About Victoria University Library

Since Victoria University was founded in 1836 in Cobourg, Ontario, the library has always been an integral part of Vic life. After Vic’s move to Toronto in 1892, the Alumni Hall in Old Vic was its first home until the Birge–Carnegie Library was built in 1910. The library moved again fifty years later, when the E.J. Pratt Library was opened.

Today, the Victoria University Library comprises the holdings of the Emmanuel College Library, established in 1928 and one of the most beautiful libraries at the University of Toronto, and the E.J. Pratt Library, which opened in 1960 and was completely renovated in 2001 to serve the needs of twenty–first century users. The combined services of both libraries are a splendid resource for students, faculty and scholars from the University of Toronto and beyond.

Victoria University’s library general holdings are enhanced by major special collections of rare books and manuscripts, ranging from Canadiana to Wesleyana in subject matter. Notable items include manuscripts and books by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, E.J. Pratt, Northrop Frye, Virginia Woolf and other Bloomsbury Group writers and artists, various personal archives, including those of the filmmaker Norman Jewison, and the Erasmus Collection at the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies.