A Brief History of Leeds #12: The 1970 and 1980s

Part twelve of a series exploring the history of Leeds, using books and other stock resources held in the Leeds Libraries collections. For all the entries in this series, see our dedicated page. The eleventh part of this series looked at the African-Caribbean community in Leeds, and ended with a reflection on the importance of…

Mary Shelley – The First Science Fiction Author

This week, library and digital assistant Alexandra Brummitt takes a look at our special edition of Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus published in 1831. She discusses the life and inspirations of author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the first science fiction writer. Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus written by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, (born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) is…

A Brief History of Leeds #11: The Post-War City, part 2

Part eleven of a series exploring the history of Leeds, using books and other stock resources held in the Leeds Libraries collections. For all the entries in this series, see our dedicated page. In our tenth part we explored collections relating to Leeds United and its important role as a carrier of the Leeds name…

Banned books!

This week on the blog we share details of a lovely display curated by staff in our Business and Intellectual Property department (BIPC) for Banned Books Week 2023 (October 1 – 7), using some treasures from our Central Library collections. The display is available to view on the 2nd floor of the Central Library. This is the…

Heritage Open Day 2023 Round-Up

This week on the Secret Library we round-up all the amazing events Leeds Libraries offered during Heritage Open Day Week! All images are (c) Leeds Libraries unless stated otherwise Local History Open DayWe kicked things off on Saturday September 9 with the second in our Local History Open Days – a chance for us to…

A Copper’s Eye: Tom Harper’s Leeds

This week we welcome guest author, Chris Nickson, who tells us about his new exhibition soon to be launched at Leeds Central Library. We generally think of a place as we see it now. That’s completely natural, it’s the way our brains work. But what we’re seeing is only today’s reality. Towns and cities are…

Opening the textile heritage of Leeds

We’re still recovering from our amazing but very-busy Open Day last Saturday, part of our Heritage Open Day (HOD) Week offer. We’ll be bringing you a full round-up of that day, and all our other wonderful HOD events in a few weeks – but today we can share a small snapshot of what we’ve been…