J. Viktor Johansson Rydberg Collection

About the collection

The J. Viktor Johansson Rydberg Collection includes works by and about author Viktor Rydberg (note that the collector and author are two different people). Among the materials are collected works, works by Rydberg in Swedish (including various contributions), translations of Rydberg's works, writings on the author himself, and various Rydbergiana in the form of postcards, photos and letters. In addition, there is one archival box of press clippings. The collection amounts to 446 catalogue posts, but as some of these are collection posts, the number of actual volumes is larger: closer to 475 or thereabouts.  

The inventory that was made at the time of the donation includes one error. It claims the donation includes a copy of Vapensmeden published by Hans Lindström in 1955. However, this publication has not been verified, and further does not align with Lindström's publication of Rydberg's works at the time, which included Vampyren and Positivspelarne (both from 1957), two early works by Rydberg.

Below is a selection of the contents of the collection, which aims to show its impressive scope, as well as highlight a few interesting or curious objects. Collector J. Viktor Johansson himself felt some of these merited particular consideration. 

Tomtebissen
Among the personal favourites of J. Viktor was the Tomtebissen: ”As the number one item of the collection is the Tomtebissen magazine […] The copy of this extraordinarily rare publication is entirely complete, but rather soiled and badly worn." Tomtebissen was a satirical magazine published in Gothenburg in 1857. Rydberg was one of its two editors.

Singoalla

In 1857 Singoalla was printed for the first time, not as a book but as the main contribution to the Gothenburg calendar Aurora, in the 1858 issue. J. Viktor had one, as he described it, "rather badly worn copy" which he presumed had been cut out from Aurora. As he was about to have the book bound, he discovered the fragment of a spine title. The title on the fragment lacked the initial letters, and read "...way carriage". After a certain amount of detective work, J. Viktor found that  publisher and printer C. F. Arwidsson in Gothenburg had removed the first signature (equal to the first 16 pages) from the remainder edition of Aurora from 1858, and printed a new signature featuring Pehr Thomasson's En läserska and then collated the material for a new edition in the series Riksdalerböcker för resor, no. 33, printed in 1864 with the spine title In the railway carriage. This anecdote illustrates J. Viktor as a book collector and scholar, and provides a glimpse of the 19^th century publishing industry. 

Old Jönköping

J. Viktor was equally pleased with an offprint of Det forna Jönköping from the Svea calendar for 1880. On the cover, Rydberg has written ”To Syssi from her Jönköping-Vicke-Vinge”. Syssi was Rydberg's wife, Susen. In the book are a number of blank pages inserted, with notes by Rydberg concerning Vapensmeden. In these notes, however, the armourer of the title is referred to as "Cuirass-maker and painter Gudmundsson”. Further, the book constituted a gift from bookseller Erik Ohlson to J. Viktor on the latter's 50^th birthday. The volume has been bound by Gustaf Hedberg and outfitted with a pasted-in photo of Viktor Rydberg, taken in the 1870s. At the back of the photo, Rydberg has written: "To a kind lady of the audience, from the original." 

Manuscripts

The collection includes a number of manuscripts by Rydberg. These are the poems Barndomspoesien and Jungfru Maria i rosengård. Antiquarian booksellers Björck & Börjesson in Stockholm had acquired these, purchased from an heir of Malla Grandinson (publisher of, among other things, the autobiography of Malla Silfverstolpe) and felt obliged to extend first right of refusal to J. Viktor, at a "reasonable price". J. Viktor wrote in a letter to Björck & Börjesson, that despite it being in the middle of Christmas week, 1955, he could not resist this offer, but made the manuscripts a Christmas gift to himself. The price amounted to 200 SEK, and with a 10 % discount to 180 SEK. As he notes himself: ”They hold no great significance for the Rydberg text, thought they do not fully align with other manuscipts or printed versions of the poems, but then again this is rarely if ever the case when it comes to Rydberg."

Trial prints
One archival box has a number of typographical variants of what is said to be trial prints of the fifth edition of Singoalla. However, the prints are unrelated to this edition, but constitute competition submissions for the general Scandinavian prize competition for typesetters and printers, 1906, announced in the 1905 issue of Nordisk Boktryckarekonst, vol. 11, p. 418 f. The print includes the title page and body of text (4 pages in all) for Viktor Rydberg's Singoalla, fifth edition, 1905. The submissions to the contest come from various printing houses, 24 in all. They provide an ample picture of the span of typographical production at this time, on the verge between the style of the 19^th century and the breakthrough of Modernism in the 1920s. 

Letters
Among the collection's curiosities is a letter from Fredrika Bremer to Viktor Rydberg where she requests a visit in May 1862. ”If you would come for a while this evening, you will meet two men whose acquaintances would be of interest to you! If it proves quite impossible - could you not go later to the other venue? - Then give me the pleasure of seeing you for a while tomorrow around one o'clock! You are most warmly welcomed by an honest admirer of the last Athenian." Fredrika Bremer received her visit a week later, according to J. Viktor who refers to Rydberg's letters, published in 1923-26.

Unbound editions
In the 19^th century, books were often issued as unbound booklets. The buyer would then take the booklets to a bookbinder, who would provide a hardcover for the book and bind the booklets. Considering this was the usual procedure, very few intact copies of such booklets remain in their as yet unbound state. The collection includes one unbound booklet edition of a Danish translation of Fribytaren på Östersjön in excellent condition: Fribytteren paa Østersøen; romantisk fortaelling af Viktor Rydberg, Folkeudgave ved Otto Borchsenius. 1878, 36 volumes, 740 pages in all.

Dedications
The collection includes many dedications. The majority of these are made to J. Viktor himself, but there are many others that are interesting in different ways. Among other titles, the Bref till en samvetsgrann vän, som genom att läsa V. R:s s. k. bibellära om Kristus [...] / af P. Wieselgren, which is dedicated to Susen Hasselblad, the woman Viktor Rydberg would eventually marry. In Läsning för barn by Zacharias Topelius is an indirect dedication branching widely indeed. The book is a gift to Elsa Stenhammar from ”her friends Viktor and Susen Rydberg”. Elsa Stenhammar is in this case the Elsa who would grow up to become a singer, organist and choir leader, cousin of composer Wilhelm Stenhammar and niece of composer and organist Elfrida Andrée. It was likely through Elfrida Andrée the Rydbergs made Elsa's acquaintance, as Rydberg was a good friend of Andrée, a friendship that surfaces in several dedicated editions from Rydberg to Andrée. In the collection are also a number of Elfrida Andrées musical settings of Rydberg's poems.

Translations
The translations indicate the international dissemination of Rydberg's works in his lifetime. In the collection are 15 of his more extensive works and some of his poems, translated to Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Dutch, Polish and Latin. Singoalla is the most frequently translated work, by the most prolific Rydberg translator, Josef Fredbärj. Singoalla is available in English, French, Italian and Spanish. Fredbärj has made additional Rydberg translations to German, but these do not include Singoalla.

Rydbergiana
The Rydbergiana constitutes a smaller portion of the collection, and includes various materials such as photos, a watercolour, letters from Susen Rydberg to chief accountant J. Wallinder, silhouette drawings and so on. Here, too, are books that were once in Rydberg's own possession, including Skilda toner, poems by Ernst Beckman, with Beckman's dedication to Rydberg. Here, too, is the Choleran i sin ryslighet, eller alfabetisk förtekning på 684 personer, de flesta medlemmar af Jönköpings stads och slotts församlingar, hvilka under augusti och september månader 1834, afledo i denna farsot. This volume from 1835 notes Viktor Rydberg's mother as one of the victims of the cholera outbreak in question: ”Rydberg, Hedwig Christ., née Duker, 39 yo.”

Among the books once belonging to Rydberg is the Archombrotus et theopompus sive argenedis from 1669, which was in his possession already during his time at the Växjö gymnasium. The book later became a New Years' gift made in January 1942 to J. Viktor from Erik Ohlson, one half of Thulin & Ohlson. Erik Ohlson was not entirely sure that Rydberg had really owned the book. He writes: ”It cannot be entirely ruled out that this is in fact a completely unrelated Rydberg, but could it be possible that two fathers may have named their sons Abraham? Ruthless!" As it stands, J. Viktor was later able to verify the names written on the inside of the cover, as belonging to classmates of the relevant Rydberg. The book can be considered having most likely been his own. As an aside, Rydberg experimented with his signature on the back of the title page.  Another curiosity is that this copy has also belonged to field secretary, later academy treasurer and printer Carl Fredrik Berling, son of Christian Fredrik Berling who owned the Berling printing house in Lund.

What the collection tells us
It is always difficult to state anything about the supposed value of a collection. From the viewpoint of book history there are a few aspects, including the one noted by J. Viktor: ”Placing next to one another the first edition of Den siste Athenaren with [the] inferior typography used by Handelstidningen for serials with some adjustments, and the 1880 luxury edition with the author's steel plate portrait […] highlights in a way Rydberg's radically changed position over the past twenty-one years, from an unknown countryside publicist to the great national poet, honorary doctor, one of the Eighteen [members of the Swedish Academy]." 

In its entirety, the collection opens a broad avenue into the writings of Viktor Rydberg, which, in this context, also paint a portrait of Rydberg as a significant cultural personage, as well as of the publishing and printing history pertaining to him. It further provides insight into the medial landscape that a person such as Rydberg might have navigated, with a wealth of contributions to calendars, newspapers, magazines, journals, introductions and postscripts. The dedications in themselves provide a glimpse of Rydberg's contacts and relations, as well as many additional clues to the networks where they belonged. 

The library has a general tendency to bind books, sometimes many times over, and in this process, covers and other features that are not part of the original text are sometimes left out. The Rydberg Collection retains a great many such features. Finally, the collection portrays J. Viktor Johansson himself, as a book collector - one of those who, in his time, contributed actively to greater awareness of book collecting, and the value of originals in a collection. 

Biography

Johan Viktor Johansson, or J. Viktor as he chose to call himself, was born on December 22^nd, 1888 in the works community of Åmmeberg in Örebro county. His childhood was, according to himself, plain but not poor, however with no academic tradition nor any books. The family moved to Gothenburg in 1897. During his years attending elementary school on Hisingen, the teacher realised that J. Viktor had a penchant for studies, and thanks to her efforts, he was transferred to the secondary grammar school. It was here he was "enamoured of the world of books".  In 1908 he was enrolled at the Gothenburg college, and earned the doctorate degree in 1927 with a dissertation on Denis Diderot.

Previously, he had also found work at the then Gothenburg city library, currently the University Library. He began as a substitute for assistant librarian Robert Olsson who took part in the Olympic Games of 1912 to compete in the hammer throw event and to carry the flag during the opening ceremony. This substitute position was followed for another few years by other temporary employment before J. Viktor was permanently hired by the library in 1915, as assistant librarian. In 1919 he was made Second Librarian, and First Librarian in 1930. He served as head of the Manuscript Section for over 20 years. 

J. Viktor writes that Viktor Rydberg was not a favourite author of his youth, but that he was rather one of those authors "ruined by the school". Rydberg was held forth as a "canonized ideal figure", which was hard for J. Viktor to embrace, and he credits literary historian Victor Svanberg for having meritoriously "brought [Rydberg] back down to earth." It was only after this that J. Viktor developed a more personal interest in Rydberg and began collecting works by and about him. 

At the time of his death, J. Viktor's private library consisted of some 6 500 volumes and over 2 000 small prints. The material was largely Swedish, and fell into three main sections: bibliography, history of literature, and belles-lettres. The bulk of the material was sold, as per his own wish, through book auction house Stockholms bokauktionskammare. However, J. Viktor wished to place the Rydberg Collection at a public library, as the collection holds "quite a few dedicated copies, bound books and books with original covers." 

J. Viktor was a prolific author. His bibliography, as detailed in Boksamlande och forskning amounts to 142 titles. Among the books he wrote or contributed to, the Försvar för boksamlaren (1943) and its second, considerably enlarged edition (1958) be the most widely read. Concerning the Rydberg Collection, J. Viktor himself has penned the most extensive text on the subject, En biblioteksman bland sina böcker which constitutes a chapter in Försvar för boksamlaren. Here, he describes the Rydberg Collection, and the text is recommended for a more in-depth rendition of the material.

Read more

Engström, Gösta. Fil. dr. J. Viktor Johanssons Viktor Rydbergssamling i Göteborgs universitetsbibliotek. 1968.

Engström, Gösta. J. Viktor Johanssons Viktor-Rydbergs-samling i Göteborgs universitetsbibliotek : katalog. 1971.

Johansson, J. Viktor, Boksamlande och forskning: valda uppsatser utgivna som minnesskrift, Elander, Göteborg, 1971.

Johansson, J. Viktor, Försvar för boksamlaren: fyra uppsatser om böcker, Wahlström & Widstrand, Stockholm, 1943.

Johansson, J. Viktor, Försvar för boksamlaren: fyra uppsatser om böcker, New, revised and expanded ed., Wahlström & Widstrand, Stockholm, 1958.

J. Viktor Johansson's Rydberg Collection (Inventory): http://hdl.handle.net/2077/39136

Suggested research topics

• An overview of the collection's contents. What is represented here, and how does it mirror the time and context of the material? 
• Biographical research 
• Rydbergiana outside Sweden: translations, reception. 

Please contact us if you have any suggested research topics you would like to share!