The Lawrence Lande Collection of Canadiana in the Redpath Library of McGill University | A Bibliography; | Collected, Arranged, and Annotated by Lawrence Lande | With an Introduction by Edgar Andrew Collard
Montreal: The Lawrence Lande Foundation for Canadian Historical Research [designed by Robert Reid and printed by Ib Kristensen at the Richard Pennington Printing Office of McGill University Press], 1965. Tall Quarto, 36.9 x 28.6 cm. Finely bound in full brown oasis niger by Vianney Bélanger. Gilt lettering to the spine, along with five raised bands which extend in blind to the covers and terminate in blind-tooled fleurs-de-lys. The leather turn-ins, hinges, and endbands are tooled elaborately in gilt with a pattern of scrolling floral vines; blue Guarro doublures and free endpapers, printed with facsimiles of the earliest known medical report in Canada (Quebec, 1646) and a circular on the Irish Potato Famine (Halifax, 1847). Housed in a quarter leather chemise with marbled paper covered boards and matching slipcase. The front of the slipcase is decorated with a paper panel reproducing the frontispiece from Alexander Cluny’s The American Traveller (1769); the chemise spine is lettered in gilt. pp. [10] xi-xxxv, [1, plus ll. 1: section title] 3-112, [2, plus ll. 1: section title] 115-176, [ll. 1: section title] 177-262 [2, plus ll. 1: section title] 265-301 [7]; plus numerous insets. The section titles were printed on blue Guarro laid paper and embellished with elaborate frontispieces; they were tipped to the text-block and excluded from the pagination. Mild rubbing and wear to the extremities of the slipcase. The slipcase is split along one of its bottom edges and one of its upper edges is starting; but it remains generally sound and is easily repairable. There is very faint rubbing to the leather at the head and foot of the chemise spine, and a few barely perceptible blemishes to the book’s leather covers. Minor offsetting to the margins of the doublures and endpapers. Else fine. The text was set, according to a design by Robert Reid, in Monotype Bulmer by Fast Typesetters Limited, Montreal. It was printed letterpress by Ib Kristensen on Guarro Ingres paper specially made for this production. The text is supplemented and illustrated with a total of 175 sample pages, including frontispieces, title-pages, manuscript pages, broadsides, and maps, from a wide range of the materials surveyed. The facsimiles were printed offset in colour, and most were reproduced at their actual size. Many of the reproductions of maps and broadsides are fold-out insets. They are printed on a variety of papers. “This is the first book produced at the Richard Pennington Printing Office of McGill University Press. The design and typography are by Robert Reid. The text was printed letterpress by Ib Kristensen. The type face is Monotype Bulmer set by Fast Typesetters Limited, Montreal. The negatives and plates for the illustrations were made by Klaus Unterberger, and were printed by offset lithography at Bopar Limited, Montreal. The text paper was made to specification by L. Guarro Casas, Barcelona, and the insets are printed on hand made papers from J. Barcham Green, England, from Cartiera Milano, Amalfi, and on various mouldmades from Guarro. Copies numbered 1 to 75 have been hand bound in full leather by Vianney Bélanger at his bindery in Montreal. Copies numbered 76 to 950 have been cased in quarter leather by Russell-Rutter Company Inc. in New York. The slip-cases for the latter were made by Boxcraft Limited, Montreal.” From a total edition of 950 copies. This copy is number 38 of 75 copies comprising the deluxe state. Signed in pencil on the colophon page by Robert Reid and Ib Kristensen. Signed in ink by Lawrence Lande on the limitation page. Item #406
“At the time of my arrival at McGill, the crowning glory of bookmaking in Canada was still in the offing. Lawrence Lande had offered to give his collection of rare Canadiana to the McGill Library if they would produce a bibliography, which landed on me to work out. Having visited a fine papermaker in Spain earlier, I thought one of his mould-made sheets would be perfect for the book. Having used Oasis Niger for my books in Vancouver, I knew what wonderful leathers were available from Russell Bookcrafts in England. And a local Monotype house set the text in Bulmer, an eighteenth century English face that William Bulmer used with Bewick’s wood engravings. Perfect for Lande’s bibliography of rare old books. And there had to be copious illustrations of the wonderful title pages that abounded in the collection.
Every time Lawrence came to check on how things were going, I’d tell him more of my thoughts, and he would say ‘Wonderful… do it.’ Presuming Lande was paying for all this, I merrily went ahead, ordering paper from Spain, leather from England, the works. When the bills came in there was hell to pay, because it turned out the press was footing the bill. But what a beautiful book! Nothing like it will ever be produced in Canada again. I say that because it represented the last of the good old days of fine letterpress printing, and since there had never been any fine letterpress printing in Canada to begin with, that book is it.” — Robert Reid (quoted in Reid’s Leaves, 29-30)
“Generally speaking one can define Canadiana as anything relating to Canada. For me it includes books, pamphlets, broadsides, maps, manuscripts, and letters relating to Canada, mainly before Confederation. It also includes material on Western Canada up to the beginning of this century. […]
The first section, Basic Canadiana, includes fundamental works dealing with the history, geography, and economic resources of early Canada. It contains accounts of the French regime and of the exploration and discovery of our land as far west as the Prairies. Military campaigns, general legislation, religious institutions and their history (including material pertaining to the Clergy Reserves), and matter concerning early immigration, land, and elections have been categorized in this section. Here you will also find essays of substance, serious periodicals, the more classical travel accounts, the biographies, correspondence, and trial reports of public figures.
The second section, Canadiana on the West and the North, is made up of publications which fall into one or the other of these two geographic areas; this division of the collection is a very natural one, and the only material that might otherwise have appeared in the first or third section is an occasional poem (there are some by Louis Riel), or some natural history (such as a pamphlet on winter birds in the pamphlet series by the Manitoba Historical and Scientific Society). Works include exploration, settlement, and legislation on the West and the North, government reports and debates, material pertaining to the Arctic, the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Red River Settlement, and the Riel Rebellion, maps, immigrant and tourist guides, city directories, dictionaries of colourful slang and of Indian languages, as well as some non-Canadian subjects that were printed in western Canada.
The third section on Cultural and Supplementary Canadiana contains material which is of inestimable value as far as our national cultural life— in the fullest sense of the term— is concerned, as well as works which supplement the theme of the first section. Thus I have collected here poetry, drama, fiction, music, and philosophy. I have included the literary periodicals, juvenile literature, literary curiosities, and maps. Here also are the almanacs, text books, works on education, books on medicine, and agriculture, sermons, speeches, and articles on religion, such as liturgies. Finally, there are biographies of literary figures and public figures of lesser importance than those appearing in the first section, directories, fishing and hunting guides and sporting journals, the later travel accounts, records of shipwrecks, reports of criminal trials, and works that have no more direct relation to our country but that they were printed in eastern Canada. The later missionary journals, as well as reports of the Canadian political prisoners of the 1840’s in Van Dieman’s Land (Tasmania), are presented here. […]
There are many reasons for collecting rare books. The businessman may collect them as an investment— a buffer against inflation. Some collectors acquire rare editions for the satisfaction of possessing something that others do not have. With the present emphasis on education, there is a growing aura of respectability and erudition about books. There are some people who collect books for the purpose of study, usually students and specialists who enjoy collating their materials and writing about the rarities they have collected. There are other collectors who hope to build a private library that will live after them as a memorial to their name.
I cannot stress too strongly the necessity for private libraries to be working libraries, not merely collections which gather dust. I have had the satisfaction of having more than one graduate student working on a thesis in my library and I recommend the practice; for unless books are used, no matter how rare or valuable they are, they become simply ornaments of ostentation. In the words of Victor Hugo, ‘It is those books which a man possesses but does not read which constitute the most suspicious evidence against him.’”— Lawrence Lande, from the Foreword.
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