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The Bodleian Library,
Oxford
The
Oxford Digital Library image includes images from the John
Johnson collection.
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The Bodleian holds several repositories of games, not all of
which are immediately apparent, but all are shown below. Most
should be viewable by appointment. Some items have been digitised
and are available online namely "Writing Blanks, Board
Games, and Other Educational Games of the 18th and 19th centuries
from the John Johnson and Harding Collections".
An exhibition “Children’s Games and Pastimes” was held from
Nov 2005 to April 2006 showing items from the John Johnson,
Opie and Harding collections. ”
The H.J.R. Murray Papers. Harold James R Murray (d1955),
author of History of chess (1913), bequeathed a collection of
books on chess, plus newspaper cuttings, book catalogues, prospectuses
of books etc. The papers were given to the Library with a collection
of printed books and Oriental manuscripts in 1955.
The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera. The
John Johnson Collection is one of the most important collections
of printed ephemera in the world. It was assembled by John de
Monins Johnson between c.1923 and 1956 and was housed at the
Oxford University Press (where it was called The Constance Meade
Collection of Ephemeral Printing) until its transfer to the
Bodleian Library in 1968. Johnson collected retrospectively,
establishing 1939 as his terminus ante quem (although there
are exceptions). While the majority of material dates from the
18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, there is ephemera dating
back to 1508. There are over 1 million items in the original
collection but additions have been made since. The material
is principally British.
Mary Gardiner Collection of Happy Families and other card
games. Mary Gardiner, a schoolteacher from Northleach, came
to the John Johnson Collection in search of Happy Families card
games and, finding only one or two packs new to her, bequeathed
her collection to the John Johnson Collection in 2002.
The Jessel Collection of Playing Card Literature. Frederic
Henry Jessel (d. 1934), author of "A bibliography of works in
English on playing cards and gaming" (1905), bequeathed, in
1934, to the Bodleian c 3,400 vols relating to the history and
use of playing cards, card games, games of chance, gaming at
casinos, fortune-telling by cards, and card-tricks. They include
satires and tracts on the social aspects of gaming; novels,
poems and plays in which card-playing figures; Acts of Parliament
directed towards the control of gaming and lotteries, extracts
from periodicals, newspaper cuttings, packs of cards etc. There
are some practically complete sets of editions of some of the
most important works on the subject, both English and foreign.
The Opie Collection of Books for children. A collection
of works written or published for children, or related thereto,
mainly British, totalling c. 20,000 items, put together from
the mid 1940s to the early 1980s as a private research resource
by Iona (1923- ) and Peter Mason (1918-1982) Opie. Accompanying
the collection are records of the books: catalogue cards, accession
diaries, notes loosely inserted into books, etc. Acquired by
the Bodleian in 1988 after a public appeal, Iona Opie donating
half the value of the collection. The Opies also collected some
important children’s games. A good selection can be seen in
“Treasures of Childhood”, Pavilion Books Ltd and U.S. Edition
by Arcade Publishing Inc 1989/90
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