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Library Exhibitions and Events: A Passion For Collecting

The University of Southampton Library offers a varied programme of events and exhibition across its sites.

A Passion For Collecting: Raymond Turley and the Isle of Wight

Curators

Jenny Ruthven (Special Collections Librarian) and Karen Robson (Head of Archives and Special Collections)

 

On display from

Thursday 1st May 2025 - Friday 30th May 2025

Location

Level 4 Gallery in Hartley Library

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About

In Local History and Community Month, we celebrate the arrival of the Isle of Wight Collection, generously donated to the University Library by Dr Raymond Turley, for many years the Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences Librarian.

Raymond Turley began collecting books on the Isle of Wight as a teenager and pursued this passion for over seventy years. His collection now includes not only books, but prints, paintings, photographs, postcards, maps, manuscripts and ephemera, dating from the seventeenth century to the present day. The exhibition uses photographs to highlight aspects of Isle of Wight history represented in the collection, including the many visitors’ accounts and guidebooks, the Island’s royal connections, the work of the engraver, George Brannon and that of the first commercial  photographers.