Don’t forget you can make your own suggestions via the book at the front desk – or just get in touch with library staff. The Book Selection Working Group meets three times a year and considers all suggestions.
If you’d like to read anything on the lists, just contact library staff and we’ll reserve it for you.
New Fiction in the library – as at March 2026
New Non-Fiction in the library –as at March 2026
Library member Diana Wayne sought information and inspiration from the library whilst planning her rail trip in Canada last Summer. Searching our shelves, Diana found just the thing – and wrote this wonderful story about the book she discovered and her travels…
“Dear Librarians at Morrab Library,
Firstly, I sincerely apologise for keeping a book for so long without renewing it. I have now renewed it again. When I lifted this book off the shelves, it was as if it should stay with me and as I type this, it sits next to me like a cat needing to be stroked.
Before I went away, I had acquired a fairly modern guide book for my trip to Canada, from the Clarence House Therapy Centre Fundraising Book selection in the Waiting Room, another source for discerning reading matter. That book had lists of facts, stock photographs and maps, but it had no heart.
I visited the Morrab Library, hoping to find something else about the destination because I planned to keep a pictorial diary of the journey. With only a few feet of Canadian information, the designated shelf looked uninviting, but it felt like a personal invitation to reach out to this particular book. A torn cover, a preface dated 1926, with anecdotes from the early 1800s and thick, soft, tactile pages, this book seemed just what I needed to enhance my journey. I had no idea, at that time, how much it would illuminate my own travel and my notebook.
Author, Lawence J. Burpee wrote ‘On the Old Athabaska Trail’ about his own experiences a hundred years ago, while comparing them to previous travellers through that particular part of the Rocky Mountains a hundred years before that.
Every page is riveting, for instance page 182:
‘The Indians in the neighbourhood of Jasper House numbered only about fifteen or twenty. They were, according to Kane, of the Shoo-Schawp (Shuswap) tribe, of whom he made a sketch, was called Capote Blanc by the voyageurs. His real home was a long distance to the north-east (Kane must have meant to say south-west), but ’he had been treacherously entrapped whilst travelling with thirty-seven of his people, by a hostile tribe, which met him and invited him to sit down and smoke the pipe of peace. They unsuspectingly laid down their arms but before they had time to smoke their treacherous hosts seized their arms and murdered all except eleven, who managed to escape, and fled to Jasper House, where they remained, never daring to return to their own country through the hostile tribe’.…
‘A day or too later they started up the valley of Athabaska, with thirteen loaded horses…..’
How could I resist? I hoped that my travels might include these places.
I read the book twice before leaving for Canada, and made copious notes, but in the end, it made its way into my hand luggage.
I loved the anecdotes: like the mountain that was named twice by early European travellers, because they had approached it from different directions. Of course, the original indigenous names were usually ignored.
The book was giving me a real insight into those Canadian years.
I started to acquire large scale maps and then I realised that we would be staying at the town of Jasper, regularly mentioned in the book. Familiar names, apart from Athabaska, started to leap out at me, like the Kootenay, one of the names for the original local people, who would trade with Burpee.
From arriving in east Canada, our journey took thirteen days of rail travel and city touring to reach the mountains and the Athabaska River at the town of Jasper.
And there it was, a short walk beyond the railway line and amidst the elks and the prairie dogs, made longer by having to wait at a rail crossing for about 200 freight wagons to pass.
It was hidden in a canyon that was hard to reach, but it was still there.
I wanted to use the book to compare with aspects of the modern Jasper, but last year a major fire burnt down half of the town and over 80 thousand acres of surrounding forest.
A typical passage on Page 182 about the Athabaska Falls reads:
‘It hurls itself into a gloomy, awe-inspiring cavern, writhes itself there in a fury for a moment, and then flips itself down a tortuous gorge. The sullen roar of its passage could be heard while we were still down the Trail.’ Lawrence J Burpee 1926
Ross Cox went through the Pass in 1817 on page 91
The Falls are just the same today, except for the safety rails for visitors.
Now tour buses follow parts of the same Athabaska route through the mountains, with the odd bear or moose waiting in a layby for a snack. I found the places that I wished for and are still the highlight of my journey.
Niagara Falls was interesting, but Athabaska Falls will stay with me.
Thank you Morrab Library.”
Diana Wayne, July 2025
We are excited to tell you about a special new addition to the library – a purpose built display case. This will allow us to install a rotating exhibition of rare and important treasures from our book and archive collections, which are usually kept locked away in secure and environmentally protected storage. You’ll find it on the first floor at the top of the staircase.
We wanted to find a way to ensure that our members and visitors not only knew about the special collections we hold in the library, but to be able to see and learn about them.
This new display case came to us via a bequest from the late Dr. Stephen Clark, much-loved life member, volunteer and former Trustee, who passed away on the 2nd of March, 2022. Steve loved the Morrab Library, volunteering for reception desk duty, joining the library’s Book Selection Committee, as well as being a founding member of the Library’s Poetry Group. His fresh-baked cakes were legendary. You can read more about Steve here.
Our biggest dilemma was deciding which of our collections we would display first, from a choice of hundreds. We settled on Henry VIII’s Great Bible of 1539. A donation to the library, it is a significant historical work, and asks all sorts of questions about when it came to the library and from whom. It is just one of thousands of historical books held in our special collections. Members and researchers are welcome to view these books, by appointment. And while we wait for them to be listed electronically through our library management system, KOHA, in the next few years, they are currently searchable in our card catalogue, and we also hold a separate listing. Staff will be able to help you discover our holdings.
We look forward to bringing you treasures from the collections in the coming months.
Read on to find out more about this important work.
The Great Bible (London), 1539
E220.5201
The Great Bible, so called because of its size, was the first royally commissioned printed Bible in English. The title page shows Henry VIII, seated on his throne, presenting a Bible in either hand to clerics on the one side and laymen on the other. Below to the left and right are Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Thomas Cromwell distributing Bibles. This picture conveyed an important political message: that the Pope’s authority over the Church in England had been replaced by Henry VIII’s royal supremacy, and that the Bible should be accessible to the poorest subjects in the realm.
Despite the best efforts of one of our volunteers, we weren’t able to establish the complete provenance of the copy we hold, although we do know it belonged to the Borlase family, with a George Borlase of Penzance signing his name in it in 1758, near to what appears to be a calculation of the age of the Bible at the time of ownership (1758-1539 = 219). George’s signature appears again with a date beginning “175”, but during later conservation the recto side of the page was severed, cutting off the last number.
The most likely George Borlase of Penzance is the son of John Borlase of Pendeen (1666-1755). The latter was also the father of Walter Borlase of Castle Horneck and William Borlase of Ludgvan. George was born in St Just in 1697, lived in Penzance, and died in Kent in 1769.
The frontispiece of the Bible has the arms of the Borlase family with ‘John Borlase of Helston’ written below. There are two possible owners of this bookplate . One, John Borlase (1764-1844), was an attorney, the son of George Borlase b. 1725. The latter was the son of the aforementioned George Borlase.
The second was John Borlase (1795-1879), a surgeon in Helston. He was the son of John Bingham Borlase (1753-1813), whose father was Walter Borlase, who was the son of the aforementioned George who signed the Bible.
All available copies of the Borlase family’s Wills have been examined but no mention of the Great Bible is made in any of them.
Information courtesy of Kay Line, Library volunteer, March 2026.
Photo: Ian Kingsnorth
We are excited to say that The Sunday Times has named The Morrab Library as one of the UK’s most enchanting libraries! We are in some illustrious company too.
Of course, it’s no secret to those who already know about our beloved library, but now many more people know too!
Click on these links to see the lists of books purchased by the library in the Autumn and Winter of 2025.
Don’t forget you can make your own suggestions via the book at the front desk – or just get in touch with library staff. The Book Selection Committee meets three times a year and considers all suggestions.
If you’d like to read anything on the lists, just contact library staff and we’ll reserve it for you.
New Fiction purchased for The Morrab Library – Autumn/Winter 2025
New Non-Fiction purchased for The Morrab Library – Autumn/Winter 2025