The Cardiff Rare Books Collection
Other key collections for literary scholars at Cardiff University
Cardiff University has acquired and developed special collections and archives to support teaching and research ever since it was founded in 1883. Most of these collections are now housed in SCOLAR. Notable collections which complement the Cardiff Rare Books Collection include:
- Salisbury Library: an internationally-renowned and wide-ranging repository of materials of Welsh and Celtic interest from the 16th to the 21st centuries, which also includes significant collections of items relating to the English border counties of the Welsh Marches.
- Carmarthen Collection: rare books and scientific equipment from the Carmarthen Academy, founded in the early 18th century; among the 5000 books are many rare theological, philosophical and scientific volumes.
- Reece and Morse Collections: around 3000 volumes, ranging from the 16th to the 20th centuries, from the library of a former Mayor of Cardiff who was also an antiquarian book collector, and from a former University academic’s collection.
- Periodicals collection: a range of major and lesser-known British periodicals from the long 19th century, including the Gentleman’s Magazine, Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, The Strand, Christian Observer, Baptist Magazine, and many others.
- Corvey Microfiche Edition: around 3300 titles by nearly 1300 writers, dating from 1790 to 1830, microfiched and catalogued. The novels section comprises approximately two thirds of the collection (for which it rivals the British Library’s holdings in terms of completeness), along with 400 poetic works and nearly 200 dramas. Other prose forms included are fairy tales, legends, fables, and children’s stories, as well as biographies, essays and contemporary literary criticism, travel writing, periodical work, and over 100 anthologies.
- Longman Archives and Archives of the Royal Literary Fund: these two microfilm collections provide access to papers from two of the most significant print-cultural institutions spanning the late 18th to the early 20th centuries. Together, these archives offer detailed information about accounting practices, contracts, print runs, profits (and losses) and the case files that anecdotally detail the circumstances of both major and minor writers in their own words.
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