A new acquisition from Gabriel Harvey’s library
The Library holds many books formerly in the possession of significant historical figures. Other than the simple pleasure of knowing that a book was once […]
Continue reading »Category: Collectors and collecting
William Morris & the book
To mark the 125th anniversary of the publication of William Morris’s edition of the works of Chaucer, 26th June has been designated ‘International Kelmscott Press […]
Continue reading »
War and words: Colin Macaulay and his manuscript connections
One of Cambridge University Library’s most treasured manuscripts, the Codex Zacynthius, is displayed in the Library’s exhibition ‘Ghost Words: reading the past’. The focus here […]
Continue reading »
Monsters & manuscripts: the tales of Mélusine & Margaret
This guest post by Dr Miranda Griffin (Fellow in French at Murray Edwards College) explores the imagery in two fifteenth-century manuscripts in Cambridge collections. This […]
Continue reading »
Early modern mathematics: digitising the Macclesfield Collection
Over the last 15 months staff from Archives & Modern Manuscripts, Conservation & Collection Care, Digital Content & Library and Development & Friends of the […]
Continue reading »
A delight in Turkish: E. J. W. Gibb and his library
Elias Gibb was a rather private and reclusive man of scholarship, but his contribution to Turkish studies in the form of translations and discussions of […]
Continue reading »
Word & image in a sixteenth-century prayer book
We all put things in books. Whether it’s bookmarks (old train tickets, receipts or some other bit of paper no longer required), related ephemera (magazine […]
Continue reading »
The man who knew everything! The letters of John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861)
175 years ago John Stevens Henslow started lobbying for a Botanic Garden in Cambridge. After twenty years of effort, his work bore fruit and led […]
Continue reading »
An epic from a tiger’s library
Among the many beautiful and fascinating manuscripts in the Library’s Islamic collection is one particularly magnificent copy of the famous Persian epic poem, the Shāhnāma or […]
Continue reading »
A Mycological Book Collection
Nathan Smith, runner-up in the 2019-20 Rose Book Collecting Prize, writes about his collection of books on fungi. For information on entering the 2020-21 Rose […]
Continue reading »