Previous exhibition

Within the walls of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, there are roughly 700,000 books and many large collections of literary and historical manuscripts, including the University of Toronto Archives. It is the largest and most diverse research resource of its kind in Canada. However, without those walls, but within the University of Toronto, there are a dozen other important Special Collections departments whose resources are well known to the specialist scholars who use them, but are not, perhaps, as visible to the general university community and the citizens of Toronto. This is the first time we have attempted a joint, collaborative exhibition to display in one venue a selection of the treasures throughout the whole university.

This exhibition is about travellers, and the exhibits are for the most part accounts of their travels. There are few restrictions: the journeys will be to anywhere in the world, at any time from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries. Some of the books and maps were published as recently as this century, others were first printed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The travellers’ tales were most often written down by the travellers themselves, or perhaps dictated to amanuenses, soon after their return. Not all are truthful, though most claim to be. One restriction is self-evident: for the journeys to have been recorded at all they must have been at least partly successful. The second restriction is more interesting: each of the explorers and cartographers is Italian, and they are all men — for the cultures of the times, even into the twentieth century, excluded Italian women from such ventures. But these were Italians who, though living at the centre of the Mediterranean region, with opportunities for trade, profit, and God’s work close by on every side, chose to cross the deserts, the oceans, and the mountains. Suffice to say that they did, and the world was changed, and they were rewarded.

This celebration of the remarkable achievements of Canadian explorer, trader and cartographer David Thompson (1770-1857) forms part of the North American David Thompson Bicentennials initiative. As the institution that holds one of the primary source documents of the life of Thompson, the narrative of his 'Travels', the Fisher Library has undertaken this exhibition to commemorate not only his life, writings and works, but also the long and rich tradition from which he came-the explorers and fur traders who mapped Canada. This exhibition was curated by Sandra Alston.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is one of the few writers to have achieved equal distinction as both a novelist and a poet. He established his reputation in the Victorian period with such iconic novels as Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the d’Urbervilles, set in the semi-fictional world of “Wessex.” In 1897, embittered by critics who branded his last two novels “distasteful” and “obscene,” Hardy abandoned prose and devoted the remaining thirty years of his life to writing poetry.  By the time of his death, he was not only the last of the great Victorian novelists but had also become one of England's most important and influential modern poets.

Drawing on the magnificent collection donated to the Fisher Library by the pre-eminent Hardy scholar and University of Toronto Professor Emeritus, Michael Millgate, this exhibition will include first editions, correspondence, manuscripts, photographs and ephemera illustrating Hardy’s professional and personal life.

ISBN 978-0-7727-6120-0 (paperback), 94 pages, $20 | Ref # 7076

Bruce Rogers (1870-1957) designed about five hundred books between 1892 and 1957. To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of this great artisan’s death, the Fisher Library is proud to present not only Rogers’ prized ‘Thirty’, but a selection of his other works dating from the end of the nineteenth century through to the middle of the twentieth century. Thomas Schweitzer has provided a solid foundation for the Bruce Rogers collection at the Fisher, upon which the library has built, as recently as 2007 with the addition of Rogers’ masterpiece, the great Oxford Lectern Bible of 1935. His books have been consistently praised for their simplicity of design and elegance of execution.

This exhibition and catalogue bring together the concerted practical efforts of two philosophers, John Slater and Michael Walsh. In this exhibition, members of the public can see and reflect on the fruits of latter days and the busiest century of philosophical speculation. This exhibition is also a tribute to the bibliophilical exertions of two of the Fisher Library’s most important donors.

Queer CanLit includes poetry, fiction, drama, 'zines, photos, and artwork, celebrating a rich history across the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries with materials drawn from the Fisher collection, the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, the Robert Giard Foundation, and private collections. It includes materials from such writers as Marie-Claire Blais, Dionne Brand, Nicole Brossard, Timothy Findley, John Herbert, Tomson Highway, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Sinclair Ross, Shyam Selvadurai, and Michel Tremblay.

This is an exhibition about the men and women who answered their country's call when war was declared in August 1914. It brings together a range of material - photographs, histories, poetry, memoirs, letters, government-issued posters, official documents, literature of the training camps and of the trenches - that highlight different aspects of this response. These printed items and artifacts are poignant reminders of a period when the sacrifice, courage and determination of Canadians so strongly shaped our nation's history.

This exhibition, the first travelling exhibit of the artist books and book-objects of Werner Pfeiffer, features 39 objects made by Pfeiffer using real books. He has "silenced" the books by gluing the pages together, while also adding ropes, nails, clamps and hooks. The intention is to comment on censorship and to provoke reactions from his audience. The exhibition also includes 8 of Pfeiffer’s artist books, a genre loosely defined as books wholly conceived of and produced as the vision of a single artist.

As this exhibition demonstrates, John Calvin's life and legacy can be told through books. Books shaped him and his age, and in the end he and his followers used the medium of print to bring about one of the greatest revolutions the world has ever known. Of all of the sheets of print produced by individual writers in the period from 1541 to 1565, Calvin is responsible for an astonishing 42% of the total; even the Bible only accounts for 14% of total print output during this era. As this exhibit, prepared by Pearce J. Carefoote, demonstrates, Calvin enjoys the ignominious distinction of being simultaneously one of the most honoured and vilified figures in human history – largely because of the mass of print he left behind for others to interpret and expand upon.