Rare Book Collection

Rare books and various other printed or manuscript materials covering a wide variety of areas are held in Archives & Special Collections. The collection numbers approximately 30,000 volumes and is constantly expanding.

The most remarkable assembly of rare materials is in the The Dysart Memorial Collection of Rare Books & Manuscripts: it includes nine manuscripts, sixteen incunabula, twenty-six 16th century imprints, and some outstanding examples of 19th/20th century fine press printing.

The Saint John's College Rare Book Collection is housed in the Rare Book Vault, & contains, among many fine bibles, religious and missionary texts, one of only five known copies of Tudeschi's ca. 1438 manuscript Lectura in Decretales.

Two unique Slavic manuscripts, the early 15th century Pomianyk of Horodyshche & the 18th century Psalterium Winnipegense Cyrillicum, were donated by Professor Rudnickij.

Further subject strengths of the Rare Book Collection are in Canadiana, particularly in Canadian Prairie literature, with, among others, the Ralph Connor, Frederick Philip Grove, and Dorothy Livesay collections. Works on the social history, immigration, and agricultural development of western Canada, early Arctic exploration, and the search for the North-West Passage, including first editions of John Palliser, Alexander Mackenzie, Henry Youle Hind, John Franklin, James Cook, John J. Bigsby, George Heriot and scores of other explorers, pioneers, and settlers, are also well represented in the collections.

Other major holdings include early native language syllabics, church history and philosophy, Bibles, including the 1611 King James Bible, English literature with extensive Swift, Rudyard Kipling and Earnest Hemmingway clusters, and some early 20th century children's literature.

Several private libraries of outstanding research value have been donated to the University of Manitoba Libraries in recent years and have been largely incorporated into the rare book collection.