Poetry – Cambridge University Library Special Collections

Simon Armitage on Ukraine: a new acquisition

Posted on 14 November 2022 by Special Collections

Private press books have been acquired by the Library since the late nineteenth century, when William Morris’s Kelmscott Press (active 1891-98) led to the flourishing […]

Acquisitions, Poetry, Rare Books, Recent acquisitions, Special Collections

The school years of Dame Muriel Spark

Posted on 18 January 2019 by Special Collections

This post is by Agnieszka Drabek-Prime, Rare Books Superintendent, who is cataloguing a varied collection of school magazines recently acquired by the Library. When you […]

Acquisitions, Poetry, Rare Books, Special Collections

A chance discovery: Guest post by Jason Scott-Warren

Posted on 18 October 2017 by Special Collections

One of the newest arrivals in the University Library’s Rare Books department was a chance find on Ebay. The History of Our B. Lady of […]

Christian Works, Poetry, Rare Books, Recent acquisitions, women

Castles in the air: two works of Renaissance and Baroque Iberian poetry

Posted on 18 March 2016 by Sophie Defrance

Thanks to a recommendation of Dr Rodrigo Cacho, Reader in Spanish Golden Age and Colonial Studies, the Rare Books department of Cambridge University Library has […]

Collectors and collecting, Hispanic, Rare Books, Recent acquisitions, Special Collections

New old books: January 2016

Posted on 1 February 2016 by William Hale

The Rare Books Department of the Library purchases over 200 printed books each year to enhance its historical collections. In the first of what we […]

Poetry, Rare Books, Recent acquisitions

Rupert Brooke: 100 years on

Posted on 28 September 2015 by Liam Sims

The latest exhibition to occupy the Library’s Entrance Hall cases concerns Rupert Brooke, who died a century ago this year (23 April 1915) and was […]

Cambridge Bibliographical Society, Collectors and collecting, Exhibitions, Manuscripts, Rare Books, Special Collections

Rupert Brooke: 100 years on

Posted on 23 April 2015 by Liam Sims

A century ago today – on 23rd April 1915 – died Rupert Brooke, lauded in his lifetime as one of the country’s finest poets. This […]

Collectors and collecting, Poetry, Rare Books, Special Collections

‘Swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget’: Siegfried Sassoon’s First World War Poems in Context

Posted on 23 July 2014 by Dr Emma Saunders

The First World War was one of the defining conflicts of European history. On 4 August 1914, the date when Britain entered the War, a […]

Manuscripts, Poetry, Rare Books, Special Collections

‘My dearest Siegfried’: The Egremont Sassoon Papers

Posted on 10 December 2013 by Dr Emma Saunders

Poet and author Siegfried Sassoon was a prolific letter writer and throughout his life maintained a close friendship and correspondence with his mother Georgiana Theresa […]

Archives, Manuscripts, New on Janus, Photographs, Poetry, Special Collections

Showing Their Hands

Posted on 17 September 2012 by John Wells

Dawson Turner, the banker, antiquary, and leading light of autograph collectors in the early nineteenth century, claimed that he had ‘never met with the man […]

Exhibitions