Recent Additions to Special Collections is an exhibition that started on 20 December 2013 in the de Beer Gallery, Special Collections, University of Otago Library. The exhibition offers a wide variety of materials on display that have been added to Special Collections by purchase or donation over the last three to four years. Not only is it an admirable opportunity to reveal what is actually collected in Special Collections, but importantly, it is an opportunity to thank all the donors for their kind generosity in giving materials to us, and to all those dealers and individuals who have supplied rare and interesting books to the collection.

The old favourites such as 18th century literature, garden history, art and architecture, travel, and works by and about John Evelyn, John Locke, and the English poet Robert Graves are present. There are also new fields of collecting such as pulp fiction and science fiction (SF); the latter 'teleported' through the generosity of Prof. Fred Fastier, and the family of the late Dr Hal Salive (Waikanae). Other items have been acquired because of their historical significance or because they fill a visible gap in the existing collection.

Items of note on display include a first edition of Mungo Park's Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (1799); a 1792 edition of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man; Fanny Burney's Evelina (1784); a third edition of Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-eater (1823); a limited edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula (2008); a facsimile of William Blake's 'Satan, Sin, and Death: Satan Comes to the Gates of Hell' from Thirteen Watercolor Drawings by William Blake illustrating Paradise Lost by John Milton. (2004); a facsimile of Carl Gustav Jung's famed The Red Book (2009); and a wonderful selection of SF and Pulp titles like Thomas Blanchard Dewey's The Girl with the Sweet Plump Knees (1963), Brett Halliday's Murder is My Business (1945), and H. G. Wells's The Invisible Man (2004).

There is slow and steady growth in Special Collections. In this way Special Collections not only maintains collecting relevance for the future, but also it continues to provide choice materials of interest to researchers in and outside the University, as well as to the wider reading public.

Poster (5.1MB in PDF format)

Handlist (3.8MB in PDF format)