Building the
Arthur Rackham Collection

SARAH BRIGGS LATIMORE

|H EN I received word this spring that Mr. and Mrs. Alfred
C. Berol had presented my Arthur Rackham Collection,
which they had acquired, to the Columbia University
Libraries, I was delighted. I suppose that my first thought was that
this collection, which I had spent a lifetime in building, would now
have a permanent home in a great institution. But there were also
personal reasons for pleasure in the fact that it would be located at
Columbia because Mr. Frederick Coykendall, who until his death
last year was Chairman of the Trustees of the University, had
always been so enthusiastic about Arthur Rackham's work. We
had compared notes when either of us found any of his illustrations
which we had not known about before. His long continued en¬
thusiasm and help were an inspiration to me. Included in the Col¬
lection is a presentation copy of the limited edition of Mr. Coyken¬
dall's beautiful little book Arthur Rackham; A List of Books Illus¬
trated by Him, which was designed by Bruce Rogers in 1922.

I have been asked how it was that I came to build this collection.
It really started when I was a child, at which time I began to ac¬
quire books illustrated by the best known illustrators. I found my
interest gradually centering on the books for which Rackham had
drawn pictures, because his draftsmanship, use and blending of
color, and choice of subjects, seemed to me to be so far above that
of other illustrators. I was attracted to his art also because he
illustrated so many of my favorite books such as Peter Pan, Rip
Van Winkle, Comus, A Midsinmner Night's Dream, etc. Little by
little I became less interested in the illustrations of other artists and
decided to try to gather as complete a collection as possible of the
books that he had illustrated.

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