Friday, Mar 22, 2024

The 2023/24 Archives Fine Books National Book Collecting Prize for Young Australians has been awarded to Nadeem Toodayan for his entry “An Oslerian Obsession, or, Broodings of a Brisbane Bibliophile”.

Nadeem Toodayan is a physician trainee with long standing interests in William Osler (1849-1919) and the history of medicine and is a foundation member of The William Osler Society of Australia and New Zealand (WOSANZ). As he writes in his essay, “It would be difficult for me to talk in measured terms about the abiding influence of Osler’s life and work in medicine on my own career attitudes and professional outlook.” The judges were impressed with his passion, polish, research, the gradual narrowing of his collecting focus and the consistency of his cataloguing.

Nadeem’s journey into collecting started during his student years when he became fascinated with accounts written by the physicians he was learning about. He would download and consume pdf versions of the works of Addison, Hodgkins and Cushing. As he describes it, “I was completely enthralled by the clinical mastery and literary erudition of these works, reading them several times over. Little did I know at this time that it was possible to purchase the originals.”

Receiving a biography of Osler turned him from pdfs to books. He initially began to collect the Medical Classics published by Gryphon but soon desired more: “[W]hat good are all these facsimiles without the originals? And what good is an original without a first edition? And what good is a first edition without a dust wrapper? And what good is all of that without the author’s inscription? Year by year, the “bibliomania” virus slowly set in, and I found it increasingly difficult to resist increasingly frequent purchases.” 

In the past decade Nadeem’s Osler collection has grown to rival and even overtake the Osler holdings of the Royal Australasian College of Physician’s (RACP) History of Medicine Library. We congratulate Nadeem on winning this year’s prize and we wish him all the best for his future collecting pursuits.

Read Nadeem's prize-winning entry here.

Nadeem had strong competition which led to the judges awarding two Honourable Mentions. The first went to Fraser Thompson of South Australia for his entry, “Paper Senseis, The creation of the Budo Hozon Toshokan 武 道 保 存 図 書 館”. Fraser has a grand vision to create a martial arts preservation library and views his collecting as an extension of his own Karate practice. The second went to Olivia Cameron of Queensland for her entry, “Bound to be a Book Collector”. Olivia’s collection focuses on 19^th and early 20^th century editions of the English and French writers she likes. What struck the judges was her poetic essay, her research of provenance and the ambition of her wish list.

A special mention was also made of our youngest entrant, Lucy Petersen, for her entry, “The Good Companions: A collection of classics printed before 1960”. Lucy wrote with humour and whimsy and the judges were surprised and delighted when it was revealed that this budding collector was only 13 when she applied.

 

We wish all the applicants well in their future book collecting.

 

The Prize:

• A $250 voucher to spend at Archives Fine Books;
• A domestic flight to one of the ANZAAB Rare Book Fairs and a further $250 to spend at the fair;
• A one-year membership to the Bibliographic Society of Australia and New Zealand;
• A two-year membership to the Book Collectors’ Society of Australia.

 

 

The Judging panel for the 2023/24 Prize consisted of Dr. Dawn Albinger and Hamish Alcorn of Archives Fine Books, Simon Farley, Fryer Library Rare Book Librarian (UQ) and President of the Bibliographic Society of Australia and New Zealand (BSANZ) and Jörn Harbeck, Bookman since 1984.

 

We’d like to thank our partners in awarding the Prize: The Bibliographic Society of Australia and New Zealand (BSANZ) and The Book Collectors’ Society of Australia (BCSA).