The Vann Victorian Collection

Professor J. Don Vann was one of the first American scholars to become interested in first editions of Victorian fiction, volumes which would ultimately become valuable literary classics. As a young man in the early 1960s, Don was introduced to the subject by one of his professors who shared a volume with him. It piqued his interest so intently that he switched his area of study from American to British literature and began a lifetime career of researching and acquiring nineteenth-century literary classics. In 1965, curiosity sent him and his wife Dolores on a journey to England where they acquired a first edition of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. Thus began Don Vann’s acquaintance with book dealers, second-hand shops, and other repositories where old, neglected, discarded, and priceless volumes of nineteenth-century novels and periodicals were readily and cheaply available.

Sixty-five years ago very little scholarly attention was paid to Victorian periodical literature. Only an occasional study was published between 1930 and 1950, often simply to satisfy a PhD dissertation requirement. For twenty years, only six periodical studies were published: two books in 1934 and the remaining four in 1939, 1941, 1944, and 1950, respectively. These studies received little attention and less acclaim, testifying to the incredible lack of scholarly interest.¹ When veterans returned to their studies after World War II, they were eager to earn their doctorates and begin careers in academe. These scholars began to realize the extent of periodical publication and its importance for understanding Victorian life and literature.

Beginning in 1965 and extending over the next fifty years, the Vanns made nearly forty journeys to England, always scouting for copies of nineteenth-century classics. Don Vann soon became a careful shopper and one of the early authorities on Victorian print culture. In the late 1950s, Professor Walter E. Houghton of Wellesley College began his work on British periodical history by compiling volume one of The Wellesley Index; this was an important factor in the 1969 formation of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) as well as Victorian Periodicals Newsletter (later Victorian Periodicals Review), the world’s greatest journal on the subject. Vann became the society’s official bibliographer, which increased his interest and expertise in periodical studies and led him to expand his collection of nineteenth-century books and periodicals.

Dolores and J. Don Vann.

Courtesy of the Clark Family Photography Collection, University of North Texas Special Collections.

Through the years, Vann and his wife continued their shopping trips to Great Britain, always searching for reasonably priced early editions of nineteenth-century classics and developing their acquaintance with many of the off-beat booksellers who knew, over time, to set aside some of their best volumes for the couple, particularly early editions of Dickens’s novels. In addition to Bleak House, Vann acquired early editions of The Pickwick Papers (1837), Nicholas Nickelby (1839), A Christmas Carol (1844), Martin Chuzzlewit (1844), Dombey and Son (1846), David Copperfield (1850), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1855), and Our Mutual Friend (1865). In addition to novels, Vann was deeply involved over the years in collecting Dickens’s periodicals, including Master Humphrey’s Clock, All the Year Round, and Household Words. Vann’s collection also includes a 1900 printing of John Forster’s 1872 biography of Dickens.

In addition to collecting Dickens’s novels and periodicals, Vann acquired, sometimes in parts, works written by other Victorian authors, such as Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, Beckett, and The Cup and the Falcon. Thackeray is represented in Vann’s collection with a two-volume edition of Pendennis (1849), Elizabeth Gaskell with Mary Barton (1848), Matthew Arnold with The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems (1849), and George Meredith with One of Our Conquerors (1891). All of these works became part of an astounding collection.

As the collection grew, it became an exceptional resource for the study of Victorian periodical literature for both students and scholars. With this in mind, the Vanns decided to donate a large portion of their holdings to the library at the...