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No. 55, March 2006 Special topic: Features in the library building/facilitiy

To acknowledge the efforts of Singapore’s literary pioneers, the National Library of Singapore has launched a permanent exhibition honouring the nation’s early writers.

Called the Singapore Literary Pioneers Gallery, the exhibition is located on the 11th floor of the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library and is part of efforts to preserve the nation’s literary heritage and create greater awareness of Singapore literature amongst library users.

The gallery occupies some 180 square metres of floor space and includes print and digital resources of 30 literary pioneers who have written in the country’s four official languages, i.e., English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. The pioneers have been recognized for being active and instrumental in developing Singapore literature up till 1965.

Some of the prominent writers being acknowledged in this gallery are Edwin Thumboo and Goh Sin Tub who wrote in English, Miao Xiu, Fang Xiu and Xing Ying who wrote in Chinese, Masuri S N and Suratman Markasan and their Malay works, and Se Ve Shanmugam and N Palanivelu and their Tamil works.

The items on display include books, letters, photographs, calligraphic works, original manuscripts and unpublished materials, and personal items such as pens, typewriters, notepads, as well as literary awards. There are also short write-ups chronicling the development of Singapore literature in the four languages from the late 1800s up till Singapore’s independence in 1965. Some of the items on display include <Coffee’s Temptation>, one of the 18 volumes of Yao Zi’s manuscripts donated to National Library Board (NLB), a manuscript translation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in Tamil by P. Krishnan, cartoon sketches by Abdul Ghani Hamid and early drafts of Goh Poh Seng’s poems.

This rich and unique content adds to the library’s rich repository of Singapore heritage collection and plans are underway to put this on NLB’s digital library.