Scarfe-La Trobe Collection of Spanish Plays

The collection comprises nearly 2,000 items consisting of 1,068 plays (with 904 duplicates), ranging in date from the 17th to the end of the 19th centuries. Representing a wide range of dramatic genres, a large proportion are comedias sueltas, that is, plays that were printed separately for sale in pamphlet form; a smaller number are desglosadas - plays printed to form part of (mainly) 17th century volumes; such volumes normally contained 12 plays, but they were also made available ‘disbound’ for sale as single items.

In all, the work of more than 200 different dramatists is represented. Amongst numerous others, the playwrights include:

• Lope de Vega (1562-1635)
• Cervantes (1547-1616)
• Calderón (1600-1681) (over a hundred of his titles are included)
• Tirso de Molina (1571?-1648)
• Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla (1607-1648)
• Agustín Moreto (1618-1669)

Purchased from Bruno Scarfe, formerly of La Trobe University, in 2003 with help from the National Fund for Acquisitions, University of Glasgow Chancellor’s Fund, the Friends of University of Glasgow Library, the Faculty of Arts Library Discretionary Fund and the Principal’s Strategic Development Fund.

How to find material from the Scarfe-La Trobe Collection

• Browse through a list of items in the collection (Sp Coll Scarfe) or use the rare books search to locate an item.
• Bruno Scarfe's original typescript catalogue (ordered by title with an author index) and other notes on the collection are shelved at the end of the Scarfe collection.
• For a comprehensive survey of the collection, see Bruno Scarfe '17th to 19th Century editions of Spanish drama: a personal collection' Bulletin of the Comediantes Vol. 29, 1977, pp.126-135 (Scarfe Offprints 1).
• See also: Bruno Scarfe 'A role for watermarks in bibliographical description, with special reference to a collection of Spanish dramatic items' Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand: Bulletin No. 12 (Vol. 3, No. 3), May 1978, pp. 85-101 (Scarfe Offprints 2).

See also the following 'book of the month' article that features the Scarfe-La Trobe Collection:

• Scarfe-La Trobe Spanish plays Spain : [various dates] (Book of the month: April 2003)