Humour Collection: Home

The concept 'humour' is wider than the term may suggest. The collection contains: c.6000 books, of which c.100 are 18th – 19th century books and the remainder are 20th century. The 1981 donation is added to regularly. As well as humorous and humour-related books and magazines, the collection contains books on the arts, social sciences, science, and medicine, journals and AV material.

The seed collection was a bequest from Herbert J Cummings. As part of the bequest was a fund to support Humour material acquisition Within this Cummings material c.20 are 19th century and the remainder are 20th century. Cummings’ collections is predominantly books with 13 serials.

Possible future subject and collecting strands include:

• Irish Comic Tradition (Gaelic and English Language see Vivian Mercier’s The Irish Comic Tradition) 
• Irish Literary tradition 
• Links to 19th century travel / historical accounts
• Philosophy of Humour 
• Psychology of Humour 

The collection prefix before the call number is: Humour.

The collection is open.

This collection of books and journals with a common theme of humour was acquired by the Library in 1981. The donation was of Workshop Library of World Humour and was originally the library of Herbert J Cummings. These 1977 items in the collection bear his bookplate.