Before The Lord of the Rings, before The Chronicles of Narnia and before Game of Thrones came The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison – the pioneering Leeds-born fantasy author of the early 20th-century. This week on the Secret Library blog we hear from Library Officer Philip Wilde, who talks us through Eddison, his life in…
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A Brief History of Leeds
A collection of articles exploring the history of Leeds, illustrated with unique and memorable books and other stock resources from the Leeds Libraries collections. Scroll to read an introduction, click a link to read more, or see our History of Leeds research guide for further resources. Readers of this series may also enjoy our articles…
Much More Than Books: Explorations in our Special Collections
This week, Philip Wilde explores some of the more unusual items held in our vast Collections currently on display. The Special Collections here at Leeds Central Library comprises of some 17,000 items. The vast majority, of course, are books. However, the collection holds much more than books. Here we shall talk about just a…
The Ancient Art of Bookbinding
This week we hear from Library Officer, Philip Wilde, who highlights some amazing examples of bookbinding in the Central Library collections… The ancient art of bookbinding has been a craft for over 2,000 years. Originally the binding served the purely practical purpose of protecting the book however, book coverings were later to be seen as…
The THOMAS WILSON Collection
by Antony Ramm and Philip Wilde, Local and Family History, Central Library Little is known for certain of the life of Thomas Wilson (c.1702-1761), Leeds Schoolmaster and Antiquarian. Thought to have been born around 1702 in Wragby, near Pontefract, Wilson’s first recorded appearance in the Leeds area was his marriage to Martha Ingham in 1727…
The WILLIE RILEY Collection
by Philip Wilde, Information and Research, Central Library Willie Riley, in his mid-forties, wrote Windyridge as an amusement, a distraction, for his wife, Clara, and two female friends, Ethel and Florence Bolton. It would be the first of some 39 books he was to write, the last being published a few months before he died…
The E.R. EDDISON Collection
by Philip Wilde, Information and Research, Central Library Born in Adel, Leeds, Eric Rucker Eddison (1882-1945) became a leading civil servant and a writer of fantasy novels, most notably The Worm Ouroboros and The Zimiamvian Trilogy. A lifelong friend of another local author, Arthur Ransome, Eddison was described by J. R. R. Tolkien as “the…
The GRIMSHAW Collection
by Philip Wilde, Information and Research, Central Library Arthur Edmund Grimshaw was a Leeds born artist and musician. He was the son of the great Leeds artist John Atkinson Grimshaw. Although Arthur also painted he was better known as a composer. The Central Library holds an original manuscript performance set of his ‘two old English melodies’, together…
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