Eighty years of bad jokes: the UL’s rag mag collection
The practice of holding “rag weeks” or “rag days” in Universities to raise money for good causes seems to have started in the 1920s. In […]
Continue reading »Author: William Hale
Assistant Under-Librarian in the Rare Books and Early Manuscripts Department at Cambridge University Library.
Joyful Sounds of Salvation
The Library Choir has been performing carols in the University Library Entrance Hall for more than thirty years. This year each of the seven carols […]
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Cosimo de Medici’s visit to Cambridge
The future Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III de Medici (1642-1723), visited England in the spring of 1669, as part of a series of European […]
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“L’entreprise la plus vaste du dix-huitième siècle”: the Encyclopédie Méthodique
The Encyclopédie méthodique was the last and largest of the great French encyclopedias of the eighteenth century. Its first instalment appeared in 1782 and its […]
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The Christmas Carol in Print
Every year, the University Library Carol Choir sings carols in the Library Entrance Hall for staff and readers (you can see our latest performance at […]
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Henry Compton’s Prayer Book, and John Wright’s Bible
Including as it does the library of the British and Foreign Bible Society as well as the collection of Arthur William Young, the University Library […]
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Scrapbooking in Cork
The Library has recently acquired two large folio scrapbooks of 436 and 360 pages, compiled between 1818 and 1822 by one E. Madder of Cork. […]
Continue reading »Navigating to Boston
The Library’s exhibition “Tall Tales: Secrets of the Tower” highlights some of the books in our holdings that you might not necessarily expect to find […]
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A Christmas Carol in Pictures
Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was first published in December 1843, with coloured engravings by John Leech. This post is based on an exhibition put […]
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Collecting Brexit
In 1915, Francis Jenkinson placed an advertisement in the Cambridge Magazine appealing for material relating to the unfolding war, adding “Such flying pieces as those […]
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