Recent acquisitions

Black History Month featured fonds: Obsidian Theatre Company

Founded in February 2000, Obsidian Theatre Company is a leading black theatre companies in Canada. As a producer of black theatre and community advocate, the company has endeavoured to produce plays, develop playwrights and train emerging theatre professionals. Their mission statement focuses on the exploration, development, and production of the black voice.
The founding board included [...]

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Recent Acquisition: Speculations of the Uses of Sewage

Here is a recent aquisition to York University's Special Collections: a pamphlet from 1847 proposing various strategies of dealing with, ahem, night soil in cities. 
This pamphlet may be of interest to students studying city planning, environmental studies, water quality, public health, sanitation, and the living conditions of the working class in nineteenth century England.
The pamphlet [...]

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Recent Acquisition: The Illustrated Family Journal

Here is a recent aquisition to York University's Special Collections: a bound volume of The Illustrated Family Journal from 1845.
Featuring numerous engraved illustrations and serialized stories to be read aloud in communal settings, The Illustrated Family Journal is a good example of popular literary periodicals sold for general consumption by the middle class. 
This volume of 21 issues [...]

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Recent Acquistion: Historical studies of Roma Travellers in Britain

Here is a recent aquisition to York University's Special Collections: a 1831 publication by James Crabb regarding the Roma and Traveller communities of Britain. The Gipsies' advocate  is an excellent example of a body of literature dedicated to the 'problem' of itinerant groups in nineteenth century Britain and efforts to reintegrate these communities into [...]

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Recent Acquisitions: Industrial Britain and reform movements

Here are a selection of recent acquisitions to York University's Special Collections related to Industrial Britain and social reform movements.
Octavia Hill's Homes of the London Poor is a reprint of a series of articles originally published in the Fortnightly review and Macmillan's magazine. Published in 1875 by Macmillan, Hill's observations of the living environment of London's [...]

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New Acquisition : Courtesy of an Unknown Donor

Earlier this summer, one of the Scott Library's staff found a number of items that were not part of the libraries collections, or indeed, any branches'.  One can only surmise that this was a anonymous donation: and what a donation!
The package included two bound collections of colour plates of late 19thC fashion models, most culled [...]

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