| Catalogue | Collections | Home | History | Contact us |
See some not-so-new acquisitions!
There have been a number of interesting acquisitions in recent months, not least an example of a typefounder's hand mould complete with its "rat's tail", a curved spring used to retain the interchangeable matrices from which letters, numbers, and other parts of a font of type could be cast.
This was the kind gift of Dr Roy Millington of Sheffield University, author of a recent history of the firm of Stephenson Blake & Company the most significant typefounder and printers' equipment supplier in Britain and the Commonwealth. The hand mould complements the Library's small collection of printing equipment.
Notable printed works include William Heath Robinson's Then And Now. (1921), with 6 full-page illustrations in monochrome, 15 other line drawings by Heath Robinson together with illustrations after photographs.
Apparently this the only example of an advertising commission undertaken by Heath Robinson, comprising caricatures of the machinery of the port of Manchester.
The Library has also acquired from the booksellers Jarndyce a volume containing twelve penny dreadfuls, eleven of which were printed in Gorton, Manchester by the Daisy Bank Press in the early years of the last century. The press began when a former actor, publican, greengrocer and bookseller named Jesse Pemberton acquired copies of a incomplete book printed by a Manchester printing firm. The book From Mill-Girl to Millionairess- a Romance, was to have been sixty-four page book but the customer who had ordered the printing had run out of a cash just as the third of the four sixteen-page sections was coming of the press. Pemberton agreed to help the printer cut his losses by buying the three-quarter books providing the printer wrapped a cover around them. After realising, rather belatedly, that the story was somewhat truncated, Pemberton purchased sets of 'John Bull' lettering sets and enlisted a group of local children to stamp beneath the last printed line of page 48: 'And then they got married and lived happily ever after. THE END'. The book sold, thus proving that where books are concerned it is possible to fool all of the people all of the time, and Pemberton was encouraged to set up a publishing firm. The press brought out about 50 works between 1910 and 1922, mostly thirty-two page paperbacks with illustrated coloured covers. Many of the books covered the usual themes of crime and murder, with a single local example (below), but there were a surprisingly large number of self-help and how to books, on wrestling and magic.
In advertisements Pemberton claimed that they were 'the best and most reliable ever published', which was not quite true given that most were simply exact copies of London editions apart from the Daisy Bank cover. The Library's volume of Daisy Bank books, coupled with another acquisition, the Thrilling Life Stories, help to fill a major gap in the collections, the local publication of cheap popular literature of the second half of the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth.
On the theme of the ship canal, we have been given a set of twenty or so lantern slides of the canal and port of Manchester, by Mr Randle Knight of Stafford. The slides, which formerly belonged to the Staffordshire Field Club, include some wonderful images of dock activity including the unloading of bananas. They complement the Library?s extensive collection of glass negatives and lantern slides.
| Catalogue | Collections | Home | History | Contact us |