Fitzhardinge Collection

The Fitzhardinge Collection is a rich assembly of rare books, featuring early printed works, classical texts and finely bound editions of major English authors. Highlights range from Renaissance humanist writings to 18th- and 19th-century literature, reflecting the collector’s deep interest in the history of ideas and literary craftsmanship.

Literature and writing Rare books and illuminated manuscripts

Key items in the collection

The Fitzhardinge Collection of about 300 books can be divided into 2 parts. There are a number of incunabula and other early editions of classical texts, poetry and religious works. They include:

Johannes Chrysostomus, Sermones XXV e Graeco e Lat. versi a Christoph Persona, Rome, 1470
Roberto Caracciolo, Sermones clarissimi in sacra theologia, Venice, 1475
Incipit ep[isto]la sancta hieronimi [sic] Paulinu[m] : presbite[orum] de omnib[us] diuine historie libris [Bible], Nuremburg, 1477
Nicolaus Pergaminus, Dialogus creaturarum moralisatus, Gouda, 1480
Saint Jerome, Incipit p[ro]logus Santi Hieronimi ... : in libros Vitaspatrum sancto[rum] Egiptioru[m] : etia[s] ero[rum] qui in Scithia Thebaida : atq[ue] Mesopotamia morati sunt
[Vitae partum], Nuremburg, 1483
Jean Gerson, Secunda pars operum Johannis Gerson, Nuremburg, 1489
Ovid, De arte amandi, Venice, 1494
Girolamo Savonarola, Operetta molto diuota composta da frate Hieronymo da Ferrara, Florence, 1495
Theocritus et Hesiod, Ta'de enesti en tede biblio ..., Venice, 1495
Terence, [Terence' cu[m] directorio vocabuloru[m] sententiaru[m] artis comice, glosa iterlineali, cometariis Donato Guidone Ascensio.], Strasburg, 1499
Petrach, [Li Sonetti, Canzone & Triumphi de Petrarcha : con li commenti ...], Venice, 1503
Livy, Titi Liuii patauini Decades cum figuris nouiter impresse, Venice, 1511
Livy, Romische historie Titi Liuij meniglich kurtzweilich vund dienstlich zu lesen, Mainz, 1514
Aristotle, Ton en te'de te biblio : perie chomenon, onomata kai taxis. Aristotelous peri zoon historias ..., Florence, 1527
Homer, Tes tou Homerou Odysseias : rerus, quid virtus, et quid sapientia possit, utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem, Glasgow, 1758
Lucretius, Titi Lucretii Cari De rerum natura libri sex, Birmingham, 1772
Alexander Pope, Poetical Works, Glasgow, 1785

The second group consists of limited-edition reprints, some of private presses, of celebrated English writers, mostly published in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The writers include:

Edmund Blunden
Geoffrey Chaucer
WH Davies
Henry Fielding
Robert Herrick
John Keats
Christopher Marlowe
John Milton
Sir Thomas More
William Morris
Christina Rossetti
William Shakespeare
Algernon Swinburne
Lord Tennyson
Anthony Trollope
Edward Thomas
Izaak Walton
WB Yeats

Presses include:

Kelmscott
Gregynog
Ashendene
Golden Hours
Halcyon
Golden Cockerell

About Laurence Fitzhardinge

Laurence Frederic Fitzhardinge (1908–1993) was a historian, biographer and bibliophile who played a significant role in the development of Australian historical scholarship and collections.

Education and early career

Born in Sydney, Fitzhardinge was educated at Sydney Church of England Grammar School, the University of Sydney and New College, Oxford. Trained as a classicist, he maintained a lifelong interest in the field and published The Spartans in 1980. His professional career, however, focused mainly on Australian history.

In 1934, he joined the staff of the Commonwealth National Library and spent 10 years in charge of the Australian collections. In 1944, he became director of the School of Diplomatic Studies at Canberra University College before returning to the University of Sydney as a lecturer in classics. From 1950 until his retirement in 1973, he served as Reader in History at the Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University.

Historical research and publications

Fitzhardinge played a key role in acquiring the Groom papers for the Library and contributed to Nation Building in Australia: The Life and Work of Sir Ernest Littleton Groom (1941). In 1951, he began his major biographical project on former Prime Minister William Morris Hughes. This became a life’s work, culminating in 2 volumes: That Fiery Particle, 1862–1914 (1964) and The Little Digger 1914–1942 (1979). He also wrote several smaller works, including studies on early Canberra history.

Personal collection and legacy

Fitzhardinge inherited a valuable library from his father, James Eric Fitzhardinge (1877–1951), a solicitor with a deep interest in English literature. Laurence continued to collect books throughout his life, aided by his wife Verity Hewitt, a prominent Canberra bookseller.

Background to the collection

Fitzhardinge’s association with the Library extended over 60 years. Not long before his death, he stated that he wished the Library to receive part of his collection, the books that illustrated the history of printing.

Geoffrey and Charles Fitzhardinge, the sons of Fitzhardinge, donated the Fitzhardinge Collection under the Taxation Incentives for the Arts Scheme in 1994–95.

The Fitzhardinge Collection is held in he Rare Books Collection. The call numbers have the prefix RB FITZ (also RBf FITZ and RBRS FITZ). There is a presentation bookplate in each book.

After Fitzhardinge’s death, the large part of his collection that did not come to the Library, was sold and dispersed. It included a fragment of a 15th-century manuscript of Petrarch’s Epistolae Seniles, which Eric Fitzhardinge had acquired in 1934. It is described in KV Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia (1969, pp. 42–3). The manuscript was acquired by the Schǿyen Collection, a private collection in Oslo and London.

This guide was prepared using these references: