Robert Bloomfield, ‘the first of rural bards’
The poet Robert Bloomfield, author of The farmer’s boy, was born in Suffolk two hundred and fifty years ago, in December 1766. Of humble parentage, […]
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Curator for a Day
In November a group of thirteen students from Long Road and Hills Road Sixth Form Colleges in Cambridge spent a day being curators in the […]
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Gustave David (1860–1936): the Cambridge bookseller
Cambridge has a long history of bookselling, stretching back well before the advent of printing into the mists of medieval time. Books were first printed […]
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A letter of gratitude
The journey down memory lane through the Rare Books Department’s new collection of school magazines took me from our cool European climate to the much […]
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First Impressions: The Gutenberg Bible
Our eighth and final ‘Treasures of the University Library’ talk was given by Dr Emily Dourish, Deputy Head of Rare Books:
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Reformation lives
One of the great joys of working with special collections in an historic library like the UL is the discovery (or re-discovery, with each new […]
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Borrowing back a book
Image: Detail of a 16th-century woodcut showing the Schools quadrangle with Rotherham’s library above (Sel.3.229) The first record of a book being borrowed from Cambridge […]
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Treasures of the University Library: don’t miss out!
Would you like the opportunity to come face-to-face with some of the most precious items from Cambridge University Library’s collections? To celebrate our 600th anniversary, […]
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The Great Fire of London
On this day 350 years ago – 2nd September 1666 – began the Great Fire of London, which burned for three days, consuming 13,000 houses, […]
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“The beauty of expression”: M.R. James and the First World War Memorial Scroll
The War Reserve collection in the University Library, initiated by Librarian Francis Jenkinson, contains a wealth of interesting things for the military researcher, ranging from […]
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