The Library’s pre-1965 collection of English adult fiction has recently been catalogued in its entirety. The collection comprises over 50,000 books never previously catalogued. Formerly the collection was arranged alphabetically by author which facilitated reader access to individual works, but unfortunately this remarkable assemblage was not well publicised.
Fiction with Welsh connections occur throughout, but the majority of works evidently or predominantly featuring Wales, or by authors with Welsh associations were routinely prioritised for cataloguing over the years. The present day convenience of electronically importing catalogue records enabled this long-outstanding project on the remaining fiction to be undertaken over a period of about three years.
Part of the English Fiction Collection
Essentially the collection dates from 1912, when the Library received its first books by legal deposit privilege by dint of the 1911 Copyright Act. There are also some examples of nineteenth century works acquired by donation or purchase.
Encompassed are crime fiction, thrillers, mysteries, espionage, romantic, comic and travel fiction, Westerns, tales from the outposts of Empire and a variety of other exotic locations, military, sea and air adventures, science fiction, historical fiction and tales of fantasy and the supernatural.
The collection chronicles life in all its facets during the first half of the 20th Century and spans the Golden Age of both “whodunnit” detective fiction and science fiction from the 1920s to 1940s, crime or detective fiction being exceptionally popular. Works range from serious literary masterpieces to popular pulp potboilers and include “cosy” tales of British village life and the more cynical “hardboiled” detective novels of mean street urban America. Heroes, antiheroes and well-loved characters appear in the form of Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Poirot, Miss Marple, Sam Spade, Tarzan, Zorro, James Bond, Dr Fu Manchu and Bertie Wooster and Jeeves.
First edition publications by eminent and influential authors include the novels of Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Philip K. Dick, Graham Greene, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Patricia Highsmith, Christopher Isherwood, C.E.M. Joad, James Joyce, Jack Kerouac, Doris Lessing, Malcolm Lowry, Horace McCoy, Ngaio Marsh, Patrick O’Brian, Flann O’Brien, William Plomer, Ellery Queen, Herbert Read, Sax Rohmer, Dorothy L. Sayers, Edgar Wallace, Patrick White, Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse, and Leonard Woolf.
Virtually all of the books are hardback editions in uniform “house” bindings. Most are aesthetically enhanced by dust jackets, illustrated by a host of artists and include, for example, Art Deco designs or more typically scenes to promote the story, which are consistently attention-grabbing, dramatic or macabre.
Over seventy per cent of the books have now been allocated shelf numbers and are thus available to the public. This work continues in an effort to ensure access to the entire collection. Author and title searches remain the principal methods of finding individual works although subject searches may also yield results for works catalogued at superior levels.
Gwilym Tawy