National Library Home > News & Events
Gateways

The Marcie Muir Collection

Marcie Muir in her Adelaide home, c.1970

A selection from the Marcie Muir collection

From left: Rory Muir, Kathie Muir, Jan Fullerton, Margy Burn and Chris Foster celebrate the arrival of the collection at the Library

In its largest acquisition for more than 20 years, the National Library of Australia recently purchased the Marcie Muir collection of Australian children’s literature—all 6700-plus pieces of it.

The collection features a lifetime of work by Muir, the champion of Australian children’s literature and renowned bibliographer. The Library acquired it after the death of Muir in 2007, from her children, Kathie and Rory.

At a recent special event to mark the collection’s arrival at the Library, Dr Kathie Muir said her mother would have been pleased for it to find its new home in the nation’s leading collecting institution where, once the enormous task of cataloguing was completed, it would be available for all Australians to see and enjoy.

The Director-General of the National Library, Jan Fullerton, described it as a remarkable collector’s collection of Australian children’s literature. 'It is as important to us as it is for the Muir family for this special Australian collection to be stored and cared for in one place—and to be made available to all Australians,' said Ms Fullerton.

Marcie Muir’s passion was to collect and record every children’s book published in Australia and those published overseas with a link to Australia. But she did not draw the line at books: letters, manuscripts, cards and other ephemera items, including board games, fabric and soap were also on her list, as long as they had a link to Australian children’s books. 

It also helped that Muir was married to and worked with bookseller Harry Muir, who ran the Beck Book Co. from 1939 to 1978. He was also the founder of Wakefield Press.

When Muir gave up working in the bookshop after the birth of her first child, her husband encouraged her to start researching Australian children’s literature and suggested that a bibliography was needed. Kathie was to say later that her mother believed the research project was a worthwhile idea but that she didn’t expect it to take more than a couple of years to fulfil. But, as the bookshelves in the family’s Adelaide home started to edge closer towards the sky, it became clear that Muir’s work was going to take a little longer than previously thought—a lifetime in fact.

Muir’s work culminated in A Bibliography of Australian Children’s Literature (two volumes, 1970 and 1976), followed by Australian Children’s Books: A Bibliography with Kerry White (1992), Australian Children’s Book Illustration in 1976 and The History of Australian Children’s Book Illustration in 1982. Muir also edited a volume of Australian stories for children and an anthology of South Australian writing for children.

As a result of this meticulous work, Marcie Muir became the standard-bearer when it came to researching the publication of Australian children’s literature. If the book wasn’t ’in Muir’, chances are it wasn’t anywhere else.

Muir’s collecting passion and her subsequent knowledge of the genre also led her to establish that the anonymous author of the first children’s book to be published in Australia, A Mother’s Offering to Her Children, was Charlotte Barton. Although Muir was unable to secure a copy of the book in her lifetime, her collection’s new home, the National Library,  boasts a first edition copy.

Work is currently under way at the Library to catalogue the collection, a huge undertaking as Muir loved to collect every known copy of a book, many with only the slightest of differences. One of her goals was to collect every copy of The Magic Pudding—she succeeded with more than 80 all collected for a different reason, including the special El Pudding Magico (1988), from Spain. Coles’ picture books were also a favourite as was Ethel Turner’s classic Seven Little Australians, with her collection, including a brightly illustrated copy of Sette Piccolo Australiani, published in Italy in 1955.

Marcie Muir collected everything that was quintessentially Australian. From a story about a family of kangaroos running the local corner store, to just about everything with Gumnut Babies on it, and from Boy's Own adventures to the The Adventures of Chunder Loo.

The range of books, documents and ephemera in the Marcie Muir collection begins in the latter part of the eighteenth century and stretches right up to the twentieth century. It also includes unpublished writings by Muir, correspondence to and from authors, such as P.L.Travers, the Australian author of Mary Poppins, floppy discs, colour slides of book illustrations, cassette tapes and more.

When the cataloguing is completed, the Marcie Muir collection will be available to visitors to the Library.

Sally Hopman
Media Liaison Manager, Communications & Marketing

Marcie Muir and Her Magnificent Collection (189KB PDF File)