Miniatures Collection

The miniatures collection of some 500 volumes comprises works 14 cm or less in height.  This is a more generous interpretation of the usual definition of miniature in collectors’ terms as 3 inches (7.6 cm) and is influenced partly by shelving and conservation considerations.  The smallest item, The Lord’s prayer in seven languages, is just 5 mm and must be read with the aid of a magnifying lens.  It is in fact engraved rather than printed; the smallest traditionally printed work, a 1728 Biblia [a summary of the Old and New Testaments] is 3.6 cm high and can be easily read with the naked eye.  By and large the works are modest productions though a few are of interest for their printing or binding, notably a copy of J.M. Barrie’s essay on the burial of George Meredith by J.M. Barrie finely bound by in red morocco by Sandorski and Sutcliffe and an early? 19th century edition of the New Testament with polished birch wood covers from ‘the Abbotsford lands’ [the home of Sir Walter Scott] and engraved views of Melrose Abbey and Abbotsford.

The collection covers the range of subject disciplines, though the largest area by a considerable margin is literature.  The publication dates span more than 400 years, the earliest work being a 1561 edition of the meditations of St. Augustine, received with the bequest of Sir Samuel Way.  There are other early publications including the first edition of Theophrastus’ Characters in English (1616) and other seventeenth century editions of classical literary works, and several early histories, notably Francis Bacon’s history of Henry 7th published by Elsevier in 1662, the Defensio regia pro Carolo I [history of Charles I] of 1650, with Thomas Carlyle’s book plate of and ownership inscription (1831), and The secret history of the most renowned Q. Elizabeth and the E. Of Essex (1725) with an enclosed letter from Lytton Strachey.

Art reproduction in miniature has been well exploited but there are few examples in our own collection: perhaps the most notable is Ezra Pound’s memoir of the sculptor Gaudier-Brzeska (1957).  Literature, on the other hand, is well represented in the collection.  There are a number of series published from the late 18th to the early 20th century (including Bell’s Poets in 109 volumes and the Little Blue Books, Ten Cent Pocket Series and Contemporary Portraits from the Haldeman-Julius Company of Kansas) as well as many individual editions of popular works, designed to be easily read and transported.  In the 1960s and 1970s there was something of a revival with a number of experimental miniature publications, and more recently there have been some fine typographical publications like those of the Black Sparrow Press and the Minnesota Miniatures printed by the Ox head Press. Czechoslovak poets are represented in a selection of small format editions, most of the 1960s, by various Prague publishers, received in the collection of Alfred French. A number of books about books have also been published in the miniature format,  including Typographia, or the printers’ instructor, an ambitious attempt to deal not only with the art of printing but ‘every subject connected with the art’ (1824) and, most appropriately, Make mine a small one, a librarian’s endorsement of the reading advantages of small books.

Contemporary social and political issues are reflected in the Quotations from Chou En-Lai, a 1969 Melbourne publication with an introduction by C.P. FitzGerald, and the Little Red School Book, originally published in Danish in 1969, which encouraged students to question and attempt to change the culture of school, education and society generally, and The Black and White Book: a handbook of revolution, issued in the same format in 1972 with a broader and more radical agenda.  Of local South Australian interest are Helen Spence’s pamphlet From kindergarten to the University on the education girls (190?) and three gifts of medical works by Adelaide medical staff and graduates, an 1828 edition of Cullen’s Nosology (the gift of Sir Henry Simpson Newland), a Pharmacopoeia compiled for use in the Adelaide Hospital (presented by Dr W.R. Cavenagh-Mainwaring), and a work dealing with conception, birth and physiognomy, falsely attributed to Aristotle, donated by Dr. A.W. Wall.