News

The International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) was established in 2004 to draw attention to discussions, events, and projects concerning gay, lesbian and transgendered rights. The date itself, May 17th, marks the World Health Organization's decision in 1990 to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. In Canada, the development of rights for LGBTQ citizens is intrinsically associated with the publication of newspapers and magazines fighting homophobia and discrimination.

C. W. Jefferys (1869-1951) was a Canadian artist, illustrator, teacher, and historian. He is best known for the artistic nationalism of his paintings of Canada landscapes and for his historical illustrations of textbooks like The Picture Gallery of Canadian History (1942). But Jefferys was also an accomplished newspaper artist and muralist, ahd his commercial work appeared in numerous daily newspapers like The Star and Globe and Mail, and in the special issues of Hardware Merchandising.

The audio from this year's Gryphon Lecture is now online and available as a downloadable mp3 file. The lecture was delivered by Leslie A. Morris and she spoke about Amy Lowell, the outspoken cigar-smoking Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who was also a major collector of rare books and manuscripts. The talk examined why and how Lowell assembled her collection, now the centrpiece of the Harvard University collections. Morris is the Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts at Harvard's Houghton Library.

Just a reminder that the Fisher will be closed for Good Friday, but we will be open again on Monday April 1. Have a great weekend!

In the meantime, below are some Good Friday and Easter images from our collections.

Please join us on March 20, 2013 at 7:30 pm in celebration of the MA in English in the Field of Creative Writing Program at the University of Toronto. The evening will feature readings by Camilla Gibb and Michael Redhill, as well as the two students they mentor in the program. There will also be a special reading by Rosemary Sullivan, the program's founder. The Adam Penn Gilders Prize for 2013 will also be awarded.

All are welcome. There will be food and a cash bar.

La Farsa series is a fine example of the Fisher’s collection of Spanish plays raging from 1842 to 1942. La Farsa was a weekly literary magazine devoted to publishing the most popular plays represented in Spanish theatres in the years prior to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

Andrew Steeves, co-founder of Gaspeareau Press, one of the country's foremost small presses, delivered the 2013 Leon Katz Memorial Lecture at the Fisher on March 5. His talk, entitled "The Stacks School of Typography: The Role of Libraries and Archives in the Development of the Gaspereau Press," focused on the way in which knowledge of book history and print culture has impacted his work at Gaspereau. Gaspereau Press is an award-winning Canadian literary publisher that has three times been named the best small press in Canada by the Canadian Booksellers' Association.

This recent acquisition, a petition to Queen Anne reviewing the Hudson’s Bay Company's claims against the French, once again emphasizes our commitment to the preservation of the Canadian historical record. 

A new video featuring highlights of the Fisher Library's latest exhibition, From Nowhere: Utopian and Dystopian Visions of our Past, Present, and Future, is now available on the Fisher's YouTube channel and below. Narrated by curator Chris J. Young, the video is a case-by-case exploration that highlights the exhibit's themes and books within the exhibit.

Happy Robbie Burns Day!

Robbie Burns Day is a Scottish holiday named after the poet and writer, Robert Burns, who was born on January 25th, 1759, in Alloway, Scotland. Robbie was the oldest of seven children born to a struggling farmer and his wife. After his mother introduced him to Scottish folk songs, legends and proverbs, he began writing touching poems and songs. Some of Robbie Burns' most famous songs include Auld Lang Syne, Ye Banks and Breaes of Bonnie Doon and My Love's Like a Red, Red Rose. His first book of poems was published in 1788.

Sir John Alexander Macdonald, this country's first Prime Minister - he held the job twice, between 1867-73 and 1878-91, serving 19 years in total as PM - and the dominant figure of Canadian

As we enter the final week before the holiday break - and a reminder to all that the Fisher Library is closed for two weeks, from Dec. 24 through to Jan. 4 - we will be showcasing some of our Christmas-themed holdings. What better place to start than that perennial classic: Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Included below are images from various editions, and variations on, A Christmas Carol, including the second edition published in 1843. Also shown are two separate illustrated editions: one by Ronald Searle, the other by Arthur Rackham.

A 1681 edition of Flavius Josephus's Histoire des juifs; a printed Ordonnance of Louis XIV; a copy of A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, uncut, in original boards; and, the first edition, first state of Thomas Boswell's Life of Johnson. Those are just a few of the many remarkable donations the Fisher received in 2011, and which are detailed in the December 2012 issue (No. 50) of The Halcyon, the newsletter of the Friends of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

As we roll into the final month of 2012, it's a reminder that this is also the final month for the current exhibit at the Fisher, "The John H. Meier, Jr. Governor General's Literary Award for English Fiction Collection." So please come to visit and enjoy this rare opportunity to see unique copies of every novel that has won Canada's most prestigious literary award, from the first winner in 1936, Bertam Brooker's Think of the Earth, to last year's Cool Water, written by Dianne Warren.

John H. Meier, Jr., the curator of the current exhibition which features highlights from his 500-strong collection of Governor General Award-winning books, was in Toronto recently to give tours of the exhibit. While at the Fisher, he sat down to talk about his collection, and what the books mean to him and how they reflect on Canadian society.

Two of Canada's most celebrated poets, P.K. Page and bill bissett, were born on this date, November 23. The Fisher celebrates both of them by highlighting their careers and showcasing some of their work from our collection.

It was 127 years ago today, November 16, 1885, that Canadian folk hero Louis Riel was hanged. Riel, who was a leader of the North-West Rebellion, the resistance movement by the Métis and First Nations people of western Canada against the Canadian government in Saskatchewan, was tried in July 1885. The trial lasted only five days and resulted in a guilty verdict.  Riel delivered two lengthy speeches during his trial, defending his own actions and affirming the rights of the Métis people.

This Sunday, November 11, is Remembrance Day. In a tribute to the many troops that have fallen, we present a small sampling of the numerous and varied First and Second World War materials held here at the Fisher. Many of these are from our manuscript collections, while others are from the general collections. The first image (and the one at left) is from John McRae's In Flanders fields, illustrated by William T.

Naval captain, navigator, explorer and cartographer James Cook, who was the first to survey and map the jagged coast of Newfoundland and Grand Banks in the 1760s, was born on Oct. 27 (or Oct. 28 - the exact day is unknown) at Marton-in-Cleveland, Yorkshire, England in 1728. As a member of the Royal Navy, Cook also saw action in the Seven Years' War, and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec.

Over the past year, the Fisher Library has begun to acquire works from one of the country's most talented artists, Robert Wu. The Toronto-based Wu works in a variety of media, including handmade bookbinding, boxmaking, paper marbling and letterpress. He creates fine leather bound books and marbled papers using traditional tools and techniques and the finest materials available.

It was at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on October 5, 1984, that Marc Garneau, a member of the Canadian Royal Navy, became the first Canadian in space when he was on board the Space Shuttle Challenger Flight STS-41G for an eight-day mission.

The Bibliographical Society in conjunction with the University of Toronto is pleased to announce the publication of an important new online reference work for book history. The British Armorial Bindings Database (click on link to access the site), begun by John Morris and continued by the Fisher Library's Philip Oldfield, was officially launched this week in London, and is now freely available on the web.

You may have noticed something different about the Fisher Library's web site - we have a whole new look and feel!

The smell of cotton candy. The sound of the midway. The long line-ups at the Food Building to eat something wrapped in bacon. Yes, the Canadian National Exhibition is here: the 133rd version of Canada’s largest annual community event starts today. Although the CNE has changed over the years, it continues to be one of Ontario’s great annual traditions. It is currently the seventh largest fair in North America and its audience truly reflects the diversity of Toronto and the region.

It's more-than likely that the telephone used by Alexander Graham Bell on August 3, 1876, when he conducted the world's first definitive telephone tests, would be unrecognizable to today's phone users. And even though phones have gotten smaller and portable, and the device is used for more than just talking, we still owe a debt to the great Bell and his invention. On that August day, Bell made the first intelligible building-to-building telephone call, at Mount Pleasant, near Brantford. In a one-way transmission, he hears his uncle David Bell recite Hamlet's "to be or not to be."

Eight years after John Kennedy delivered a speech before the United States Congress, setting out a national goal that "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth," the Apollo 11 lunar module carrying the astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. It not only fulfilled Kennedy's goal, it was considered, at the time, one of the great technological achievements in human history.

It was on July 13, 1953, when actor Alec Guinness strode on to the stage - contained within a giant canvas tent on the banks of the River Avon in the village of Stratford, Ontario - at the first-ever Stratford Shakespearean Festival of Canada and spoke the opening lines of the first play produced by the festival: "Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this son of York." That first season of the festival lasted six weeks and comprised just two plays: Richard III and All's Well That Ends Well.

The lastest issue of the Halcyon, the newsletter of the Friends of the Fisher Library, is now available online. The issue, No. 49 (June 2012), features an article on an exciting new addition to the library: a copy of the 1555 edition of Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica, printed and published by Johannes Oporinus of Basel.

With the Transit of Venus on everybody's mind, we thought we'd pull some materials that highlight past transits from the Fisher stacks.

Lovers of the Camelot legend – and devotees of the BBC series Merlin – may be interested in a new find at the Fisher Library.

Rare books scholars tend to use the term "incunable" to refer to books that were produced during the infancy of the handpress, namely from the printing of the Gutenberg Bible around 1455 to the year 1500. Some have extended the category to refer to books printed in the earliest days of regional printing, such as "American incunables" (i.e., books printed in the American colonies in the seventeenth century). Others have appropriated the word to apply it to the first works of great printers, as Irvin Haas did in his 1936 bibliography of the great artist and book designer, Bruce Rogers. 

The Fisher Library has recently acquired a limited edition set of playing cards illustrated by the Jewish artist Arthur Szyk. Titled "Heroes of ancient Israel: the playing card art of Arthur Szyk," each of the cards features a hero of ancient Israel: four kings - Saul, David, Solomon and Hezekiah; four women of courage - Deborah, Ruth, Esther and Judith - as the queens; and four warriors - Judah Maccabee, Simon Bar Giora, Bar Kokhba and John of Giscala - as the jacks.

There's only a couple of more days left to see the current exhibition being held at the Fisher, "How Beautiful My Brethern and Sistren: Derek Walcott, Life and Work." The exhibit highlights a broad selection of original archival material from the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott - from O Babylon! to Omeros, as well as other aspects of his life and work, including his painting and drawing. The exhibit will close at 8 p.m. on Thursday April 6.

For 111 years, the Codex Torontonensis, the oldest complete book in the Fisher Library, has been awaiting a companion from its Byzantine home to join it on our library shelves. This past February, that long wait finally ended. Through the kind auspices of the Office of the Chief Librarian and the University’s Collection Development Department, a Greek Gospel Lectionary was added to the Fisher’s medieval manuscript holdings. 

This year's Leon Katz Memorial Lecture was given by Ben McNally on March 13, 2012, where he discussed the past, present and future of bookselling.  The evening was well-attended and continued the tradition of entertaining and informative lectures given by diverse speakers at the Fisher Library as part of the Friends of the Fisher lecture series. 

A new exhibit featuring materials from one of the Fisher Library's manuscript collections opens today at the University of Toronto’s Art Centre (UTAC). Titled Workforce: Representing Labour in Cultural Revolution Posters, the exhibit showcases 17 posters from the Mark Gayn Collection housed at the Fisher Library. The posters, produced primarily between 1963-67, convey the importance of manual labour during this tumultous time.

In our continuing series to mark Freedom to Read week, we examine one of the great scientific books in history - and the controversy it caused after publication.

Coming on the heels of his story on the Tyrrell maps, Toronto journalist Ian Brown has again focused on a unique Fisher collection for a feature story in the Globe and Mail. This past weekend, in the Feb.

The Fisher Library actively continues to expand its holdings of medieval manuscripts, with particular interest in finding texts that will support the work of students and scholars in the Latin codicology and paleography programs. 

The renowed Czech-Canadian author Josef Škvorecký, whose fiction encompassed themes from repression to expatriatism to jazz, died January 3, 2012. While he was considered one of the great Czech dissident writers of the 20th century - his books included the Governor General Award-winning Engineer of Human Souls (the only GG winner originally written in a language other than English or French), The Cowards and The Swell Season, all of which featured his alter ego Danny Smiřický - he was also a long-time professor of English at the University of Toronto.

For those Marc Chagall fans who visited the excellent exhibit on his work at the Art Gallery of Ontario and who wish to see more of the Russian painter's work, you might think about making a trip up to the Fisher to see its Chagall.

On November 15, a memorial was held for Richard Landon, the Fisher Library's long-time Director who passed away in October, at the Knox College College Chapel. Seven speakers - Larry Alford (chief librarian, University of Toronto), Robin Petersen (sister of Richard Landon), J. Edward Chamberlin (University of Toronto), Michael Ryan (Columbia University), David Mason (David Mason Books), Pearce J. Carefoote (librarian, Fisher Library) and Nick Mount (University of Toronto) - delivered eloquent and impassioned tributes to Richard, touching upon both his personal and professional life.

When Richard Landon first came to Toronto from British Columbia to take a job in the Rare Books and Special Collections department at the University of Toronto, one of his first stops in the city was the then-famed area known as Gerrard Street Village. Gerrard was Toronto's version of Greenwich Village, full of bohemian life. The street was populated by artists, intellectuals and poets - as well as booksellers, including Village Books, owned by Martin Ahvenus.

The Fisher Library's latest exhibition has opened.

The first Friends of the Fisher event of 2011/12, the John Seltzer and Mark Seltzer Memorial Lecture, was held this past Tuesday, September 27. Katharine Kyes Leab, editor of American Book Prices Current, delivered a fascinating and entertaining talk on book collectors, entitled "H. Bradley Martin and Other Rare Birds: Collectors and their Astonished Families."

 The Fisher Library was featured this week on the CTV/BNN television program App Central. Technology reporter Kris Abel visited the Fisher in the summer to test out the TextGrabber app, which allows a smartphone user to capture a printed text from a magazine, book or document in more than 60 supported languages.

An engaging collection of Canadian Theatre Programs has recently been organized and made available for use at the Fisher Library. The collection includes programs from several Canadian cities, ranging from an assortment of material from Toronto theatre companies, to obscure programs from cities such as North Hatley, Quebec, and Prescott, Ontario. This ties into the library's existing collection of theatre programs dedicated to the Shaw Festival, as well as the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library has started a collection of World War II memorabilia, focussing on the correspondence of ordinary soldiers and their families. The letters give a new and intimate insight into the lives of these men and women, their daily routines, concerns, and thoughts about the war. In addition, researchers can also piece together how families coped on the homefront. Besides correspondence, the collection includes photographs and rare ephemeral material. 

Mark Gayn was a Canadian journalist who contributed articles to such publications as the Toronto Daily Star, the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, Le Monde, Yomiuri, and the Chicago Daily News. His extensive travels through Asia and the U.S.S.R. earned him a reputation as one of the world's most knowledgeable commentators on these areas.

An exhibition to commemorate the donations of books by the late Ralph Stanton (1923-2010) has opened at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. In Memoriam - Ralph Stanton honours the acade

While he was in Toronto earlier this year to deliver the Friends of the Fisher's Leon Katz Memorial Lecture on Catherine Parr Traill and Agnes Chamberlin's 19th century classic book Canadian Wild Flowers, University of British Columbia's Alexander Globe sat down to discuss the genesis of the book and the networks involved in getting the book into print.

The Fisher Library is proud to present two videos centred around the latest exhibition, Great and Manifold: A Celebration of the Bible in English. Fisher Librarian and exhibit curator P.J. Carefoote discusses the historical and religious significance of the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, as well as his selection process and how he put the exhibit together.