Cambridge University Library Special Collections

A Dramatic Archive

Posted on 10 January 2017 by Mary Scott

Since joining the Library team as Archives Trainee, I have been lucky enough to peer through a lot of windows into the University’s past. One […]

Archives, Cambridge University Archives, Cambridge University history

A Christmas Carol in Pictures

Posted on 21 December 2016 by William Hale

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 […]

Christmas, Illustration

Under the Microscope – Preliminary Investigations of the Changi Archive Conservation Research Project

Posted on 14 December 2016 by Emma Nichols

You may have seen here that in May this year I was awarded a Research Bursary from the Wellcome Trust. The award means that I am […]

Archives, Conservation, Digitisation, Royal Commonwealth Society, Science

Robert Bloomfield, ‘the first of rural bards’

Posted on 12 December 2016 by John Wells

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, […]

Anniversaries, Exhibitions, Manuscripts, Poetry, Rare Books

Edward Rose and the Rose Reader

Posted on 9 December 2016 by Madelin Evans

A new addition to the Department of Manuscripts and University Archives collections, MS Add.10138 (Edward Rose: writings and family correspondence), tells the story of the […]

Curator for a Day

Posted on 5 December 2016 by Liam Sims

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 […]

600th anniversary, Collectors and collecting, Exhibitions, Library history, Manuscripts, Rare Books, Special Collections

Asante Goldweights

Posted on 1 December 2016 by John C.

This post is inspired by the set of Asante goldweights, boxes and scale currently on display in the Curious Objects exhibition, which celebrates the Library’s […]

600th anniversary, Exhibitions, Royal Commonwealth Society

The Peterborough Cathedral Manuscripts and the Peterborough Lapidary

Posted on 28 November 2016 by Special Collections

Guest post by Dr Francis Young In 1970 Peterborough Cathedral placed its ancient manuscripts on permanent loan to Cambridge University Library, owing to the unsuitable […]

Manuscripts, Special Collections

Bibliographical Prizes

Posted on 22 November 2016 by Suzanne Paul

Entries are now open for two prizes that Cambridge University Library offers annually. The Gordon Duff prize, named after the celebrated bibliographer of 15th-century English […]

Collectors and collecting, Friends of Cambridge University Library, Gordon Duff Prize, Rose Book-Collecting Prize

Gustave David (1860–1936): the Cambridge bookseller

Posted on 20 November 2016 by Liam Sims

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 […]

Anniversaries, Collectors and collecting, Incunabula, Library history, Rare Books, Special Collections