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From the Archives
The Biggest, the Weirdest and the Worst
BY ANDREW VOWLES
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| Books as you know them — and as you don't — in the U of G Library archives. Photo by Rebecca Kendall |
Not surprisingly, the U of G Library archives include books of all shapes and sizes. Start looking for the most outlandish ones — the smallest, the largest, the strangest, the worst — and you find some surprises. Here's a compendium of the “most-est” books housed in the archives.
Smallest
Each of the miniature illustrated volumes in the grandiose-sounding Thistle Library collection measures only 3½ by 2½ inches. U of G owns about half of this collection. The books' distinctive tartan covers hint at their content, mostly Scottish history, geography and culture. Titles include Cathedrals and Abbeys of Scotland, Bonnie Prince Charlie: The Story of “The Forty-five” and Edinburgh of Today — the latter a monster at 250-odd pages.
Heaviest
A leading contender for the archives' heavyweight title is a 1979 edition of Elora and Salem: Twenty Sketches by A.J. Casson, published by M.B. Loates Publishing Co. The book's centerpiece is its collection of watercolours of two small towns near Guelph, all painted by the Group of Seven member. Those delicately rendered plates are contained within a 20- by 20-inch package of imported handmade paper, all hand-bound in full leather and decorated with 24-carat gold marbled end papers and weighing about 20 pounds.
Widest
Perceived Obstacles is an apt title for this doorstop by American artist Richard Tuttle that barely fits on its archive shelf. At more than three feet wide, this art book contains full-size drawings from an original gallery exhibition in 2000. Surprisingly, the first few pages in the volume contain only Thumbelina-sized pieces that might well fit inside one of those Thistle Library volumes.
Oldest
The granddaddy of the archives collection is an incunabulum printed in 1490. Incunabula (Latin for “swaddling clothes”) are the earliest printed books from before the year 1501. Guelph's vellum-bound volume is a 164-page text by the 13th-century Pope John XXI. He was teaching medicine at the University of Siena when he wrote the Summulae Logicales, a reference manual on Aristotelian logic. Referring to the 50-year period following the publication of the Gutenberg Bible, Lorne Bruce, head of Archival and Special Collections, says: “This was the invention of the book as we know it.”
Most fetishistic
High Heels and Hairy Legs, written by Guelph fine art graduate Lise Melhorn, are arguably the most unusual books in the collection. Hairy Legs is printed on nine leg-shaped leaves in a legwork stocking held together by garters. Its topic: shaving. Her other work consists of a pair of papier mâché shoes, each containing eight paper insoles that tell the story of High Heels. A close contender is another shoe — a worn men's dress shoe wrapped in tissue paper in a box — containing a poem by American poet and visual artist Clark Coolidge. On the Slates is written on sheets of paper the size of U.S. currency, all wrapped in a dollar bill, tied with a shoelace and tucked inside the shoe. Most salacious
One of the most, er, revealing books in the archives is Sex, the coffee-table book by Madonna released in 1992 to accompany her album Erotica. Originally purchased for use in a U of G course, the book was formerly housed in the general stacks upstairs and moved to the reserve desk before winding up in the archives. It's hardly a rarity: two editions — about 1.5 million copies each — were printed. And its simulations of sexual acts and accompanying erotica written by Madonna as a character inspired by silent film actress Dita Parlo would probably be considered relatively tame by today's standards.
Worst
Perhaps the worst work in the archives is contained in an 1893 pamphlet by Lowden Macartney. Called Select Poems of McGonagall, the pamphlet sketches the life and literary efforts of Scottish poet William Topaz McGonagall, whose fascination with shipwrecks, accidents and battles was matched only by his execrable writing style. One such attempt reprinted in the pamphlet begins as follows: “'Twas on the 16th of October, in 1894, / I was invited to Inverness, not far from the seashore, / To partake of a Banquet prepared by the Heatherblend Club, / Gentlemen who honoured me without any hubbub . . . .”
Most valuable
The most valuable book in the U of G collection is a 1908 first impression of Anne of Green Gables. The volume is signed and inscribed to George B. MacMillan, a friend of author Lucy Maud Montgomery's. Lacking a dust jacket, the cover shows a more grown-up Anne than the red-haired girl often depicted on other editions. Bruce says first impressions of this work have been auctioned for up to $40,000 US.