New Acquisition: The Neil Rhodes Collection

In January this year a significant donation of books joined our collections here in St Andrews: the Neil Rhodes Collection, a collection of English renaissance and related literature. The books were donated by Emeritus Professor Neil Rhodes, many bearing his bookplate; designed and engraved by Andy English in Ely they were a Christmas present from his wife, Shirley McKay in 2018.

Although Rhodes already had a couple of 17^th century works (a collection of Ben Jonson plays from the 1640 folio and the 1628 edition of Raleigh’s The historie of the World), his collection was formally started in 2018 with the purchase of the first folio edition of Spenser from the bookseller Sokol Books (Rhodes deciding that this was a more appealing way to use his money than putting it into an ISA!). The collection was deliberately put together to complement the University of St Andrews’ holdings, Rhodes having decided early on that he would like to leave the collection to the University, where he spent almost his entire career.

The overall shape of the collection, as described by Rhodes, is broadly speaking:

classical and European-language texts as sources and influence (sixteenth century); early editions of English Renaissance literature (seventeenth century); the formation of an idea of the English Renaissance – the literature of ‘the last age’– in literary history, commentary, anthologisation, and adaptation (eighteenth century).

The collection also contains some modern material. Wanting to develop the illustrated editions of the collection Rhodes purchased five plays produced in the Classics Illustrated series. The forerunner of the modern graphic novel, these illustrated works, primarily intended for young readers, provide an opportunity to study the relationship between word and image.

Some of the modern publications aim to contextualise the primary texts at the core of the collection. Thus we find not only library exhibition catalogues, but also the recent publication Inscription: the journal of material text, an avant-garde production devoted to the material text, accompanied by various supplements and enclosures. Despite its untraditional style (for example, issue 1 has a layout which requires the book to be rotated through 180 degrees in order for it be read, with two beginnings and an ending at the centre), it does contain traditional scholarship on topics such as provenance and book history.

Alongside the books Rhodes provided a 270-page catalogue to his collection, complete with introduction. Thanks to this, and the use of AI, we were able to extract the bibliographic information and use it to create very basic records in Alma, our Library Management System, in a matter of days. Whilst this gives online access to the Rhodes Collection for anyone searching for specific authors or titles, the records don’t reveal the wealth of information currently undocumented, such as bindings, former owners, and annotations.

The Rhodes Collection consists of some 346 titles, and whilst there is no fixed amount of time it would take to catalogue these fully (how long is a piece of string?), if a qualified rare books cataloguer spent only 2 hours on each title, it would take them roughly five months to catalogue the collection. Cataloguing a rare book to the Descriptive Cataloguing of Rare Materials (Books) standard used here at St Andrews involves more than downloading a record (assuming one exists). For instance, pagination and signatures have to be checked, the binding and provenance described (how good are your palaeography skills for deciphering that inscription?), and printers and publishers identified. Authority work also needs to be undertaken, so that names and subjects have the correct controlled headings to ensure the book is fully discoverable. Condition reporting also needs to be undertaken, describing accurately the physical state of the book. This is just some of the work which goes into creating a catalogue record for a rare book.

This is the stage we want to get to, with each book in the Rhodes Collection having a full DCRM(B) level catalogue record. But for now, having the collection discoverable via basic records is a good place to be in. Some items have already been used for teaching, and hopefully more will be soon.

Briony Harding
Acting Rare Books Librarian