The Arkley Collection of Early & Historical Children’s Literature is one of four collections related to children’s books in UBC’s Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC). Items in the collection are drawn from works of American, British and Canadian children’s literature from 1799-1939. Important works within the collection include Canadian first editions, early editions of children’s classics, and works by celebrated illustrators. While there is a separate collection in RBSC devoted to exclusively to Alice in Wonderland (the Alice 100 Collection), the Arkley Collection also includes a large amount of material by and about Lewis Carroll. Although some items may be purchased for the collection as they become available, the Arkley Collection relies on gifts in order to grow.
The 1909 Illustrated Edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales was acquired for the Arkley Collection in honour of Sheila Egoff, an internationally known author, critic and professor with special ties to UBC. Egoff attended the University of Toronto while working in the children’s department at the Toronto Public Library in the 1940s, earning a degree in Library Sciences. Her critically acclaimed text, The Republic of Childhood (1967), is significant in academic circles as the first scholarly treatment of children’s literature. In 1961 Egoff became a professor at UBC, contributing to the founding of the graduate program in library studies and later becoming the first tenured professor with a specialty in children’s literature. Egoff retired in 1983 but continued to catalogue the Arkley Collection for RBSC until her death in 2005.
References:
http://guides.library.ubc.ca/historicalchildrensliterature/arkley
http://www.bcbookprizes.ca/about/details/sheila-a-egoff-childrens-literature-prize/