Sandars Lectures 2011-2012
The Sandars Readership in Bibliography was instituted in 1895 with a bequest of £2000 left to the University by Mr Samuel Sandars of Trinity College […]
Continue reading »Category: Rare Books
A very individual artist: Arthur Szyk and his world
The Library has recently received a generous donation of a copy of the very fine Passover ‘Haggadah’ illustrated by Arthur Szyk, the 20th century Polish […]
Continue reading »The original Miss Austen: celebrating the bicentenary of ‘Sense and sensibility’
This month marks the 200-year anniversary of Jane Austen’s first novel, Sense and sensibility, which was published in October 1811 as an anonymous work, ‘by […]
Continue reading »A Cistercian Missal in Cambridge University Library
An article by Michael Carter on the Cambridge University Library copy of a Missal printed by Thielman Kerver in Paris, 1515 for the Cistercian rite […]
Continue reading »An Ottoman cosmography
The brown leather binding looks unremarkable enough, but within the Library’s rare books collection there is a volume, which once opened up, demonstrates a key […]
Continue reading »Detective work
A significant part of rare books cataloguing work is documenting ‘copy-specific’ information—previous ownerships, binding, decoration, or imperfections—about the book in hand. Identifying and describing this […]
Continue reading »“The most interesting objects”
Two recent acquisitions enhance our strong collections in natural history, anatomy and the history of collecting. The first is a catalogue of the natural history […]
Continue reading »Eighteenth-century English erotica for a discerning German wartime audience
The Rare Books Department has just purchased a rather unusual piece of First-World-War printing. John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, or Fanny Hill […]
Continue reading »What’s so special about Music?
Maybe surprisingly, the invitation to join this blog as a contributor made me re-consider what’s so special about Music. Of course, being employed within the […]
Continue reading »Incunabula lecture
On 7 June the incunabulist Paul Needham, Scheide Librarian at Princeton University, will give a masterclass at Cambridge University Library on collation and composition in […]
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