It’s Banned Books Week this week (September 22 to September 28). We’ve recently unearthed this wonderful list of books banned by Leeds (Public) Libraries in 1975 – or, if not quite banned entirely, at least only available with Librarian approval. While we definitely don’t operate in this way anymore, we thought it would be interesting…
Category: Art & Literature
The Leylands in Poetry
We welcome local poet Sally Michaelson this week on the Secret Library Leeds, who offers some poignant poetry about the Jewish community of Leeds and the Leylands area of the city centre. We are publishing these poems as part of Local and Community History Month. We hope you enjoy these poems. You can find out…
The Chimney Corner: Secret Books from the Secret Library #8 – Chronicles of Crime
Number #8 in an occasional series, this week we hear from Librarian Antony Ramm about a criminally little-known autobiography by a notorious member of the French underworld… We’ve praised the Public Domain Review website before on the Secret Library Leeds blog – if you’re not already a reader, we strongly recommend you sign up to…
The Wickham Family
This week we hear from Library and Digital Assistant Kirsty Lodge, on an intriguing discovery that wasn’t a discovery, but which turned out to be another discovery entirely – leading to some inspired cross-departmental working… When departments collide! Sometimes the most interesting discoveries, come about because of chance, coincidence, or serendipity. When the Music department…
The Mystery of the Missing Author (s)
This week we hear from Becky Bavill, Library and Digital Assistant, who brings us a quick, but perplexing and intriguing, look at the mystery of a Leeds author of romantic fiction… You can hear much more about the broader history of romantic fiction in an upcoming talk, taking place at the Central Library on the…
Mary Wollstonecraft – the Mother of Modern Feminism.
This week, to celebrate International Women’s Day, Library and Digital Assistant Alexandra Brummitt, looks at the works and life of the first British feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft. Looking at Wollstonecraft’s most famous work, she discusses how this work influenced the suffrage movement and generations of feminists. When thinking of the suffrage movement at the turn of…
A Book to Dye For
In this blog post Rhian Isaac, Senior Librarian for Special Collections and Heritage, shares a deadly discovery. One weekend I stumbled upon an intriguing article in National Geographic that highlighted the Winterthur Museum’s Poison Book Project, and it instantly caught my attention. I was captivated with the idea of poisonous books lying undetected in library collections,…
Brigandines
This article is part of our series on the current Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition, taking place at the Central Library until January 2024… There are lots of exciting things to discover in the Local and Family History department at any time, but if you visit during the Fantasy exhibition, it’s even more exciting! Amongst…
The Secret Library | Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog 