This exhibition catalogue introduces historic photographs of Indigenous peoples of Western Canada from a collection housed at the University of Alberta’s Bruce Peel Special Collections. The publication focuses on the ancestors represented in the collection and how their images continue to generate stories and meanings in the present. The selected photographs contribute to a richer, deeper understanding of the past. There is strength, character, persistence, determina... [READ MORE]

This exhibition catalogue shows nearly 100 highlights of an extraordinary collection of rare books and print ephemera about angling. Featuring the books of a single collector, Bruce P. Dancik, who is an angler-collector in the mould of Roderick Haig-Brown, the catalogue includes titles that have contributed significantly to the development of angling as a sport and as a philosophy. Many books in the collection are titles of extreme rarity, often illustrated with woodcuts, ... [READ MORE]

This exhibition catalogue features over 100 highlights of a large and extraordinary collection of Canadian little magazines and Canadian small press and micro-press imprints assembled by David McKnight. As a determined collector/librarian imbued with remarkable passion and resolve, McKnight invested 30 years developing a private collection that has considerable potential for literary research in the areas of Canadian Modernist poetry, avant-garde literature, and the produc... [READ MORE]

Like the popes in Rome, the Prince-Bishops of Salzburg ruled over substantial territories as secular princes. Salt, Sword, and Crozier highlights their dual authority—the princely sword and the bishop’s staff or crozier—and the basis of their economic power in their control of natural resources such as salt. The exhibition showcases books from the Salzburg prince-bishop’s seminary library that were printed from the fifteenth through the early-ninete... [READ MORE]

Over the course of fifty years, distinguished Staff Sergeant (retired) of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Alert Henry (Al) Lund amassed the largest ever collection of Mountie books, magazines, and comics. From a collection of thousands, he selected approximately one hundred of his favourites for the exhibition and catalogue. In the books, magazines, and comics, the artists and illustrators have captured the image of the Mountie in a variety of styles and have often depi... [READ MORE]

George Baxter (1804-1867) was a pioneer in advancing the art of colour printing. A perfectionist, Baxter not only engraved but also examined the prints as they were produced, often providing touch-ups by hand. Baxter's process was, in the end, uneconomical, and he died bankrupt, but no one did more to bring vivid artworks within financial reach of every household, or leave a more colourful legacy for generations of admiring collectors of Victoriana. His oil-coloured prints... [READ MORE]

This exhibition catalogue celebrates the life and work of avant garde poet and playwright Wilfred Watson. Drawing on the rich collection of letters, notebooks, manuscripts and sketchbooks in the University of Alberta Archives’ Wilfred Watson Fonds, this exhibition traces Watson’s development from his early encounters with the work of T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Emily Carr to his decades-long engagement with the writing of Gabriel Marcel, Wyndham Lewis, and Mar... [READ MORE]

This exhibition catalogue traces more than one hundred years of Cantonese opera in Edmonton within the changing dynamics of the Chinese community. It tells a story of life experiences on the Prairies by highlighting the inextricable relationship between Cantonese opera and the Edmonton Chinese community as this cultural practice moves deftly through historical periods between 1890 and 2009. This period has been selected to coincide with the arrival of the first Chinese in ... [READ MORE]

Throughout its history, movable elements in books, commonly called pop-ups, have been used to educate, entertain, and inspire both children and adults. "Wow, open this!" looks at the art and science of moveable elements incorporated into books. Books that delight children with that 'wow' moment, as a scene comes to life in their hands, were first used in scholarly works to help illustrate a vast array of topics such as geometry, architecture, medical and natural ... [READ MORE]

The Linda Miron Distad Culinaria Collection, housed at the University of Alberta Libraries, currently consists of more than 3,000 food-related texts from around the world, spanning several centuries. Collecting Culinaria accompanies an exhibit at the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library featuring cookbooks and household guides from the collection, as well as other selected items from the Library's holdings. The catalogue highlights some of the collection's most intriguin... [READ MORE]

Floyd Sully, a Canadian collector fascinated by practical yet beautiful representations of China, laboured over 15 years to assemble this beautiful collection focused on maps, documentary paintings, and illustrated texts. It features works produced inside China and abroad that were created for both Chinese and Western viewers. This publication explores important dimensions of Chinese visual culture and offers a diverse and telling set of perspectives on the Chinese world a... [READ MORE]

This catalogue introduces the work of Miriam Green Ellis (1879-1964), pioneer woman journalist of Western Canada. Never one to follow a typical path, she steered clear of the "women's page" and society columns; her livelihood was the agricultural beat. Ellis's daring journey by river steamer from Edmonton to Aklavik in 1922-documented with a diary, travelogue, photographs and slides-launched and illustrated her subsequent "Land of the Midnight Sun" lect... [READ MORE]

The Spacious Margin: Eighteenth-Century Printed Books and the Traces of their Readers draws from the holdings of the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library at the University of Alberta, presenting an array of readerly interactions with books in the form of annotations, improvements, corrections, ornamentation, and suggestive wear-and-tear. In this scholarly catalogue, Brown and Considine describe and contextualize the notable physical traces of readership and circulation f... [READ MORE]

The Countess Mountbatten's Own Legion of Frontiersmen was conceived and organized in 1905 as a body of frontier sentinels, and they first published The Frontiersman's Pocket-Book in 1909 as their training and survival manual. Long out-of-print, copies command steep prices in the antiquarian book market. This facsimile edition of the Pocket-Book features documents, photographs, and maps drawn from the University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Special Collections Library's Sir Samu... [READ MORE]

Cowboy, conservationist, and curator Martin S. Garretson was widely considered one of the foremost experts on the natural history of the buffalo as well as one of the preeminent advocates for the preservation of the North American bison for several decades during the early twentieth century. His personal mission to save the buffalo from imminent extinction and to inform the American public of the important role the buffalo played in North American history resulted in Garre... [READ MORE]

Settlement and urbanization of the Canadian Northwest coincided with the greatest popularity of the postcard. Settlement, along with the building of a transcontinental railway and the industrialization of central Canada, were the three pillars of the National Policy in the years following Confederation. These themes also were the subject of thousands of images preserved in postcards. By the first decade of the 20th century, many cities, towns, and villages were home to pho... [READ MORE]

"This catalogue presents examples of first editions of all the English-language titles that have won Canada's prestigious Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction (GGs) from its inception to the present. If we look at the list as a whole, it soon becomes apparent that it represents most of the great Canadian authors of the twentieth century. This collection thus gives a fascinating perspective on the history of publishing and printing in Canada in the twentieth c... [READ MORE]

Published to accompany a 2010 exhibit at the University of Alberta's Cameron Library, this unique double catalogue showcases 25 pieces of cartographic artwork by Matthew Rangel and Michael Coulis. In their own way, each artist pushes the aesthetic and intellectual conventions of mapmaking "beyond the neatline"- exploring the connection between physical journeys and inner landscapes, place and personhood, geography and memory. Curated by University of Alberta Map ... [READ MORE]

In June of 2010, the University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Special Collections Library mounted an exhibit of documents, photographs, artifacts, and ephemera which provided significant insight into Chinese pioneer life on the Canadian Prairies. Written by exhibit curator Brian Evans, the accompanying exhibit catalogue chronicles the stories of these immigrants as they welcomed new opportunities, struggled with racism, and became integral parts of the communities in which they ... [READ MORE]

Meaning "provided with marginal annotations," marginated neatly describes the items featured in this extensively researched catalogue. From presentation inscriptions to readers' commentaries to children's doodles, the variety of annotations that appear in these 17th-century books gives unique insight into the lives of their readers-and, indeed, into the lives of the books, as they passed from owner to owner. This catalogue was published to accompany a 2010 exhibi... [READ MORE]