Cruickshank Collection
A collection of some 220 books (ca. 350 items) from the library of Professor Don Cruickshank (1942-2021), an expert on Spanish Golden Age Literature and biographer of Calderón. His collection contains many rare Spanish playtexts (sueltas) and numerous editions of Calderón.
Cruickshank was born in Fettercairn, Kincardineshire and was raised in Aberdeen, where he attended university. He studied modern history and modern languages, in particular Spanish (under Terence May and Peter Dunn). He took his PhD, on Calderón, at University of Cambridge under the supervision of Edward Wilson. In 1968 he became a research fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, before being appointed to a lectureship at University College Dublin, where he spent the rest of his career, eventually retriring in 2007 as Professor of Spanish. Cruickshank presented a small number of sueltas to University of Glasgow Library in 2003, to complement the then recently acquired Scarfe-La Trobe Collection of Spanish plays. This larger collection was bequeathed in 2021 and now augments the 2003 gift.
Many of the items contain Cruickshank's extensive bibliographical notes. Several are extremely rare, being the only copies recorded in Iberian books online. Interesting and important provenances include Pedro Soriano Carranza - a contemporary and friend of Calderón (e.g. his name and annotations in Cruickshank 97) - and the Portuguese bibliophile, Victor Marat d’Avila Perez, whose library was auctioned in Lisbon in 1939-40 (Cruickshank 3). The collection includes two manuscript items (Cruickshank 4 & 160), one unique copy of an account of a lawsuit printed on parchment containing illuminated initials and a full-length portrait of a king of Spain (Cruickshank f15), as well as several other illustrated texts.
A project to catalogue the collection was funded by the Friends of Glasgow University Library and completed by Honorary Research Librarian, Jack Baldwin, in 2024.
How to find material in the Cruickshank Collection
- See Sp Coll Cruickshank on rare books search and collections search: browse through a list of the books catalogued.
