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Barbier Collection

Archive Print Collection: Barbier Collection

Details

Type of record: Book

Title: Barbier Collection

Level: Collection

Classmark: Barbier Collection

Persistent link: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/43177

Description

Originally the working library of Paul Barbier, Professor of French at the University of Leeds, 1903-1938. It consists of lexicographical works, mostly in French, although other European languages such as German, Italian and Spanish are also represented. The oldest book in the collection was published in 1603, but the bulk of the works date from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Subjects include French language and dialects, foreign words and phrases, slang, proverbs, Spanish, German and Italian language and dialects, English language and provincialisms, Walloon dialect, dictionaries, glossaries, and vocabularies, etymology and grammar.


From the colleciton guide:


Paul Barbier (1873-1947) was Professor of French Language and Literature in the University of Leeds from 1903 to 1938, having first joined the French Department as Lecturer in 1899. His personal library of some 2,500 books, pamphlets and offprints was acquired by the University Library in 1948.


The central core of the collection, which reflects most clearly Professor Barbier's extensive range of scholarship, deals with Romance languages and lexicography, with special emphasis on French, Italian and Spanish dialectology. These books and pamphlets have been kept together to form the "Barbier Collection", which is housed in the Brotherton Library's Special Collections area.


Other books on general subjects, with special strengths in the fields of Africana, archaeology and Welsh language and literature, have been classified elsewhere in the Library, and are not included in this handlist. A substantial number of offprints of periodical articles by Professor Barbier are in the Library's University of Leeds Collection, and they also are not listed here.


Professor Barbier's manuscripts of 2 major unpublished works were presented to the University Library by his son, Carl P. Barbier, in 1955, and are also available in the Special Collections area: MS. 125 contains notes on researches for a dictionary of fish names; MS. 270 contains material collected for a dictionary of the French language, some of which was used in composing the 31 parts of his "Miscellanea lexicographica", published in the Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Literary and Historical Section, 1925-50.


An appreciation of Professor Barbier by W.P. Milne, Professor of Mathematics, 1919-46, appeared in the University of Leeds review, vol. 1 (1948-49), PP.42 -54.

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