National Library News June 1999 Vol. 31, no. 6

Copp Clark Closes Doors and Opens Book Collection to the National Library of Canada

The National Library of Canada has received a major donation of Copp Clark imprints when Copp Clark Professional, "the last remaining division of Canada's oldest publishing company," ¹ closed its doors in June 1998. The acquisition, consisting of approximately 1800 post-1880 books and almanacs, adds to the National Library's considerable collection strength in educational textbooks and fills gaps in the Library's retrospective Canadiana holdings.

The donation was precipitated by McMaster University Library, which acquired the Copp Clark archives and, in turn, found a receptive home for the books at the National Library of Canada. Copies of the company's 19th-century books had been donated to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, in 1989.

As Copp Clark has played a major role in the history of Canadian publishing, its imprints are an important part of the National Library's Canadiana collection. Copp Clark can be traced to 1841, when Hugh Scobie, a Scot, opened a book and stationery store on King Street East in Toronto. Here he published and edited a newspaper, the British Colonist. In 1847, he produced the first edition of the Canadian Almanac and Directory, which is currently published by IHS/Micromedia. ²The "oldest and most widely used single-volume reference work in Canada", ³ the Canadian Almanac and Directory was also the first annual publication and the fifth title received by the National Library of Canada through legal deposit on February 14, 1953.

In 1869, two employees of the company, William Copp and Henry Clark, purchased control and eventually renamed the company after themselves. A few years earlier, the Ontario government had passed legislation enforcing the use of local textbooks in schools. This encouraged publishers to produce texts in major subject areas. By the early 1900s, Copp Clark had evolved into a major publisher of textbooks, particularly in language arts and mathematics. It had also established its own typesetting, printing, and binding operations.

In addition to its work as an educational publisher Copp Clark acted as an agent for several publishing houses in the United States and the United Kingdom and provided warehousing facilities for other publishers. A number of Copp Clark imprints are rare first Canadian editions of British or American authors. For many years, Copp Clark published L. Frank Baum's Oz series under its imprint. "The copies prepared for Canadian issue generally were modified by substituting a binding bearing a Copp Clark imprint on the spine and by substituting the Copp Clark imprint on the title page for that of Reilly & Britton/Reilly & Lee." ⁴ Copp Clark also published works by such other notable authors as Winston Churchill, G.K. Chesterton, Joseph Conrad, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Galsworthy, G.A. Henty, Washington Irving, Rudyard Kipling, Sinclair Lewis, Sir Walter Scott, Alfred Tennyson, and Edith Wharton. Although Copp Clark was for many years the leading Canadian importer of ‘colonial editions', it also published a number of Canadian authors, including such as, Gilbert Parker, Robert Barr, Charles G.D. Roberts, and Sara Jeannette Duncan. ⁵

The National Library selectively acquires publishers' papers as part of its Canadian Literary Manuscript collection. These are generally the papers of small press or independent publishers who contribute to the development of the Canadian literary heritage. Publishers' archives held by the National Library include: Sono Nis Press, Blackfish Press, Oolichan Books, Gauntlet Press, the House of Anansi Press, Coach House Press, and Éditions du Sentier.

1 Copp Clark purchased the Canadian Almanac and Directory Publishing Company in 1996 and the new company was renamed Copp Clark Professional. Source: Simon Fraser's Canadian Publishers' Records Database (http://www.lib.sfu.ca/cgi-bin/trust1.pl?cprd), CPRD ID: 0180.