LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Special Interest Group for Literary and Cultural Studies

Michael Peto photographic collection
Michael Peto came to Britain from Hungary in 1939. He was a freelance journalist with the Observer newspaper, and travelled extensively, covering the work of the Save the Children Fund around the world. Other aspects of his work involved the arts, especially the London ballet scene. Major topics covered by the collection (which consists of some 130,000 items) thus include Eastern Europe, Israel, India, ballet and theatre and Scotland, as well as leading political, literary and entertainment figures.

Scarfe-La Trobe Collection of Spanish Plays
The collection comprises nearly 2,000 items consisting of 1,068 plays (with 904 duplicates), ranging in date from the Seventeenth to the end of the Nineteenth Centuries. Representing a wide range of dramatic genres, a large proportion are comedias sueltas, that is, plays that were printed separately for sale in pamphlet form; a smaller number are desglosadas - plays printed to form part of (mainly) seventeenth century volumes; such volumes normally contained 12 plays, but they were also made available ‘disbound’ for sale as single items. In all, the work of more than 200 different dramatists is represented. Purchased from Bruno Scarfe, formerly of La Trobe University, in 2003 with help from the National Fund for Acquisitions, Glasgow University Chancellor’s Fund, the Friends of Glasgow University Library, the Faculty of Arts Library Discretionary Fund and the Principal’s Strategic Development Fund.

Eleonora Duse Collection
Over 1,000 items relating to the Italian actress Eleanora Duse (1858-1924), collected by Giovanni Pontiero and bequeathed to the Library in 1996. Included amongst the papers are postcards, programmes, offprints and photographs, as well as correspondence in connection with Pontiero's biography of Duse. 31 printed books accompany the manuscript items.