Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) was a prominent media theorist who taught at the University of St. Michael’s College from 1946 until his death in 1980. The John M. Kelly Library holds a substantial collection of material by and about McLuhan.
The Marshall McLuhan Collection was created in 2010 to mark the centenary of McLuhan’s birth and to celebrate his long association with St. Michael’s College. Much of the collection was formerly part of the University of St. Michael’s College Publications Collection, which includes publications by members of the College’s faculty, staff, and student body.
The collection also includes material from the estate of James Feeley, a librarian and former assistant to McLuhan. Feeley was working on a bibliography of McLuhan’s work, and his extensive collection of material by and about McLuhan was donated to the library in 2008. A small collection of material about Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller, an American engineer, author, designer, inventor, futurist, and McLuhan collaborator, was also donated by Feeley and is included in the McLuhan Collection.
Highlights include rare collector’s items such as a complete set of the DEW-Line Newsletter (1968–1970), as well as inscribed first editions, variant copies, and dust jackets.
The Marshall McLuhan Collection does not include the Marshall McLuhan fonds, which were donated to Library and Archives Canada in 1984 by McLuhan’s widow, Corinne McLuhan.
All items within the McLuhan Collection are listed in the University of Toronto Libraries catalogue.
Marshall McLuhan in other Kelly Library Collections
Marshall McLuhan in the Sheila Watson Library Collection
Marshall McLuhan had a close intellectual and professional relationship with Sheila Watson. He served as an advisor for her dissertation, Wyndham Lewis and Expressionism, completed in 1961, and Watson later worked with McLuhan as a teacher and general assistant.
The Watson Library Collection reflects this association. It includes 116 records that reference McLuhan, including 63 items written by him.
Marshall McLuhan in the Sheila Watson fonds
The Sheila Watson Fonds contains substantial material documenting Watson’s close personal and professional relationship with Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan and his secretary frequently forwarded correspondence to Watson to manage or answer on his behalf, and Watson became a close friend of Marshall and his wife Corinne McLuhan, as well as other members of the McLuhan family.
The fonds includes approximately 75 cm of textual records related to McLuhan, most notably 217 letters and notes from McLuhan to Watson.
Correspondence
The correspondence includes 217 letters and notes from McLuhan, written from Canada, the United States, France, and England. The material includes forwarded correspondence about McLuhan’s letters to the editor of various publications; letters from Anne Wyndham Lewis, the painter’s widow; comments sent to McLuhan by readers of Watson’s Ph.D. thesis; letters from scholars whose ideas McLuhan thought would interest Watson; submissions for a proposed Festschrift for Watson; photocopied excerpts; and newspaper clippings on Wyndham Lewis, theatre, music, media, and the McLuhan family.
The fonds also includes correspondence from Corinne McLuhan, including 199 letters, as well as correspondence from other members of the McLuhan family. In addition, it contains copies of 47 letters between McLuhan and Wyndham Lewis from Cornell University, which Watson had copied as part of her thesis research.
Notebooks
Watson created notebooks as part of her personal and professional work as a writer, Ph.D. student, and professor of English. These notebooks often contain brief page references and quotations from books, journal articles, and magazine columns. Of the 40 notebooks in the Watson fonds, eight relate to McLuhan and date from 1969 to 1986.
Collected Material
Watson collected material about McLuhan both during his lifetime and after his death in 1980, including articles, obituaries, and related publications. For a complete list of Watson’s library items related to McLuhan, see the published works section of the finding guide.
Other Material
The fonds also contains McLuhan’s annotations on some of Watson’s typescripts, Watson’s manuscripts about McLuhan, and essays written about McLuhan for a critical anthology edited by Watson that was never published.
Learn more about the Sheila Watson fonds on Discover Archives.
Marshall McLuhan in the Wilfred Watson fonds
In the early 1960s, Wilfred Watson made contact with Marshall McLuhan and developed a growing interest in McLuhan’s theories, culminating with their collaboration on the study, From Clich to Archetype. The Watson fonds contains four letters as well as an annotated typescript of Watson’s article “McLuhan’s Wordplay” published in The Canadian Forum, v.61, May 1981.
Learn more about the Wilfred Watson fonds on Discover Archives.
Marshall McLuhan in the Fred Flahiff fonds
Fred Flahiff, literary executor for Sheila Watson, wrote the Watson biography Always Someone to Kill the Doves: A Life of Sheila Watson (2005). The fonds contains photocopies and other research material collected by Flahiff in the preparation of the biography, including correspondence between the Sheila Watson and Wilfred Watson with Marshall McLuhan, includes some transcriptions as well as inventories of letters in the Wilfred Watson fonds.
Learn more about the Fred Flahiff fonds on Discover Archives.
Marshall McLuhan in the James Feeley fonds
The Feeley material consists of publications, research notes and correspondence regarding James Feeley’s activities as a bibliographer, specifically his efforts to complete a bibliography of McLuhan’s published articles as well as administrative and working files from Feeley’s position as Explorations Administrator, 1966-1970. Fonds includes 12 Letters to Feeley from Marshall McLuhan, 1964-1965, and 1977.
Learn more about the James Feeley fonds on Discover Archives.
Marshall McLuhan in the USMC Archives and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Archives
The USMC Archives has very few archival records related to McLuhan as the Marshall McLuhan papers and audio-visual material was donated in 1984 to Library and Archives Canada by his widow, Corinne McLuhan. See the finding guide to these records.
Material in the USMC Archives and PIMS includes:
- The Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies archives contains two letters of correspondence between McLuhan and Etienne Gilson and L.K. Shook.
- Film about McLuhan on “Heritage Minute”
- Three photographs
- Pamphlets and William David Sharpe’s notes from “History of English Literature from Dryden to Keats”, taught by McLuhan, 1948-1949.