‘At the recent Feast Service, we were delighted to receive three books for our Rare Books Room from Rob Smith, OPC President. Whilst we are very proud of some of the wonderful old works we hold, it is exciting to see the collection continue to develop and to recognise the achievements of more recent OPs. We are very grateful to the OPC for their generosity. The books are:
Zoological Articles contributed to the “Encyclopaedia Britannica” by E. Ray Lankester (1857-64). The book is rather beautiful; black bound, it has a golden octopus printed on the cover. It contains numerous woodblock illustrations, making it perfect for our February display. We have added our copy of the Vanity Fair illustration of him by Spy, something which is attracting a lot of interest from the boys. We hope visitors on 27 February will enjoy seeing it.
The second is Abd-Er-Rhaman in Paradise by Jules Tellier, translated by Brian Rhys with wonderful woodblock illustrations by Paul Nash (1903-06). This tells of Abd-Er-Rhaman’s journeys through Heaven and the Gardens of Delight before he realises there is more to life than pleasure.
The last is The Look and Learn Book of the Trigan Empire (1973) by Don Lawrence (1942-46), a book which may raise an eyebrow. Nick Russell (1973-77) kindly forwarded an article discussing Don’s great work, The Trigan Empire. Originally published during the 1960’s as a double-page episode in boy’s magazine Ranger, it was so successful that the publisher brought out this hard-backed volume. Although not yet very valuable, this is already quite rare and we were lucky to find a copy. I wonder if any OPs remember reading it?‘
Hillary Cummings
Librarian, the Kayton Library