The English Collection includes first and special editions of English literature, history and many other topics, from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Fifteenth-century books are held in the Incunabula Collection.
Among the writers well represented are Milton, Spenser, Donne, Dryden, Pope, Defoe, Sterne, Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, the Brownings, Morris, Swinburne, Bridges, Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontes, Eliot, and many others.
More about the Turnbull Library's Special Printed Collections
More about the Milton Collection
Further editions and supporting literature are held in the Alexander Turnbull Library General Collection.
The Library’s Wellington building redevelopment
The Library building in Wellington is closed for redevelopment, and due to reopen in early 2012. During the relocation period, some collections will be available in two temporary locations: Archives New Zealand and a reading room at 77 Thorndon Quay, Wellington.
More about collection access through the Wellington building redevelopment period
Access items in this collection
This collection is currently closed, as we prepare to move it to Archives New Zealand for access through the building redevelopment period. It will reopen at Archives New Zealand on 25 February 2010.
A growing number of items in the collection are listed on the National Library Catalogue.
Other forms of access include:
- Card catalogue - provides access to items catalogued before 1963.
- Microfiche catalogue - provides partial access up to 1984.
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Printed sources - Early imprints in New Zealand libraries: a finding list of books printed before 1801 held in libraries in the Wellington region, 1995; A descriptive catalogue of the Milton collection in the Alexander Turnbull Library by Kathleen Coleridge, 1980.
Contact the Alexander Turnbull Library for help with your search.
You can also search the British Library's English Short Title Catalogue by library name 'Alexander Turnbull Library' to find descriptions of items in the Special Printed Collections.
English Short Title Catalogue - British Library website
Borrow items in this collection
Original items from this collection cannot be borrowed.
Get copies from items in this collection
You can order digital photographs and microfilm copies of items in this collection.
Photocopies are possible under certain circumstances, depending upon the physical condition of the item. Photocopies are made by Library staff.
More about copyright and usage
Get help
We can answer your enquiries in person, by letter, phone or email.
Image
'Seleucides Nigricans (Shaw). Twelve-wired bird of paradise' .Hand-coloured lithograph in vol. 1 of R. Bowdler Sharpe, Monograph of the Paradiseidae or birds of paradise, and Ptilonorhynchidae, of bower-birds (London: Henry Sotheran & Co, 1891-1898).
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