About This Collection
Norman Colbeck was a bookseller who traded from Bournemouth on the south coast of England. Colbeck emigrated to Canada in 1967 where, at UBC Library, he prepared a two-volume catalogue of his collection.
The collection includes material written by and about English and Anglo-Irish poets and essayists of the Romantic, Victorian and Edwardian periods (nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). More than 450 authors of these periods are represented in more than 13,000 volumes. The collection also contains a vast number of presentation and association copies, all preserved in their original state as acquired by Mr. Colbeck over more than 40 years. Significant items include many first editions, special editions, limited editions, and titles of significance in the history of printing (by the Lee Priory, Pickering, Kelmscott, and Cuala Presses), publications of book collectors’ clubs (Sette of Odd Volumes), and little magazines.
The collection is strong in minor writers of the period. Unique items include many rare first editions, special editions, limited editions, association and presentation copies, items significant to the history of printing (by Lee, Priory, Pickering, Kelmscott, and Cuala presses) and publications of the book collectors' club Sette of Odd Volumes.
Want more information about Norman Colbeck? Check out these items held in the UBC Collection:
Ian Fletcher. "The Colbeck Collection." English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 32.2 (1989): 223-226. Project MUSE. Information about the Colbeck Collection; requires a UBC CWL
Fredeman, William E. Norman Colbeck., 1999. Biography from the Gale Literature Resource Centre; requires a UBC CWL
Featured Materials
Book of fifty drawings. by Call Number: PR10.T2 B3 1897 B6Publication Date: 1897With an iconography by Aymer Vallance.
Leonard Smithers, 1897.
4to, bright red cloth, with cover drawing in gilt by Beardsley, t.e.g., others trimmed. Limited to 500 copies.
Vagrant Verses by Call Number: PR10.Q1 G5 1886Publication Date: 1886Sage green cloth, gilt-lettered spine and upper side, all edges uncut, dark blue end-papers.
Inscribed on half-title is Katharine Tynan's autograph: "Miss Christina Rossetti, from a loving disciple, Jan. 2nd 1886." Christina Rossetti has marked "disciple" with an asterisk, and noted below in pencil: "Katharine Tynan."
This valuable copy is mentioned by Christina Rossetti in her letter of 11 January 1886 (Family Letters, New York: Scribner's, 1980, p. 149). After several sentences about Miss Tynan she continues: "She had given me a volume of Vagrant Verse by her friend Miss Rosa Mulholland, but I rate higher K.T.'s own muse."
The Riddle, a pleasant pastoral comedy... by Call Number: PR10.S1 R3 1895 R5Publication Date: 1895The Riddle: A Pleasant Pastoral Comedy, adapted from "The Wife of Bath's Tale" as it is set forth in the Works of Master Geoffrey Chaucer.
Presented at Otterspool on Midsummer's Eve, 1895.
Another copy of First Edition, No. 78 of 400 copies.
This is the copy the author sent to his sister, inscribed: "Alice, with my love, Walter. June 1895."
Later in the Esher Library, and preserved in the familiar light brown linen case gilt-lettered up spine, but bookplate is not present.
The Night by Call Number: PR10.S5 H6 1900 N5Publication Date: 1900With a frontispiece in Photogravure
by Laurence Housman.
Square 8vo, pale blue linen with coloured design on upper side, all edges uncut. A collection of nine short plays.
The prince's progress, and other poems by Call Number: PR5237 .P7 1866Publication Date: 1866With two designs by D.G. Rossetti.
Uniform size with Goblin Market, smooth green linen with a different design by D. G. Rossetti, gilt-stamped on spine and both sides, all edges uncut, light brown end-papers with binder's ticket of Burn
Unlike Goblin Market this book was provided with a half-title, on which the artist has inscribed: "To Mrs. J. H. Trist with kind regards D G Rossetti, 1866."
The house of life by Call Number: PR10.N8 R6 1894Publication Date: 1894Image taken from page 2 of work.
Limited to 500 copies on French handmade paper.
There are three borders and 114 engraved initials by B.G. Goodhue. With Edmund Gosse's bookplate and inscribed on end-paper: "For Mr. Edmund Gosse, a book-lover, with the esteem and compliments of F.H. Day, 22 May, 1894."
Swinburne's Poems and Ballads: A Criticism by Call Number: PR10.N9 R6 1866Publication Date: 1866Image taken from page 50.
Green vertically ribbed cloth, spine gilt, top and lower edges uncut, toned pale yellow end-papers, eight leaves of adverts at end paginated to ten and then again to six.
First edition of the author's first book, inscribed "With the author's compliments."
The margins of page 50 and the next (shown above) have four clever thumb-nail sketches of Morris, D.G. Rossetti and Burne-Jones.
Five Poems by Call Number: PR10.U7 S5 1928Publication Date: 1928Dark blue rough buckram (8 x 11") gilt-lettered up spine and in three lines on upper side, edges uncut, in printed dust-jacket.
No. 268 of only 275 printed on Van Gelder handmade paper at the Cambridge University Press, each numbered and signed by the author. No ordinary edition was published.
Times broadsheets... by Call Number: PR10.S1 R3 T5Publication Date: [1915]"The Times" Broadsheets for Soldiers and Sailors: Selected Passages from Great English Writers.
[Made by Sir Walter Raleigh]
A complete set of the first 72 leaflets, size 8 x 10", mostly printed on one side only on wove paper. The 12 series complete, each six in original printed pictorial envelope, on which Sir Walter Raleigh's name appears as editor.
Raleigh writes in his letter to Evan Charteris, 17 August 1915 [Letters, 1926, Vol. 2, p. 440] "Also I am preparing 'broadsheets' for the trenches, to be worked by the Times. It's better fun than I knew. I wish you would send references of anything that occurs to you, from bits of the Book of Job to accounts of a prize fight.... So, for a time at least, I've got a job."
Archival Materials
- Norman Colbeck fondsThe fonds contains correspondence, notebooks, and other literary manuscripts of many of the authors represented in the Colbeck Book Collection. The fonds also contains records generated by Colbeck, through his activities as a book dealer and collector, and in the process of cataloguing his collection for UBC. Finally, the fonds contains records created by the Librarian in charge of the Colbeck collection, generated in the process of cataloguing and maintaining that collection.
Notable Serials
The Yellow Book: An Illustrated QuarterlyCall Number: AP4 .Y4Publication Date: v.3(1894:Oct.)-v.13(1897:Apr.)Published by Elkin Matthews & John Lane, 1894.
Uniform small 4to, 6 1/4 x 8", bright yellow cloth with lettering and overall cover designs initially by Aubrey Beardsley, and from volume 6 onwards by other various artists. Contributors to Volume 1: Henry James; Richard Le Gallienne; Max Beerbohm; Arthur Christopher Benson; Ella D'Arcy; William Watson; George Stainsbury; Arthur Symons; Henry Harland; Edmund Gosse; Fred M. Simpson; Feorge Egerton; Arthur Waugh; Hubert Crackanthorpe; John Davidson; Richard Garnett; John Oliver Hobbs; George Moore.
The Savoy: An Illustrated Monthly by Publication Date: No. 1, January 1896 - No. 8 (and last), December 1896Leonard Smithers, 1896.
From No. 3 onwards the title-pages read "An Illustrated Monthly." A set of the eight parts as issued by the publisher in three volumes 4to, 7 3/4 x 10 1/2:, in blue cloth with an elaborate design by Aubrey Beardsley on upper sides dated 1896, lower sides and spines also gilt-designed by him, spines lettered in nine lines with two short rules, all edges uncut. Heraldic bookplates of Cyril Dendall Butler.
Colocating This Collection
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Indexes, Catalogues, and Bibliographies in Print
Colbeck, Norman. A Bookman’s Catalogue: The Norman Colbeck Collection of Nineteenth-Century and Edwardian Poetry and Belles-Lettres in the Special Collections of the University of British Columbia. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1987.
Full text available online with UBC CWL login
Author Search
Field, Michael (pseud. for Katherine Bradley & Edith Cooper)
Palgrave, Francis Turner, 1824-1897
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 1861-1922
Rossetti, Christina Georgina, 1860-1894
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828-1882
Rossetti, William Michael, 1829-1919
Shaw, George Bernard,1856-1950
Sitwell, Dame Edith, 1887-1964
Whistler, James Abbott McNeil, 1834-1903
Yeats, William Butler, 1865-1939
Publisher Search
Cuala Press , Formerly Dun Emer Press
Subject Headings
English Literature--19th Century
English Literature--20th Century
Ephemera
Pamphlets in the Norman Colbeck Collection
Written by Norman Colbeck