Conference A one-day conference of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand was held at the Library on Saturday 5 February, the programme beginning with a business meeting of the Society with an address by the President, Mr D. H. Borchardt. Papers which followed were: Mr A. G. Bagnall and Ms P. Griffith ‘The retrospective New Zealand National Bibliography: its origins and problems’; Mr S. Challenger ‘The literature of landscapes and gardens’; Dr Michael Hoare ‘Problems of bibliography with J. R. and J. G. A. Forster’ and Ms K. A. Coleridge ‘The Milton Collection in the Alexander Turnbull Library’.

The diversity of the contributions, together with the number and interests of the participants attending the conference, provided for informal but fruitful discussion between librarians, academics and bibliographers of various disciplines.