Frank W. Tober papers

The Frank W. Tober papers comprises letters, postcards, photographs, pamphlets, magazines, newspaper clippings, newsletters, printing ephemera, invoices, notebooks, woodblocks, prints, coins, sculpture, and other realia. A major portion of the papers relate to Tober's collections and collecting activities.

Series I. Personal papers. This series is composed of materials from Frank Tober's personal and professional life, including many photographs of Frank, his wife Ellen, his parents, his friends, and his Du Pont coworkers. Notable among his correspondence is a series of postcards sent by Tober between 1945 and 1947 to his future wife, Ellen, to whom he wrote several times a week while in graduate school at Yale. Tober retained copies of his yearbook from Southwestern High School in Detroit, The Prospector , as well as his college yearbook, Keweenawan, from the Michigan College of Mining and Technology. Included in subseries I.C. Writings, is a copy of Tober's 1948 doctoral dissertation from Yale, as well as his short essay on collecting the Wise-Forman forgeries and a personal notebook recording poems, quotations, extracts, and other items that interested him. Subseries I.D. consists of materials relating to Tober’s 1995 gift of his extensive literary collection to the University of Delaware Library. Included are inventories and appraisals of the Tober collection and documentation on Tober’s bequests to the University of Delaware and Virginia Polytechnic Institute. The subseries also includes correspondence between Tober, his longtime friend and estate executor Robert Fleck, and various University of Delaware officials in regard to the gift. Personal documents such as Tober’s marriage and death certificates and legal documentation including Tober’s last will and testament are included as well.

Series II. Collections and collecting comprises a major part of the Tober papers, and includes both documentation of his collecting activities and objects he collected. The numerous invoices and letters Tober kept are related primarily to his book collection. The records are arranged chronologically, reflecting Tober's own system, and include Tober's handwritten inventories and periodic estimates of the value of his book collection. The vast majority of these records relate to Oak Knoll Books and its proprietor, Robert Fleck, with whom Tober maintained a decades-long friendship. Tober was also a long time member of the Delaware Bibliophiles, whose newsletters, announcements, and meeting information from 1991 through 1993 are also included. Notable among the items related to Tober's collecting activities are five finely-made custom slipcases (F57-F61) removed from Wise forgeries when the books were cataloged for the print collection in Special Collections.

Another area of collecting interest for Tober is subseries II.B. Napoleon and the French Revolution, which is composed of a small group of items. These include two French Revolutionary assignats (F62), engraved portraits of major French Revolution-era historical figures, depictions of important subjects and events from that period, and portraits of Napoleon in several different media (Box 6). Tober also acquired a boxed set of Napoleon medals created circa 1810 by Bertrand Andrieu (Box 5), and sixteen (16) French Revolution-era and Napoleonic-era coins dating from 1791 to 1815 (F24).

Series III. Pucca Press contains the output and records for the small personal press founded by Frank Tober, and also includes records pertaining to his interest in book repair and preservation. Tober printed his annual Christmas cards under the imprint of Pucca Press from 1964 through 1981, and he retained examples of the final versions of the cards, arranged by year. He also preserved the trial sheets, paste-ups, sketches, and even eight original woodblocks used at Pucca Press. Notable in this series is Tober's record book, which includes detailed notes about his printing methods, as well as various recipes related to book repair and preservation (F69).