La Mama Exhibition

Baillieu Library, ground floor, 14 February to 8 April 2012

La Mama, named after the off-Broadway theatre in New York, was established in Carlton, Melbourne by Betty Burstall in 1967. La Mama was established as a venue for avant-garde theatre, music, poetry readings, improvisations and screenings of new films. Liz Jones has been artistic director and administrator of the theatre since 1977.

The display of items from the La Mama Collection, held at the University of Melbourne Archives, will showcase the unique place La Mama holds in Australian theatre. The vital energy both on stage and behind the scenes is seen in correspondence, play appraisals, and photographs relating to performances by Cate Blanchett and Stelarc, the scripts of David Williamson, and linocut posters by Tim Burstall.

Above: Stage set illustration for Stelarc’s performance ‘Event for Obsolete Body,’ 1980, La Mama Collection (1983.0065 – 1989.0072), File 11, Box 1, University of Melbourne Archives.

Treasures Revealed

Experience some of the most prized possessions held in the University of Melbourne Library with ‘Treasures Revealed’, available free for iPhone, iPad and Android.

Australiana includes convicts, gold diggers, the 1854 Melbourne directory; Rare Books includes a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible, Book of Hours and Middle Eastern Manuscripts; Prints include Goya, Hogarth, Callot, Lindsay and Piranesi. And more.

See: http://apps.toura.com/university-of-melbourne-library/treasures-revealed

Migration Tales

This image, from a pamphlet by Isaac Thomas, held in Special Collections, is about the fictional Morgan Bach who wishes to leave Wales to seek his fortune in Australia, much to the despair of his mother. In ballad form, the verses are a conversation between mother and son, in which she tries to talk him out of his plans. As much as it pains him, however, he will not be moved. A subsequent ballad by Thomas details Morgan Bach’s later return to Wales as a rich man, but his mother does not recognise him (this pamphlet is held by the National Library of Australia).

The performing and selling of ballads was very popular entertainment in 18th and 19th-century Wales. In the latter, many ballads written in the industrial south of Wales related to Australia, suggesting a preoccupation with emigrating to escape poverty and start afresh in a new country. The Thomas ballads about Morgan and his mother were two of the most popular and were printed in many editions, many of which survive to this day.

Above: Isaac Thomas, of Aberdare, Morgan Bach a’i fam yn ymddiddan yn nghylch myned i Australia, [Publisher] Caernarfon: argraffwyd gan H. Humphreys, 184-?, Special Collections, University of Melbourne.

A translation of this ballad is also available in Special Collections: Isaac Thomas, of Aberdare, Morgan Bach in Australia: Reproductions of two Welsh migration ballads from the 1850s, with translations and introduction by Geraint Evans, Melbourne: Ancora Press, 2010.

Rare Rocks

The Earth Sciences Rare Book Collection is an important research collection of rare and early geological and palaeontological books, including strong holdings of early palaeontological works in English, French and German. About 65 per cent of the items are the only known copy in Australia. The collection is socially and historically significant as it represents the development of the discipline of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, and it is connected to significant geologists such as Frederick McCoy and Ernest Skeats, early and eminent professors in their field at the University. Many of the books are beautiful items in themselves with embossed leather covers and fine illustrations. This engraving is ‘Volcanic crater near Frankenhousen in Lower Hesse’, in Rudolph Erich Raspe, An account of some German volcanos, and their productions: With a new hypothesis of the prismatical basaltes, established upon facts: Being an essay of physical geography for philosophers and miners, London: Printed for Lockyer Davis, Holborn, printer to the Royal Society, 1776, plate II, facing p. 38. Earth Sciences Library Rare Books Collection, Special Collections, University of Melbourne.

Books from the collection may be viewed in the Special Collections Reading Room in the Baillieu Library. For more information see www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/earth/rarebooks

‘Appeals to a Child’s Imagination’

Exhibit: ‘Appeals to a Child’s Imagination’: The Morgan Collection of Children’s Books, Special Collections, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne, ground floor, Baillieu Library, until Wednesday 1 February 2012

A display highlighting the Morgan Collection of Children’s Books from the Library’s Special Collections is now showing on the ground floor of the Baillieu Library. This collection is based upon a generous donation to the Library in 1954 by the British antiquarian Frederick Charles (F.C.) Morgan (1878-1978). As a result of his generosity, the University acquired one of Australia’s foremost collections of children’s books and a significant collection in world terms. Since then, the collection has been actively enlarged and today it consists of approximately 4,000 items, four times the size of its original 1,086 volumes in 1954.

One of the many highlights of the Morgan Collection is its wealth of lavishly-illustrated books. The present display celebrates the colour illustrations by the prominent 19th-century children’s book illustrators Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway. The collection contains not only books, but also various toys and games enjoyed by children of the Victorian era, including a mid-19th-century cube block puzzle, a portable folding globe, c.1866, paper doll story books and a child’s magic set. Through its rich array of items, the Morgan Collection offers staff, students and the wider community the opportunity to engage with the social milieu of a past age through treasured childhood stories and playthings, some of which are still familiar today.

Above: Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886), ‘Hey diddle-diddle and Baby Bunting’, London: Routledge, 1882, gift of F.C. Morgan, 1954, Special Collections, Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne.

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