Archives & Special Collections

Bruce Collection

***Access note: temporarily unavailable: all ASC photographic collections are currently (2024/25) off site during library building works; please enquire regarding future access.***

Some 1400 stereoscopic glass photographic negatives made by William Speirs Bruce (1867-1921) on expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic between 1899 and 1914.

The negatives include images from :

• the Prince of Monaco's Arctic expedition on 'Princesse Alice', 1899
• the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition on 'Scotia', 1902-1904
• the Scottish Arctic Expedition on 'Conqueror', 1909

Locations portrayed include:

• Ascension Island
• South Africa
• the Falkland Islands
• the South Orkney Islands
• Spitzbergen, Norway
• the Monaco Museum

The title and date are inscribed on most plates, probably by Bruce; numbers were added by a different hand in an arrangement by subject which does not retain the chronological sequence in which the photographs were taken.

Included with the collection are albumen contact prints from some negatives and some positive glass plates.

Access to the original negatives is restricted owing to their fragility. Any photographs from the Bruce collection displayed on the Special Collections website have been produced digitally by the University's photographic unit from the negatives and are not available as original positives. 

Please note that access to original photographic material is now strictly by appointment only and requires a minimum of 24 hours advance notice. Also some fragile items may be restricted for preservation. Please contact the Special Collections Reading Room: 0141 330 6767 or special@lib.gla.ac.uk

 

How to find material from the Bruce collection 

• For an overview of the collection, see WSB Photo. The glass plates are listed under WSB Photo C1 
• Alternatively, browse records for all items via the manuscripts search
• Material relating to the 'Scotia' exhibition (held in the Hunterian Museum, 1979) is shelved at MS Gen 1721
• Photographs from the Scotia Antarctic Expedition (Book of the month: April 2004)
• 'Some new perspectives on the life of William Speirs Bruce (1867- 1921), with a preliminary catalogue of the Bruce collection of manuscripts in the University of Edinburgh'  (Archives of Natural History, 28 (3), 2001, pp 285-311) is held at Sp Coll RQ 1965.
• Papers of W.S. Bruce are held by Edinburgh University Library Special Collections (Gen. 1646-1669) and the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge (William Speirs Bruce Collection)
• See also the Voyage of the Scotia , an on-line exhibition of photographs from the collection of The Royal Scottish Geographical Society at the Glasgow Digital Library.