Williams Collection

Harold Stannett Williams (1898–1987) was born in Melbourne. He attended Trinity Grammar School and Melbourne High School, worked in the Commonwealth Laboratory and then studied medicine at the University of Melbourne. In 1919 he visited Japan and, almost unintentionally, found himself engaged as an assistant by the Scottish mercantile and agency firm of Findlay Richardson & Co. in Yokohama. In the following year he was transferred to Kobe and he decided to remain in Japan permanently. In 1926 he became manager of the silk firm of Cooper & Co.

Valente Collection

The Valente family were an old Portuguese landed family who lived in a seventeenth-century house at Oliveira de Aziméis, near Porto. Their library was established in the eighteenth century by Alfonso Manuel Alvares Amador Egas Moniz de Almeida de Faria de Oliveira Valente. His name, in somewhat shortened form, is inscribed in some of the books. His descendants were also collectors, with most of the modern works being acquired by Manuel Amador Valente (d. 1970), the last surviving member of the family.

Tarala Collection

Andrei Grigorievich Tarala was born in Siberia in 1893. He served in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I. In 1922, together with other soldiers of the White Armies, he fled to China and eventually settled in Harbin. In the 1930s he worked with the Chinese Eastern Railway Company. In 1963 he and his wife migrated to Australia and for a few years they lived in rural Victoria. They later settled in Sydney.

Simon Collection

Ernst Julian Walter Simon (1893–1981), known as Walter Simon, was born in Berlin and educated at the University of Berlin. From 1919 to 1935 he was on the staff of the University of Berlin Library and he spent a year on exchange at the National Library of China, where he catalogued Manchu books. He began studying Chinese in 1920 and became a lecturer in Chinese in 1926. As a Jewish scholar, he was forced to leave both the Library and the University in 1934–35. In 1936 he and his family migrated to England where he found a job in the School of Oriental Studies in London.

Sakakibara Collection

Shozo Sakakibara (1859–1940) enlisted in the Japanese Army in 1879 as an engineering officer. He fought in the 1894–95 Sino–Japanese War and also the Russo–Japanese War, when he participated in the siege of Port Arthur in 1904–05. He attained the rank of lieutenant-general. He was a keen reader and built up a substantial library, including books in a number of European languages.

Acquisition

The Library purchased the Sakakibara Collection in 1964 from Keisho Hakura, a friend of General Sakakibara.

Pelli Collection

Giuseppe Bencivenni Pelli (1729–1808) was born in Florence and attended the University of Pisa. He practised law in Florence before joining the staff of the Secretary of State of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1758. From 1761 to 1775 he was a member of a group of nine magistrates with jurisdiction in Florence. In 1775 he became director of the Galleria di Firenze (Uffizzi Gallery), where he remained until 1793. He held other administrative positions until the overthrow of the Grand Duchy by Napoleon in 1799.

McLaren-Human Collection

Jessie McLaren (1883–1968), who was the daughter of Charles Reeve, a missionary in India, was born in Hobart. She grew up in Tasmania, India, Geelong and Melbourne, where she attended the Presbyterian Ladies’ College and the University of Melbourne. She became a travelling secretary for the Australian Student Christian Movement. In 1911 she married Charles McLaren, a Melbourne doctor, and they immediately left for Korea as missionaries of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria. They lived in Korea for 30 years.

Mauritius Collection

André de Chapuiset Le Merle (1898–1966) was born at Beau Champ Sugar Estate in Mauritius. He worked on a sugar estate called Bénarès, in the south of Mauritius, and later on an estate at Vallon, Ferney. He was a member of the Society of History of Mauritius.

Acquisition

The Library purchased the Mauritius Collection in 1968 John Lawson of the English antiquarian booksellers, E.M. Lawson & Co. The owner was the widow of La Merle.

Luce Collection

Gordon Hannington Luce (1889–1979) was born in Gloucester, England. He was educated at Dean Close School, Cheltenham, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he read classics and English literature. His Cambridge friends included Rupert Brooke, Arthur Waley, E.M. Forster, Maynard Keynes and others who were later associated with the Bloomsbury Group. In 1912 he was appointed Lecturer in English Literature at Government College in Rangoon.

London Missionary Society Collection

The London Missionary Society, founded in 1795, was a non-denominational Christian mission with strong links with the Congregationalist movement. The Society’s first missionary in China was Robert Morrison. He established a mission at Guangzhou (Canton) in 1807 and was later joined by William Milne and Walter Medhurst. Progress was extremely slow, even though the Chinese Government tolerated Christian missions after 1843.