This week Central Collections Manager, Rhian Isaac discusses The History of Book Illustration through our collections here in Central Library. Illustrated texts pre-date the printed book by thousands of years but unfortunately much has been lost from early civilisations, such as Greece, China and Rome due to the fragility of the material. Ancient Egypt is the exception…
Category: Art & Literature
The Golden Age of Childhood
Join us on an exploration of classic children’s books from our collection and the evocative illustrations that accompanied them. Many books that we now regard as children’s classics, such as Aesop’s Fables and the stories of Grimm and Anderson, were originally written for adults. They were simply tales intended to inform and instruct. In 1860,…
Andy Goldsworthy at Hyde Park Picture House and the Art Library
Kiera Falgate, Library Officer on the Central Library’s Arts Floor, tells us about the art of Andy Goldsworthy. Andy Goldsworthy, who grew up near Harrogate, is one of the most influential and fascinating living British artists, and his work can be found from New York to Wakefield, in pristine galleries and in sheep fields. In…
Exploring Emily Brontë
Librarian Antony Ramm highlights some books that take an oblique look at the Emily Brontë story… Last Monday marked the 200th-anniversary of Emily Brontë’s birth, and there have been a wide range of articles in the local, national, specialist and social media describing and analysing both Emily’s life and her masterpiece: the novel Wuthering Heights (1847)….
The Magic of Harry Potter is coming to Leeds Central Library
Collections Manager, Rhian Isaac, talks about the upcoming Harry Potter: A History of Magic exhibition and programme of events in anticipation of the launch in December. It is 20 years since Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published and we are extremely excited to be bringing the traditions of folklore and magic at the…
Writing Leodis
Librarian Mark Kirkby set Garforth Writers’ Group an offbeat creative challenge recently, using photographs from our local photographic archive, Leodis, as inspiration. On arrival, the writers were presented with a set of images showing a variety of places and potential settings, across different time periods. They each selected an image to provide a basis for a…
Traces of Tolkien in Leeds
Dr. Alaric Hall will deliver a talk at Leeds Central Library on the 12th of October, using the Special Collections at the University of Leeds, to explore the scholarships and friendships made by J.R.R. Tolkien during his time (1920-1925) in Leeds, and how these affected his creative writing. Ahead of that talk, Local History Librarian,…
Adam & Eve in the Garden of Leeds
Local historian, Bill McKinnon, remembers a pair of local celebrities who resided in the Hyde Park area for forty years… The garden that has formed the setting for the Victoria Memorial on Woodhouse Moor since 1937 used to be known as the the Adam and Eve Garden. It was named after statues of a young…
