Nichol Smith Collection

Key items in the collection

Highlights from this collection demonstrate its historical significance and variety.

The Nichol Smith Collection contains a little over 10,000 books, pamphlets and issues of periodicals, published between the late 16th century and the mid-20th century.

The great strength of the collection is in English literature, particularly the literature of the 18th century.

There is a relatively small number of works in Latin, French, German and Italian.

About half the books in the collection were published before 1820. There are good holdings on a number of 17th-century writers, such as:

Francis Bacon
Aphra Behn
Thomas Brown
Gilbert Burnet
Samuel Butler
John Cleveland
Abraham Cowley
John Dryden
Robert L'Estrange
Ben Jonson
George Mackenzie
John Milton
Thomas Shadwell
James Shirley.

Dryden is particularly well represented, with about 50 volumes published before 1800.

The collection contains an extraordinary range of first and early editions of all the prominent and minor writers of the 18th century.

In addition to poetry, plays and novels, it includes:

essays
opera libretti
sermons
political tracts
histories
memoirs
anecdotes
letters
voyages
travels
legal and theological works.

Numbering in the hundreds of volumes are works by or about:

Samuel Johnson
Alexander Pope
Jonathan Swift.

Other leading writers who loom large in the collection include:

Joseph Addison
John Arbuthnot
Richard Bentley
George Berkeley
Lord Bolingbroke
James Boswell
Edmund Burke
Thomas Chatterton
Colley Cibber
Jeremy Collier
William Congreve
William Cowper
Daniel Defoe
Henry Fielding
John Gay
Oliver Goldsmith
Thomas Gray
David Hume
James Macpherson
Peter Pindar
Richard Steele
Laurence Sterne
James Thomson
Izaak Walton
Thomas Warton
Edward Young.

Another feature of the collection is the number of 18th-century editions of the works of Shakespeare, as well as critical writings. There are also good sets of periodicals such as the:

British Apollo (1708–1710)
Historical Register (1716–1723)
Monitor (1713)
Observator (1682–1687)
Rambler (1750–1752)
Spectator (1711–1714)
Tatler (1709–1713).

The modern portion of the collection contains editions of poetry, prose, letters and diaries of English writers, including:

Geoffrey Chaucer
William Shakespeare
Ben Jonson
John Dryden
Jonathan Swift
Samuel Johnson
Thomas Crabbe
Thomas De Quincy
Thomas Hazlitt
William Wordsworth
Lord Byron.

The bulk of the works relate to English literature and history, but there are also works on bibliography, Latin classics, religion, the theatre and Oxford University. There are large sets of publications of:

the Scottish Tract Society (1883–1934)
Oxford Historical Society (1891–1921)
the Malone Society (1907–1961)
the English Association (1910–1946).

Many of the books contain the bookplates and inscriptions of earlier owners. They were usually signed by Nichol Smith and, in some instances, he added the year of acquisition and bibliographical annotations. He also inserted entries from book dealers’ catalogues, manuscript notes, letters and newspaper cuttings.

A few manuscripts were found among the books in the Nichol Smith Collection. In particular, an interleaved copy of James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnsoncontained letters of Johnson (1778) and Boswell (1787), both written to Dr J Hussey. Other items include a letter from AB Falconer, a memorandum by CH Firth, and a listing by Nichol Smith of English newspapers 1770–1800.

Two groups of Nichol Smith letters have been acquired separately. One comprises copies of his correspondence held in the National Library of Scotland, including letters from:

George Saintsbury
Walter Raleigh
Sir Charles Firth
James Sutherland
Lord Crawford.

The other group consists of a long series of correspondence between the writer, collector and bibliographer Hugh Macdonald and Nichol Smith between 1932 and 1955.

About David Nichol Smith

David Nichol Smith (1875–1962) was born in Edinburgh and educated at George Watson’s College, the University of Edinburgh and the Sorbonne. After a few years editing school textbooks, he was appointed Professor of English at Armstrong College, Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1904.

In 1908, he became Reader in English at Oxford University and remained in Oxford for the rest of his life. He was elected Fellow of Merton College in 1921 and served as Merton Professor of English from 1929 to 1946. In retirement, he travelled widely and was Professor of English at the University of Adelaide from 1950 to 1951.

Scholarly work

In his early career, Nichol Smith focused on Shakespeare. His first book, Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare (1903). In later years he devoted most of his time to 18th-century literature. His books included:

He edited the Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse (1926), along with works by authors such as:

John Dryden
Jonathan Swift
Samuel Johnson
William Hazlitt
Lord Byron
William Wordsworth
other writers.

Book collecting

Nichol Smith began collecting rare books when he was an undergraduate in Edinburgh. One of his earliest purchases was a copy of Helidorus, Aethiopicorum libri X (1619). Eighteenth-century English imprints made up the bulk of his library, but he also collected books in:

Anglo-Saxon type
pirated editions
literary spoofs
Gothic novels
translations
Greek, Latin and Italian books.

The David Nichol Smith Seminars

The first seminar was held in Canberra in 1966 and was jointly organised by The Australian National University and the Library. It coincided with the publication of the Short title catalogue of books printed in the British Isles, the British colonies, and the United States of America, and of English books printed elsewhere, 1701–1800, edited by William J Cameron and Diana J Carroll.

The 17th David Nichol Smith Seminar was held in Adelaide in 2020.

Background to the collection

Shortly before his death, Nichol Smith expressed the wish that his collection would be preserved in the Library. It was purchased in 1962 from his wife, Mary Nichol Smith.

The books and pamphlets in the Nichol Smith Collection, including the modern publications, are kept together as a formed collection within the Rare Books Collection. They have been catalogued individually and the call numbers have the prefixes RB DNS and RBq DNS.

The manuscripts and copies of letters are held in the Manuscripts Collection. They occupy 5 folders. They have been catalogued at the collection level. The correspondence between Nichol Smith and Macdonald are also held in the Manuscripts Collection and has been microfilmed.

Manuscripts, lectures and correspondence of Nichol Smith are held in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh and the Bodleian Library in Oxford. See AS Bell, 'Nichol Smith Collections in Edinburgh and Oxford', in RF Brissenden (editor), Studies in the Eighteenth Century: Papers Presented at the 2nd David Nichol Smith Memorial Seminar, Canberra, 1970, ANU Press, Canberra, 1973, pp 397–409.

A microfilm copy of the collection in the Bodleian Library is held in the National Library at mfm G7693–7699. Photocopies of the letters in the National Library of Scotland are held in MS 5411.

This guide was prepared using these references:

Herbert Davis, David Nichol Smith, in Brissenden, R.F. (ed.), Studies in the Eighteenth Century 2: Papers Presented at the 2nd David Nichol Smith Memorial Seminar, Canberra, 1970, ANU Press, Canberra, 1973, pp 1–16.
Donald W Nichols, Globetrotting scholar: David Nichol Smith, National Library Magazine, vol 6 (2), June 2014, pp 20–22.
Suzanne Rickard, A Larger Benefaction in Mind: The David Nichol Smith Collection, National Library of Australia News, vol 6 (9), June 1996, pp 3–6.
James Sutherland, David Nichol Smith, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol 51, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004, pp 78–9.
James Sutherland, David Nichol Smith 1875–1962, Proceedings of the British Academy, vol 48, 1962, pp 449–59.