Guide to the Toole-Stott Circus Collection, ca. 1886-1970
Project archivist: David Tambo;
machine-readable finding aid created by David Seubert
Department of Special Collections
Davidson Library
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone: (805) 893-3062
Fax: (805) 893-5749
Email: special@library.ucsb.edu
URL: http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/speccoll.html
© 1999
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Guide to the Toole-Stott Circus Collection, ca. 1886-1970
Collection number: PA Mss 14
Department of Special Collections
Davidson Library
University of California, Santa Barbara
Contact Information:
- Department of Special Collections
- Davidson Library
- University of California, Santa Barbara
- Santa Barbara, CA 93106
- Phone: (805) 893-3062
- Fax: (805) 893-5749
- Email: special@library.ucsb.edu
- URL: http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/speccoll.html
- Project Archivist:
- David Tambo
- Date Completed:
- April 23, 1998
- Encoded by:
- David Seubert
© 1999 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Descriptive Summary
Title: Toole-Stott Circus Collection,
Date (inclusive): ca. 1886-1970
Collection number: PA Mss 14
Creator: Toole-Stott, Raymond, 1910-1982
Extent: 42 boxes (26 lf)
Repository:
University of California, Santa Barbara. Library. Dept. of Special Collections
Shelf location: For current information on the location of these
materials, please consult the library's online catalog.
Abstract: Collection of author Raymond Toole-Stott, author of
Circus and Allied Arts: A World Bibliography.
Collection includes correspondence, monographs, book drafts, printed ephemera and scrapbooks relating to the circus.
Language:
English.
Administrative Information
Provenance
Library Purchase, 1972.
Restrictions
None.
Publication Rights
Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish or
quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given
on behalf of the Department of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply
permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], Toole-Stott Circus Collection, PA Mss 14, Department of Special Collections, University Libraries,
University of California, Santa Barbara.
Biography
This collection was assembled by Raymond Toole-Stott (1910-1982), British author, journalist and compiler of the multi-volume
Circus and Allied Arts: A World Bibliography, as well as other writings on the circus, conjuring, and Somerset Maugham. Toole-Stott also worked as a free-lance journalist
for twenty years, eight of which he spent as the Chief Feature writer to Bertram Mills Circus at Olympia. During a few seasons
in the 1930s, he managed a circus on his own.
Among his other credits, Toole-Stott was the founder and original editor of the
Sawdust Review, a precursor to the British circus journal
King Pole. Recognized as the pre-eminent historian/bibliographer on the circus, he spent the later part of his life collecting numerous
books related to the circus, while compiling and writing his four-volume bibliography. Toole-Stott's accomplishments as a
scholar and circus aficionado are particularly notable, considering that he worked full time in the Treasury Solicitor's office
as a civil servant. Prior to his death in 1982, he had started to write the fifth volume in
Circus and Allied Arts series, which has since been published posthumously.
Scope and Content
The collection consists of a manuscript component and a larger book collection of several hundred volumes, both of which are
housed in Special Collections.
The manuscript holdings have been partially arranged and described. The following is a preliminary box level inventory of
the collection.
Box 2-3
Correspondence (includes other research material and working papers)
Circus and Allied Arts (includes typescripts, proofs and reviews)
Box 8
Vols. 1-4 (bound carbon copies)
Box 10
Page proofs and typescripts (unsorted)
Box 11
Manuscript writings by others
Box 12
L'Union des Historiens du Cirque (U.H.C.) Etudes (4 bound volumes containing ca. 75 articles and essays by various authors, generally inscribed)
Box 13-17
Children's books (uncataloged)
Box 18-20
Serials (uncataloged; includes single or scattered issues of late nineteenth and early twentieth century boys' magazines such
as
Beadle's Boy's Library,
Beadle's Half Dime Library,
Brave and Bold,
Diamond Dick, Jr. - The Boys' Best Weekly,
Fame & Fortune Weekly,
The Five Cent Wide Aware Library,
Pluck and Luck,
and Sawdust Ring)
Box 21-26
Pamphlets, programs, leaflets and other printed ephemera
Box 29
Research Materials (including notebooks)
Separations (material, including correspondence, removed from books cataloged separately in the Toole-Stott Collection)
Box 32
Photographs (includes a few b/w negatives)
Box 36
Circus and Allied Arts (galley proofs)
Box 37
Monographs, portfolio, children's books, poster
Box 38-39
Research materials (mostly photostats and artwork)
Box 42
Clippings (some on disbound scrapbook pages)
