Illustration – Cambridge University Library Special Collections

Peter Pan in the Tower

Posted on 22 May 2024 by Special Collections

Post by Dr Sarah Pyke, Munby Fellow in Bibliography 2023/24, who is using the University Library’s legal deposit holdings (the Tower Collection) to survey illustrated […]

Illustration, Library history, Rare Books, Special Collections

The world turned upside down: popular literature in eighteenth-century Orléans

Posted on 28 March 2024 by Emily Dourish

The University Library has recently acquired, with the generous support of the Friends of the National Libraries, a unique piece of eighteenth-century satirical French printing […]

Acquisitions, French, Historical Printing, Illustration, Recent acquisitions, Special Collections

The Rose Book Collecting prize 2022: Illustrated books from early-modern Japan

Posted on 13 October 2022 by Liam Sims

The Rose Prize is awarded annually to a current student of the University, for a coherent collection on any subject from any period. The winner […]

Collectors and collecting, Friends of Cambridge University Library, Illustration, Japanese, Rose Book-Collecting Prize, Special Collections

Word & image in a sixteenth-century prayer book

Posted on 8 February 2021 by Liam Sims

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 […]

Collectors and collecting, Illustration, Library history, Rare Books, Special Collections

Digitisation of the Polonsky Foundation Greek Manuscripts Project: a reflection on digital technologies and collective memory

Posted on 1 June 2020 by Special Collections

My name is Raffaella Losito, and in March 2020 I had the great privilege to join the Digital Content Unit team as a Digitisation Technician […]

Cambridge Digital Library, Digitisation, Greek, Illustration, Manuscripts, Medieval manuscripts, Polonsky Greek

Erotica comes to Cambridge

Posted on 4 February 2020 by Liam Sims

When one thinks of the great collections which Cambridge University Library has built up over its six centuries, erotic literature is probably not very near […]

Acquisitions, Collectors and collecting, French, Illustration, Rare Books, Special Collections

Watercolours of 19th-century Australia, Canada, Gibraltar, Mauritius and the Channel Islands

Posted on 5 February 2019 by John C.

The Royal Commonwealth Society department has published a detailed on-line catalogue for one of its largest and most historically significant art collections, RCMS 40. It […]

Cambridge Digital Library, Illustration, Royal Commonwealth Society

Start them young: close encounters with movable books

Posted on 8 June 2018 by Emily Dourish

As Special Collections curators and subject specialists we’re all used to hosting visits to the University Library for academics, students and members of the adult […]

Illustration, Rare Books

Smelly Remedy: Womb Fumigation Illustrated in Seventeenth Century Print

Posted on 12 March 2018 by Special Collections

Swelling, shifting and releasing noxious vapours, the Early Modern womb was deemed to be an unruly organ and the cause of numerous ailments. The symptoms […]

Exhibitions, Illustration, Medicine, women

Talk on the Liberation Collection, 22nd February

Posted on 14 February 2018 by Special Collections

On Thursday 22nd February Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey will give a talk to the Cambridge Bibliographical Society on ‘The power of the image in liberated France, […]

Cambridge Bibliographical Society, Collectors and collecting, Events, Illustration, Rare Books, Recent acquisitions

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