Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
The history of the Isle of Wight
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
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Manuscripts
This collection contains the papers of English art historian Katharine Ada Esdaile (1881-1950), with the bulk of the materials relating to her research and writings on British monumental sculpture, sculptors, and church monuments from the medieval period to 19th century. Material types include personal writings, diaries, correspondence, business papers, family papers and photographs, research files and research notebooks, and miscellaneous published and unpublished materials. Notably the collection includes more than 600 chiefly pre-World War II visitor booklets and pamphlets produced locally by British churches and approximately 3500 photographs taken or collected by Esdaile of sculpture, often funerary monuments in English churches, ranging from large churches like Westminster Abbey to small rural parishes. This collection provides a resource for viewpoints on monumental sculpture in the early 20th century (for instance as represented in book reviews by Esdaile) and for information about Esdaile's experience as a woman art historian in the early 20th century. Given the broadness of Esdaile's scope, from medieval to 19th century British monumental sculpture, the collection is less useful for specific information about monuments or sculptors. In addition, many of Esdaile's attributions in her notes appear to have been based primarily on her own instincts and do not have citations. Many of Esdaile's notes are handwritten on small scraps of paper or are fragments, sometimes making the information difficult to parse. The collection is chiefly Esdaile's files, but the dates on some items (such as post-1950 booklets) indicate the collection was added to and used after her death, presumably by her son Edmund Esdaile, who also made notes on items in the collection and appears to have done the preliminary organization of the papers after Esdaile's death.
mssEsdaile
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Rare Books
This collection contains nearly 600 monographs published by the British publishing firm A & C Black from the late 1800s through the 1950s (bulk 1901-1936). Many of the volumes were published as part of the firm's successful "Colour Books" series and contain color plates and pictorial cloth bindings. The titles in the collection cover a variety of subjects including travel in Great Britain and abroad, antiquities, art, history of various civilizations, social life and customs of various cultures, natural history, literary classics and other literature (especially juvenile), gardening, military art and science, recreation, and transportation. Many of the firm's early 20th century series are represented by items in the collection, including the 20 shilling series; 7s 6d series; Artist's sketch book series; the "Peeps" series including Peeps at Many Lands; Beautiful Britain; Black's Popular Series of Colour Books; and Black's Water-Colour series. The collection also includes two non-A & C Black imprints by William Collins Sons and Co. and J.M. Dent.
499150:292