83. The Mark Samuels Lasner Collection

The Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library, occupies a large reading room and two offices in a quiet corner of the Morris Library. (No, not William Morris.) The collection is associated with the Special Collections Department, and focuses on British literature and art of the period 1850 to 1900, with an emphasis on the Pre-Raphaelites and on the writers and illustrators of the 1890s. Its holdings comprise 9,000 first and other editions, including signed and association copies, manuscripts, letters, works on paper and ephemera. The collection is particularly strong in Aubrey Beardsley and Max Beerbohm material.

Part of the Michael Field books in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library, 2013

Ricketts and Shannon are well represented, for example by a series of lithographs, and a few dedication copies of Vale Press books. The Michael Field works include, of course, copies of the four plays that Ricketts published at his private press, but the collection can also boast of rarer books, such as the plays that Michael Field published anonymously, and partly posthumously, between 1905 and 1918, and for which Ricketts provided a vignette: Borgia, Queen Mariamne, Deirdre, and others.

The Life of Benvenuto Cellini (two volumes, Vale Press, 1900) [Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library]

The two-volume edition of The Life of Benvenuto Cellini was published by the Vale Press in 1900. Ricketts dedicated a copy to his friend Cecil Lewis in July 1922: 'To C. Lewis from his Friend C Ricketts'. 

Charles Ricketts, 'The Moon-Horned Io', drawing for Oscar Wilde, The Sphinx (Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library)

One of the treasures that I had the opportunity to study during my visit to Delaware was a drawing for Oscar Wilde's The Sphinx (1894), 'The Moon-Horned Io'. On the same table I had a copy of the book, along with a copy of de deluxe edition, of which only 25 copies have been printed. It shows how rich this collection is. 

Mark Samuels Lasner stimulates the use of his collection - at the time of my visit many Pre-Raphaelite items were on loan to the exhibition in the National Gallery of Art in Washington - and he, and his assistent Ashley Rye, are welcoming, hospitable, and helpful. Access to the collection is available by appointment. Recommended.