Happy New Year! And what better way to begin 2014 than by looking at some of the outstanding donations the Fisher received in 2012, which is the focus of the latest issue of The Halcyon, the newsletter of the Friends of the Fisher Library.

The Fisher's Director, Anne Dondertman, highlights most of the major gifts-in-kind donations from 2012 in her four-page write-up. She points to a number of significant donations from the almost one hundred individual donors that augment the Fisher's main collection strengths: fine and early printed books, philosophy and theology, history of science and medicine, modern European literature, Canadian literature and Canadiana, and art and illustration and graphic material. Highlights include Jane and Michael Millgate's collection of the work of Thomas Hardy (which receives a comphrehensive examination by the new Head of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Deborah Whiteman), a magnificent six-volume set of F.O. Morris's A History of British Birds donated by Roger Silverthorne which features almost four hundred hand-coloured plates, a heavily annotated copy of Duns Scotus's Sententiarum that shows the response to the text by actual scholars of the day, and more than twelve hundred books donated by the estate of Jean Whiffen, including large additions to both the Fisher's Graham Greene and Lewis Carroll collections. Another highlight is an entire Bible copied by hand in thirty-three journals by Marjorie Griffin Armour in 1938 and 1939 in Binbrook Township, Ontario. The offer of a $25 prize was an inducement during the depression, and Marjorie, then in her early teens, accomplished the task in just under a year by averaging three pages a day.

Read about these and other donations, including the 2012 manuscript gifts, by clicking on this link, or visiting The Halcyon page on the web site. Or come to the Fisher to pick up a printed copy of the newsletter. And don't forget to become a Friend of the Fisher!

Latest issue of The Halcyon now available