Launch Event for the Marseille Middleton Holloway Collection

speccoll
Friday 27 October 2017

A special event to mark the gift of the Marseille Middleton Holloway Collection was held on 24th October 2017. We were thrilled to be able to welcome 13 of Holloway’s descendants to the University Library’s Napier Reading Room where they saw on display the albums and family papers which they had presented to the University, alongside other items from our Special Collections.

Principal of the University, Professor Sally Mapstone, welcomed the Marriage family and thanked them for their generous donation, acknowledging the long association between the Williams, Marriage and Melvin families and the University. Here she is being shown the album of historical autograph letters (ms39022/1) by Mrs Caroline Marriage and her two sisters.

Robert Crawford, Wardlaw Professor in the School of English, spoke about the letters of Robert Burns to be found within the Literary album (ms39022/2) and explained the background to one of them, before reading a letter and some Burns poems.

The album of historical autograph letters begins with two items from the reign of Elizabeth I. Both albums also contain engravings and other images of the featured authors on many of the facing pages, opposite the letters.

We were particularly pleased to welcome some of our MLitt students from the Shakespeare and Renaissance Literary Culture course, who have been set the transcription of a letter from the first album as a Palaeography assignment. They had the unique opportunity of talking with the donors about the provenance of the albums they are researching.

Members of the family were able to look at the albums again

The family papers which were presented along with the two albums contain a wide variety of correspondence, artwork, certificates and notes about the letters, their collectors and the wider family.

Dr Julia Prest of Modern Languages looking at the exhibition panel featuring Beethoven’s letter to Thomas Broadwood about the presentation of a piano in 1818.

The exhibition features letters by, and images of, Francois I of France, Elizabeth I, Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, Robert Burns, Horace Walpole, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Nelson, Lord Byron, Beethoven and Wordsworth. It is open from 0930-1630 Monday to Friday in Martyrs Kirk, North Street, and runs until the end of the year.

The University of St Andrews news article about the collection can be read here.

Photographs courtesy of Stuart Nicol Photography, 2017 ©

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5 thoughts on "Launch Event for the Marseille Middleton Holloway Collection"

  • Recent Acquisition – Letter from Robert Burns | Echoes from the Vault
    Thursday 25 January 2018, 10.48am

    […] item, seen below, is part of the Marseille Middleton Holloway Collection of letters and autographs, presented to the Library last […]

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  • Beethoven – Two men and a fortepiano | Echoes from the Vault
    Friday 2 February 2018, 9.27am

    […] in anticipation of the gift of a six-octave fortepiano. The letter is one of the highlights of the Marseille Middleton Holloway collection, recently entrusted to the University.  The letter is written in French, in Beethoven’s famously […]

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  • Admiral Horatio Nelson and his ‘Dearest only true friend’ | Echoes from the Vault
    Wednesday 4 April 2018, 4.20pm

    […] as the greatest officer in the history of the Royal Navy.  The letters are highlights of the Marseille Middleton Holloway collection, recently entrusted to the […]

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  • Creating facsimiles of the Marseille Middleton Holloway Albums | Echoes from the Vault
    Friday 20 July 2018, 2.01pm

    […] 2017 the University of St Andrews Library was privileged to be entrusted with two albums containing letters and autographs from some of the most illustrious names in history, art and […]

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  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘Fancy in Nubibus’, 1817 | Echoes from the Vault
    Wednesday 22 August 2018, 12.31pm

    […] and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). The document is one of the highlights of the Marseille Middleton Holloway collection, recently entrusted to the […]

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