Toronto Public Library Special Collections: Osborne and Merril

TPL calls it a world-leading research collection of rare and notable children’s books. Its 90,000+ items include book-related art, toys, games and archival items on authorship and promotion of books for young readers. The collection has four parts: the Osborne Collection of items before 1910, the Lillian H. Smith Collection of items after 1910, the Canadiana Collection and the Jean Thomson Collection of Original Art.

Highlights include a manuscript of Aesop’s fables from the 14th century and Florence Nightingale’s childhood library. TPL’s page captions a cuneiform tablet from around 2000 B.C.E. as “our oldest item”. Canadiana includes a first impression of Anne of Green Gables. The Jean Thomson Collection holds over 5,000 original illustrations, from woodcuts to watercolours.

It is on the 4th floor. It began in 1949, when British librarian Edgar Osborne donated around 2,000 rare and notable children’s books. TPL says the Lillian H. Smith Collection is named after the first professionally trained children’s librarian in the British Empire.

TPL calls it one of the world’s leading research collections of speculative fiction and popular culture, with 80,000+ items across science fiction, fantasy, horror and magic realism. It is on the 3rd floor.

Look for first editions of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. The pulp magazines date back to the 1920s, with titles including Amazing Stories (1926) and Weird Tales (1923). The archive includes manuscripts and drafts by Guy Gavriel Kay for novels such as Tigana and The Summer Tree. And there are over 5,000 graphic novel titles.

A delightful niche: this puppetry collection includes 575 books, current issues of The Puppetry Journal and over 55 puppet shows that TPL staff continue to perform. The branch has a long history with young readers. TPL’s branch history says Boys & Girls House opened on September 27, 1922 as the first library in the British Empire devoted exclusively to children.

TPL calls it one of the world’s largest research collections devoted to Arthur Conan Doyle, with 25,000+ items, many relating to Sherlock Holmes. The Arthur Conan Doyle Room, styled as Holmes’s study, has books you can pull off the shelves and read, and TPL’s page carries the same appointment notice, so check it before you go. Our Toronto Reference Library guide covers the building around it.

TPL calls it one of the world’s largest research collections of Canadian history, with over a million items and an emphasis on Toronto and Ontario. A fun find: TPL lists the first cookbook published in Canada, The Cook Not Mad (1831), among its holdings.

A community-built archive maintained by TPL, collecting items in English and Chinese that reflect the Chinese Canadian community in the Greater Toronto Area. TPL says you fill out a brief form and show one piece of identification to see items.

Performing arts materials, book art and visual arts items, including a copy of Audubon’s Birds of America. TPL says its collection of stage designs is the largest of its kind in any Canadian public library. The Canadian sheet music collection holds 3,000+ parlour songs and piano pieces from 1805 to 1960.

Current and historical maps, atlases and gazetteers, and many of the maps can be viewed on the Digital Archive. A good one for anyone who loves old Toronto.