The Walter de la Mare Library

The Walter de la Mare Library is in two parts. The first part, acquired in 2005 through the good offices of Giles de la Mare, the writer’s grandson, and the generosity of the Friends of Senate House Library, is the working library, and consists of approximately 650 items used by Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) as his working collection. The second part, given by the literary trustees of Walter de la Mare in 2009, comprises some 420 titles and consists of editions of De la Mare’s work: the De la Mare Family Archive of Walter de la Mare's Printed Oeuvre.

The working library indicates Walter de la Mare’s wide range of interests which informed his career as a poet, novelist, short story writer, anthologist and literary critic. The books cover historical and contemporary literature and also include science, history and travel, the whole giving an idea of the range of published material chosen for such a collection by a working writer of the period. The books date largely from De la Mare’s lifetime. Some were gifts and bear inscriptions from donors, often the authors. Walter de la Mare annotated around 300 books, mostly before 1910. This lends a particular significance to the collection as a reflection of the writer’s development. His literary friendships are also in evidence, for example with several gifts of books from Edward Thomas, and annotated examples of his works such as The Icknield Way and Collected Poems, for which Walter de la Mare had written the foreword.

The multiple editions of De la Mare’s work offer an insight into twentieth-century book and publishing history:  design, illustration, reception, and authorial emendation. Several items have been rendered unique, either by having been marked up by De la Mare or his son Richard, who published many of his works, or through inscriptions from Walter de la Mare to various members of his family. The editions include translations, most of which are rare in Great Britain. Also rare are private press editions, an issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, containing De la Mare’s short story ‘The Orgy’, and a bound volume of early issues (some hand-written) of The Choristers’ Journal / Magazine (1889-92), co-founded and co-edited by De la Mare at St. Paul's Cathedral School.

Records are now available on the Library's catalogue: Walter De La Mare Library list . A list of De la Mare’s working library, together with an essay by Giles de la Mare about it, is also available in the Walter de la Mare Society magazine, issue 11, reproduced here by permission of Giles de la Mare. For a catalogue list of the De la Mare Family Archive of Walter de la Mare's Printed Oeuvre, do a mixed classmark search on [WdlM] T.

Catalogue records note annotations and provenance. Among the editions, the presence of a dustwrapper is always explicitly stated.

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