With a huge sense of joy & relief I have just submitted my PhD thesis. 79,869 words. 241 pages. 5 years & 10 months of my life. Looking forward to a summer of rest & a viva in a couple of months. But now, champagne with a long-suffering but patient & lovely
@aglmasters
.
#phdlife
Just found some amazing waste paper used in the binding a 1575 London edition of Cicero’s De Officiis
@theULSpecColl
(Sun.8.57.135). The name John Lesley/Leslie & his initials appear in some of the blocks, & ‘for John Robertson Glasgow’ is written on one sheet. (1/3)
Indescribably humbling to help ring all five tons of a half-muffled Great Tom
@ChCh_Oxford
this evening. I don’t know how to feel at the moment but this helped a lot.
Post your favourite black & white photo.
Martin Routh, President of
@magdalenoxford
for 63 years, taken shortly before his death aged 99 in 1854. The wig is preserved
@MagdLibAndArch
. One of the earliest born people (1755) to have been photographed.
Everard’s Printing Works in Bristol, built in 1900 with a Pre-Raphaelite
#artnouveau
façade. The tiles, by William Neatby (at Doulton), depict
#Gutenberg
(L) &
#WilliamMorris
(R) along with fonts used by both.
After 1 failed purchase & 17 months trying to buy our own place, we finally got the keys to one half of a former Victorian post office today. Nice to be greeted by a festive knitted post box decoration too! With
@aglmasters
.
I have just completed cataloguing a collection of about 1650 volumes
@theULSpecColl
(75% of which are seen here), a project begun in June 2019 & interrupted by COVID. In a digital world it’s so satisfying to see physically the neat & tidy fruits of my labour. (1/3).
A few years ago I inherited a vast collection of
#postcards
of
#libraries
. Thought it might be nice to post one every day & enjoy them. Here’s
@TrinCollLibCam
c. 1910, with bookcases containing William Grylls’ 1863 bequest down the centre, probably removed in the ‘60s refurb.
We added an extremely cool thing to our shelves today: a 38-volume early 19thC French travelling library - the ‘Bibliothèque Portative du Voyageur’ - house in a book-shaped box.
#newacquisition
(1/6)
Incredible scenes
@theUL
before full
#COVID19
closure at 5pm. Staff from across the Library helping hundreds of readers find books, check them out & provide help. All the emotions in my second home right now.
Ever wondered what a bookish don’s rooms looked like at Cambridge in the 1880s? Here are Henry Bradshaw’s (
@theUL
Librarian) in the Wilkins Building
@Kings_College
) in 1886, probably photographed just after his death that February.
@theULSpecColl
Cam.a.500.10.
Have just sent off to my supervisors 73,000 words of my first complete PhD draft (minus conclusion at this stage) for their delectation over the next six weeks. So I get a nice break from it over Christmas, which will be glorious.
#phdlife
In at 4.15 and now walking through a waking London to a train home to Cambridge. Exhausted but beyond happy that I came. Fuller thoughts after sleep. Thanks all. X
I can't bring myself to listen to this because own voice = awful. But it was fun to share this little travelling library
@theULSpecColl
more widely today!
Visited England’s smallest parish church today: St Beuno, Culbone (Somerset), measuring just 35 feet long & nestling in a wooded combe above the north coast of Exmoor. The ‘most isolated & picturesque church in England’, according to Simon Jenkins.
Bibliographical friends: Robin Myers, former archivist of
@stationerscomms
&
@CorpusCambridge
& first woman President of
@BibSoc
died this morning, on her 97th birthday. I was pleased to call her my friend & will miss her wicked sense of humour & our evenings of bookish chat.
Two years to the day since what felt like the whole of Cambridge descended on
@theUL
to borrow what they could before we closed the doors at 5pm. An odd two years but finally things seem to be improving.
The great Barry Humphries had a lovely bookish bookplate, designed by Roland Pym. Humphries was the 344th member of the Roxburghe Club, the world’s premier bibliophile society, founded in 1812. Membership is limited to forty at any time. This is in a book on my shelves… (1/2)
This copy of William Pratt’s Arithmeticall Jewel (London, 1617)
@theULSpecColl
(Syn.8.61.78) contains a C17 ivory & brass device based on the book’s frontispiece, housed inside the front board. No mention of it in the record so one for updating! One for
@sci_instruments
. (1/2)
A sighting of
#AuroraBorealis
at Alwalton (near Peterborough) in 1742 is recorded in the
@sg_soc
minutes: 'Several dusky streams of light began to move quick & waving from west to east & chang'd instantly into bright colours strong & cleare, red, crimson, yellow & blue.'
Just cataloguing a large and rather dull eighteenth-century legal book and this fell out of the back. Looks like Henry VIII has been teleported to a 1920s flapper party (which, no doubt, he’d have loved).
Been thinking for a while I should be better acquainted with the great Cambridge writer E. M. Forster, and chanced upon these lovely little pocket editions at David’s bookshop yesterday 🎉
Twenty-two years’ worth of William Stukeley’s almanacks, used for diary-keeping, noting down his wife’s expenses, and gifts received (mostly meat).
@bodleianlibs
MS Eng. misc. d. 719.
One of the quirkier reasons I miss being
@theUL
is that at the beginning of the month I usually wind
@CamUniLibrarian
’s clock (an unofficial task inherited from a former colleague). A gorgeous 1690s Thomas
#Tompion
with the most soothing bell.
#horology
#clocks
#libraries
Gorgeous scene of a Jacobean printing shop, from the title page of Alexander Cooke’s ‘Yet more worke for a masse-priest’ (London, 1622). Notice the typesetter in the background & the ink man left foreground with his ink balls.
@theULSpecColl
Syn.7.62.300.
Thrilled that my beloved G. David bookshop - home of
#Cambridge
bookish types since 1896 - has reopened. Had a lovely rummage this morning after 5 months away. Do pop by if you’re local or visiting. More of their stock now on
@AbeBooks
too:
A stunning binding on my desk today, executed in
#Leuven
in the 1540s by Jacob Pandelaert, who signed his initials lower right. The figure is a personification of Hope. On a copy of Lucretius printed in Leuven in 1542 & now
@theULSpecColl
Rel.c.54.2.
#bookbinding
Had this chonky boi out for a visitor this afternoon: the Liber Privilegiorum of Cambridge University. A collection of University legal documents copied in the 1590s by Robert Hare. Stunning medieval-style illumination, including King Arthur & a rather chubby St Gregory. (1/2)
Handed over the keys to our old flat today so life in our new place is fully underway! Time for champagne with
@aglmasters
in some gorgeous new glasses 🍾
Lovely bit of early sixteenth-century printed waste used as a bookbinding, with stamped heraldic features. From
@theULSpecColl
’s collection of fragments.
#rarebooks
Have spent a little over a year, on and off, cataloguing hundreds of 19thC book sale catalogues
@theULSpecColl
, received in 1975 from Tim Munby's library but until now not fully catalogued. Enjoy!
Amused & outraged in equal measure by this shelf of ‘dull books’ in an Edinburgh bookshop last week (outraged because two of the six are about libraries!).
Think I’ve discovered a book belonging to the great painter Angelica
#Kauffman
(b. 1741): Tasso’s Il Goffredo (1754), an author whose work she would later illustrate. A quick Google suggests she spelled her surname this way in a document in 1759.
@theULSpecColl
7740.e.45.
BREAKING: Emmanuel Macron has appointed France's youngest ever prime minister - and the first to be openly gay.
34-year-old Gabriel Attal became a household name as government spokesperson during the COVID pandemic.
📺 Sky 501 and YouTube
Had the very great honour of helping to ring Great Paul
@StPaulsLondon
for
#Easter
today. Cast in 1881 it weighs 16.5 tons, is 11 feet across, & makes an immense noise. Sound up 🔊
Popped into Peterborough Cathedral for some ‘private prayer’ this afternoon. Stunning place. The nave reminiscent of Ely. Stonking churchyard too & bits and piece of monastic buildings all over the place. Need a proper visit post-plague.
Spent a total of 1hr 15m in London today, picking up a donation of ‘about thirty’ (in fact, 66) books once owned by
@theUL
Librarian A. F. Scholfield. Lots of stuff he had at school (Eton) covered in schoolboy scribbles. Great stuff but this packhorse is knackered 🥵
A few tricky days tending broken-armed husband greatly improved by sharing
@Nigella_Lawson
’s Carbonnade a la Flamande with a friend. A gorgeous Belgian beef stew with dark beer, beef stock, mustard, dark sugar, allspice & thyme. Served with mash & carrots 🤤
Some psychedelic 18thC endpapers on a copy of Cuthbert Tunstall’s ‘De arte supputandi’ (London, 1522), the first book on arithmetic to be published in England. This copy, printed on vellum, was given to
@theUL
by Tunstall soon after publication.
@theULSpecColl
Sel.3.262.
St George and the dragon, from a book of magic spells and incantations written in Syriac (Northern Iraq?, 18th century?). Given to
@theULSpecColl
in 1891 by University Librarian Francis Jenkinson. MS Add. 3086.
#StGeorgesDay
#StGeorge
Just discovered the gloriously named Tinkler Ducket of Norfolk. A fellow of
@CaiusCollege
until his expulsion in 1738 for ‘atheism & immorality’. Lived out his days in
#Venice
& Constantinople. Sounds like a hoot!
I was going to wait until
#ForeEdgeFriday
to post these glitzy blue, red & gold fore-edges
@theULSpecColl
, but they’re too good to wait. On Gibbon’s Decline & Fall (Dublin, 1788-9), from the library of the Earl & Countess of Enniskillen (CCC.48.12-17).
#foredgefriday
A most amusing find
@witchmuseum
, spotted in July: a ‘cocke rock’, to be placed under the pillow on a full moon to guarantee conception. Used until the 1920s & sent anonymously to the Boscastle Museum of Witchcraft & Magic ‘because no one in my village now believes in its powers’
I hope it's not immodest to say that in June I found a book from Gabriel Harvey's library lurking unrecognised in a bookseller's catalogue. Pleased to say it's now on the shelves
@theULSpecColl
with four of its former shelfmates.
#provenance
After much delay,
@aglmasters
& I found out on Friday that an offer we made on a lovely ground floor flat in Cambridge has been accepted! Won’t be moving in for a while & lots to sort out, but excited to be buying our first place!
Next month (23 February) I'm putting on a pop-up display
@theUL
on 'Queer connections in literary Cambridge' for
#LGBTHM
/
@LGBTHM
. All welcome & no booking required. More info at the link below. It precedes a talk that evening by
@JustinBengry
... (1/2)
Queen Elizabeth I died
#OTD
in 1603. This volume of sermons by John Udall (London, 1596) luxuriously bound in velvet & with silver thread may have been made for presentation to the Queen, carrying her arms on both covers.
@theULSpecColl
SSS.24.32.
The substantial ruins of Buildwas Abbey, Shropshire, a couple of weeks ago. A Cistercian foundation begun in 1135, it enjoyed precisely 401 Easters before its suppression by Henry VIII in 1536. Now in the care of
@EnglishHeritage
. Many of its manuscripts now
@TrinCollLibCam
.
A great day
@BeineckeLibrary
. Amongst other things, sat in on a student class on medieval liturgical MSS (including a gorgeous 14thC Hours complete with peacock, MS 657), saw their Gutenberg & heard some bells.
I don’t know who she was, but I like the low x-height in her lettering, and those sevens dropping below the line are great too.
#books
#type
#typography
This
#WorldBookDay
I was lucky enough to happen upon some books with hand-drawn
#flowers
on their vellum spines. Presumably from the same source but now scattered among the books of John Moore, Bishop of Ely (1646-1714)
@theULSpecColl
. You might like,
@JillWhitelock
.