Exhibitions + More

Rare Chapbooks Featured in Exhibition

Posted on July 24, 2008 @11:03 am by kalsbeek

An exhibition of nineteenth-century English chapbooks is currently on display at UBC’s Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC). Chapbooks are booklets that were popular in rural areas and towns from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Literature of this sort was a miscellany, spanning jestbooks to histories of depraved criminals, medieval romances to song verses. Although once read by many, chapbooks are extremely delicate and ephemeral: being cheaply produced on low-quality paper and small in size, they were not made to survive over time. Many are illustrated with luridly coloured woodcuts. There are over three hundred in RBSC, many of which are part of the Arkley Collection of Early & Historical Children’s Literature. The exhibition demonstrates the collection’s value as a catalogue of the diverse themes covered by this type of print publication in nineteenth-century Britain.

The exhibition, created by English Master’s student Catherine Whitehead, will run from July 2008 to the end of November 2008. RBSC is open from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.

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Fine Lines: An exhibition on artist and writer, Heather Spears

Posted on April 25, 2005 @12:33 am by kalsbeek

UBC Rare Books and Special Collections and Koerner Library would like to announce the opening of: Fine Lines: An exhibition on artist and writer, Heather Spears, on now at Koerner Library. Curated by students from the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies with assistance from Rare Books and Special Collections, the exhibition features material recently donated to the library.

The exhibition showcases unpublished material documenting Heather Spears’ successful career as both a visual artist and a writer. A former UBC student, Heather Spears has published 11 collections of poetry (4 with drawings), 3 science fiction novels, 3 books of drawings, and 1 crime novel. Spears has won numerous awards for her artistic works including the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 1989 for The Word for Sand. Spears has also held over 75 solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally.

The exhibition runs through the end of August 2005 and is located in Humanities & Social Sciences, Floor 2, Koerner Library.

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Textbook Exhibition

Posted on April 17, 2004 @11:29 pm by kalsbeek

UBC Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) is pleased to present, Hitting the Books: the Early Canadian School Textbook Collection in UBC Rare Books and Special Collections. The RBSC textbook collection is one of the country’s largest, with books dating from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Some of the texts were printed in Britain or the United States of America, but the majority were printed in Canada.

This exhibition is a reconnaissance mission to provide a glimpse into some of the unique features of the collection. It looks at three early Canadian publishers and their works. It also provides some insight into the life of Canadian students from the late eighteenth through to the early twentieth century.

This exhibition is located in the display cases in Rare Books and Special Collections and will be on display from April to the end of August.

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