Rare Books

The Fisher is proud to hold Marshall McLuhan's working library.

The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer is the triumph of William Morris’ Kelmscott Press. Morris created Kelmscott in 1891 as a rebuttal to what he considered the poor quality of mid-19^th century mass-produced goods, particularly in the book trade. This masterwork set a new benchmark for book design.

Another treasure has been found among the books donated to the library by the late Professor Ralph Stanton: a 1541 publication of the Adagiorum of Erasmus. There is no other copy of this particular edition, printed by Sebastianus Gryphius in Lyon, at the University of Toronto. 

The Knox College Collection, numbering some 5,000 rare books, was deposited at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in 1995, and cataloguing on the collection was completed by the summer of 2008. The collection originally constituted the core of the Knox College theological library, which was established in 1844.

In 2008, Dr. H.L. and Mrs. Pamel Sussmann donated a superb collection of books and pamphlets – 221 items in total – on South Africa.

René Descartes (1596–1650) is primarily remembered as a philosopher and scientist, one of the most influential of his time.

Arguably one of the greatest gardeners who excelled at both plantsmanship and authorship was Philip Miller, Curator of the Chelsea Physic Garden for almost fifty years, and the centre of an international network of plant enthusiasts and botanists.

The Fisher Library has some two hundred books printed before 1501. These books, commonly referred to as incunabula or incunables (latin for "from the cradle"), were printed in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, with the majority being in Latin, but also in Hebrew, Greek and some vernacular languages.

The Sidney Thomson Fisher collection contains some of the Thomas Fisher Library’s most prized possessions, including the first four folios of Shakespeare’s Works (1623, 1632, 1664 and 1685) and a rich collection of Wenceslaus Hollar’s famous engravings.

The Joseph Brabant Lewis Carroll Collection was donated to the Library in 1997 by Joseph Brabant and Nicholas Maes.