Exploring the Treasures: The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Collections at UCLA

The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), stands as a beacon for scholars and enthusiasts of English literature and history, particularly those interested in the 17th-19th centuries, Oscar Wilde and the fin de siècle, and the art of fine press printing. Located in the West Adams district of Los Angeles, about 10 miles southeast of UCLA, the Clark Library houses an impressive collection of books, manuscripts, and other materials that offer a glimpse into the cultural and intellectual landscape of the past.

A Legacy of Collecting: William Andrews Clark, Jr.

The Clark Library owes its existence to William Andrews Clark, Jr., a book collector and philanthropist who was the son of copper magnate and Senator William Andrews Clark, Sr. Originally from Montana, Clark Jr. moved to Los Angeles and became known as the founder of the L.A. Philharmonic. His passion for books led him to amass a significant collection, which he later donated to the Southern Branch of the University of California, along with the library buildings and property, and an endowment of $1.5 million.

Clark's collecting interests evolved over time. Initially, he acquired a broad array of English imprints, including the four Shakespeare folios, important editions of Chaucer, Ben Jonson, Byron, Dickens, and Robert Louis Stevenson, works illustrated by George Cruikshank and William Blake, and French literature. He also collected autograph letters and manuscripts by authors, statesmen, and musicians, as well as materials relating to the exploration of the American West.

Later, Clark began to concentrate his collecting on English literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, particularly the Restoration period. He also developed an interest in fine printing within the Arts and Crafts tradition, acquiring complete runs of books printed by the Kelmscott Press and Doves Press.

Strengths of the Collection

The Clark Library is renowned for its extensive holdings in several key areas:

British Literature and History (1641-1761)

The library boasts one of the most comprehensive collections for the study of British literature and history from the English Civil War through the reign of George II. Its literary collections include works by John Dryden, John Milton, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, and Aphra Behn. The library also holds scientific works by Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Edmond Halley, John Evelyn, and Sir Kenelm Digby.

Oscar Wilde and the Fin de Siècle

The Clark Library houses the most comprehensive collection of materials related to Oscar Wilde in the world. This collection includes manuscripts purchased from Wilde's son, Vyvyan Holland, as well as photographs, original portraits, caricatures, playbills, and news cuttings.

Inside the chilly basement of the Clark Library, Rebecca Fenning Marschall scans a treasure trove of bound notes in a section that she recently re-catalogued. The Manuscripts and Archives librarian carefully thumbs through pages, pointing to scratched out and rewritten phrases. Oscar Wilde, the great wit of the Victorian age, was known for quick quips that still roll off tongues with ease. His wry lines, though, came with much much effort. "He's working on witty stuff," says Marschall. "He's not divinely inspired."

There are notebooks that Marschall likes to show the students who stop by to tour this immense collection. One dates back to Wilde's school days and is filled with hard to read squiggles on philosophy. She points to a doodle, a small drawing of pottery, in a margin. A few pages later, she explains why his notes are sometimes difficult to decipher. In this book, Wilde is going back and forth between English and Greek. The handwriting remains fluid, as though he didn't stop to process the difference between the languages. Marschall says that this probably wasn't out of the ordinary for a university student of that time, but it is interesting. Scholars appreciate going through these notes.

More than a century ago, Wilde's words brought him a certain level of stardom. He was a hit playwright with enough charm and style to move through fashionable society. Scandal, in the form of a then-illegal affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, led to his demise. Wilde did time for the crime of loving another man. Later, the writer headed to Paris, where he died in 1900 at 46. In recent times, Wilde has emerged as both a literary hero and icon of LGBT rights. His work has influenced subsequent generations of wordsmiths. One of his most famous fans is the British singer Morrissey, whose praise may have inspired teens of the 1980s and '90s to pick up a copy of "The Picture of Dorian Gray." Wilde's choice quotes come up on Internet memes so frequently that, sometimes, his name is simply added to words that could never have come from his pen. He has turned up as a character in the comic book version of "Doctor Who" and was made into an action figure. Perhaps Wilde is more famous now than he was in life, as known for his work as he is for the persona he developed. "Wilde is a guy who didn't like to show that he worked hard," says Marschall.

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The keys to understanding Oscar Wilde are at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Operated by UCLA, there are rows of archives here dedicated not just to Wilde, but to his "circle." Marschall explains that this is a term the library uses to encompass a fairly large group of people. Aubrey Beardsley, who provided illustrations for Wilde's play "Salomé," is in here. So is Max Beerbohm, the caricature artist and writer who depicted Wilde in his book "Rossetti and His Circle." William Butler Yeats, a contemporary who, like Wilde, hailed from Ireland, is represented. The collection is immense. Marschall says that it might not be the biggest archive of its kind in the world, but it could be. Seven-and-a-half rows of shelving are dedicated to various editions of Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray." That's not including a script from the film adaptation or the manuscript of the book's third chapter. (As Marschall explains, "Dorian Gray" was originally serialized in a magazine, so chapters are spread far and wide.) There are editions that span decades and version that appear in a variety of languages. Not long ago, a student stopped by to research the various book covers for a thesis. These books are put to good use."It makes us a destination," Marschall says of the collection. It's an unexpected destination at that. While Wilde did travel through the United States, he didn't make it to Los Angeles. His connection to the city came years after the author's death, when a local philanthropist began collecting these works.

Clark was born in 1877 so, while he was quite a bit younger than Wilde, their lives chronologically overlap. Moreover, some of Wilde's peers were still around when Clark was collecting. This includes Lord Alfred Douglas, himself a poet. Clark corresponded with Douglas, so some of the collection may have come directly from Wilde's former lover.

Marschall indicates that Clark wasn't just a rich guy buying for no other reason than the thrill of the purchase. "He was really knowledgable about what they were and went out to acquire things on purpose," she says. Clark even published a multi-volume bibliography based on his acquisitions.

One of the points of interest is the breadth of forgeries they have on hand. There are multiple copies of "For Love of the King," a play that was published under Wilde's name long after his death. Wilde didn't write it and the controversy over authorship ultimately led to a libel suit. The Clark has a dossier including information on the subsequent court case as well. There is also a fake draft of "The Importance of Being Earnest" as well as other forged papers. Marschall points out how similar the handwriting is to Wilde's own markings. The telltale signs are often watermarks showing that works were written on paper made after Wilde died. Another clue is the ink. A lot of these papers are written in purple ink. "For Love of the King" was attributed to Wilde upon posthumous publication, but he didn't write it. Inside his own legitimate notebooks and on typed manuscripts edited in his own writing, we see an Oscar Wilde working diligently to create the stories, and, ultimately, the personal image that has persisted through to the present day. Maybe that's why Wilde is so popular, his brand -- to use the popular word of today -- was carefully executed. Marschall thinks that, for this reason, Wilde might have been at home in the 21st century. "He would probably be really into social media in general because you can curate this version of yourself and that's really what he was into."

Al Székely Collection is now available in UCLA Library Digital Collections and contains watercolors illustrating Wilde’s Dorian Gray. This set of 16 watercolor illustrations were created by artist Al Székely for Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. These illustrations were never previously published.

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Fine Printing

Clark also took an interest in fine printing within the Arts and Crafts tradition, which is represented by complete runs of the books printed by the Kelmscott Press and Doves Press, the two greatest influences on the revival of printing in England at the turn of the 20th century. The library also has a substantial collection of American fine presses in the Arts and Crafts Movement, particularly Californian printers, as well as the library and papers of printer and sculptor Eric Gill and Los Angeles artist Paul Landacre.

Accessing the Collections

Clark Search is the primary tool for locating materials within the Clark Library's collections. This search function is specifically tailored to the library's holdings. For manuscript collections, such as those of Oscar Wilde and Eric Gill, researchers can consult the Clark's finding aids in the Online Archive of California.

The Clark Library is actively engaged in revising its cataloging practices to ensure accuracy and eliminate biased or racist language. Furthermore, the library has several ongoing digitization projects aimed at expanding online access to its collections.

Digital Collections

The Clark Library has several digital collections ongoing. Two large digitization projects focus on early modern manuscript material. We are digitizing over 300 English manuscripts through a Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Digitizing Hidden Collections grant and approximately 285 early modern annotated books through a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant. The collections will grow in the coming months as more items are digitized and published online.

This collection contains complete digital scans of over 300 early modern English bound manuscripts from the Clark Library. Dating primarily from the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries, these handwritten texts comprise a vast range of manuscript genres, including commonplace books, miscellanies, recipe collections, historical treatises, literary manuscripts, sermon notebooks, scientific texts, heraldic manuals, musical collections, travel narratives, legal compilations, and account books. Together, these items offer an expansive research archive for historians and literary critics, with particular strengths in social history, history of food and medicine, musicology, textual studies, and history of the book.

Comprising over 250 early modern printed books bearing handwritten annotations, this collection offers rich evidence for studying the material history of reading. The books collected here range in subject matter (from science and natural history to literature and philosophy), time period (1472-1818), and type of annotation (from scholarly commentary and cross-referencing to printers’ notations and polemical criticism). The annotators themselves include translator John Florio, literary critic John Dennis, painter William Hogarth, French bibliophile François-Louis Jamet, English ephemera collector Narcissus Luttrell, avian enthusiast Judith Gowing, York printer Thomas Gent, London lawyer Thomas Turner, country vicar Thomas Austen, and many other identified and unidentified readers. Digitization of these items has been made possible by the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which awarded the Clark a Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grant in 2017.

Collection of work created by the English artist Eric Gill (1882-1940).

Research and Fellowship Opportunities

The Clark Library offers various fellowships for graduate and postdoctoral scholars to conduct research using its collections. These fellowships are administered by UCLA's Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies and vary in stipend, duration, and qualification.

The Library's Architecture and Grounds

The Clark Library is situated on a walled block in the West Adams neighborhood. The two-story building, designed by Robert D. Farquhar, features paired cubic reading rooms reminiscent of the Villa Lante. Its brick and stone facades reflect an English baroque style similar to that of Wren at Hampton Court.

The library occupies the former yard of a large house built in the early 20th century. The property was surrounded by a brick wall, which may have appealed to Clark. After purchasing the property, Clark bought and removed eleven neighboring houses, extended the wall around the entire block, and commissioned landscape architect Ralph D. Cornell to develop plans for a public park, though this project was never completed.

In 1988, Barton Phelps & Associates was commissioned to prepare a master plan for the site, proposing a major research facility surrounding a below-grade garden. The first phase of construction, the North Range, houses editorial offices, conference and food service facilities, and guestrooms.

A Glimpse into the Collection's Breadth

The Clark Library's collections encompass a wide range of subjects and formats, reflecting the diverse interests of its founder and the evolving focus of the library over time. Some examples include:

English poetry from the 17th and 18th centuries
Sermons and theological works
Music and song collections
Philosophical treatises
Works on mathematics, astronomy, and physics
Cookbooks and medical formularies
Materials related to nobility and heraldry
Travel narratives and historical accounts
Manuscript collections, including commonplace books, recipe collections, and scientific texts

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