Case XI: Sidney Fisher, Shakespeare and the Fisher Library

The core of the Shakespeare collection came to the Fisher Library when Sidney Thomson Fısher (1908 1992) and his twin brother Charles Boddy Fısher (1908–1994) were persuaded to donate their book collections to the University of Toronto when the Thomas Fısher Rare Book Library officially opened in 1973. In addition to more than three thousand books on Shakespeare and a related collection of six thousand engravings by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607–1677), the donation also included the works of Rudyard Kipling, Lord Dunsany, and Norman Douglas. 

Bookplates on inside cover of Shakespeare's First Folio, 1623

It was in recognition of the Fısher brothers’ remarkable gift that the new Library was named the Thomas Fısher Rare Book Library. The acquisition immediately put Toronto in the front ranks of rare book libraries in Canada. The Fısher Library is still the only institution in the country to own a Fırst Folio, and the rich and wide-ranging Shakespeare collection in which it is embedded remains one of our great strengths.

The Shakespeare portion of the donation consisted of books that Shakespeare would have used as sources,the four seventeenth-century folio editions, the later eighteenth and nineteenth-century editions, as well as works describing England and London in Shakespeare’s day. The Fısher brothers grew up in a house filled with books, and Sidney Fısher’s curiosity was first aroused when his father gave him a volume of Shakespeare that he himself had won as a school prize as a boy. The collection was carefully built over the course of several decades, from antiquarian dealers in England and Europe. The interest in Shakespeare, and in the London of Shakespeare’s time, led Fısher to Hollar’s views of London, and he went on to form one of the largest collections of Hollar engravings in the world.

The photograph shows Sidney (left) and Charles Fısher with Marion Brown, the head of the department of rare books and special collections. 

Shortly after acquiring the folios in the summer of 1955 Sidney Fisher began preparations for exhibiting the books at the newly formed Stratford Shakespearian Festival. On display here are the catalogues listing the books on exhibit in 1956, and Fisher’s own exhibition captions describing the First Folio. Fısher exhibited fifty of his books, including the four folios, Holinshed’s Chronicles, Plutarch, and Chaucer, from 18 June to 18 August, in the Stratford Arena.

Also on display is a copy of the telegram, dated 28 April 1955, from Sidney Fısher to his London agent, indicating his interest in the acquisition of the four folios. By the end of June 1955 they were already in Fisher’s possession in Montreal.

Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677). London, ca. 1647 (1832 facsimile)

This is an exact facsimile lithographed by Robert Martin in 1832 of Hollar’s 1647 long view of London. Originally engraved in six separate plates, it is a birds-eye-view of London taken from the tower of St. Mary Overy in Southwark on the south bank. Prominent in the foreground of the left panel is the Globe theatre with a flag, and the ‘Beere bayting h’.

Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677). [Stratford  Shakespeare monument], 1656. 

This etching is a depicition of the funerary monument to Shakespeare in the north wall of the chancel inside Holy Trinity Church at Stratford-upon-Avon, the same church in which Shakespeare was baptized.