You might not have needed a fortune teller to predict the country’s performance in some of this summer’s sporting events but, if you’re still looking for a little old-fashioned advice from Destiny, the Local and Family History department at Leeds Central Library can certainly help you out. Mother Shipton’s Wheel of Fortune was printed in…
Category: Treasures & Discoveries
The Gledhow Hall scrapbook
One fascinating item in our collections is a scrapbook put together by the matron at Gledhow Hall hospital during the First World War. Officially entitled ‘The Great European War’ the scrapbook consists of photographs, newscuttings, letters and ephemera relating to life in the hospital between 1915 and 1919. Gledhow Hall at the time of the…
Read More: Finding Hemingway
by Antony Ramm, Information and Research, Central Library This is an entry in our Read More series. These are ‘long-form’ articles, where staff offer a curated and detailed look at areas of our book collections, usually based around a specific theme or subject. These posts aim to guide the interested reader through to those books that offer a…
Read More: The First Historical Novel?
by Antony Ramm, Information and Research, Central Library This is an entry in our Read More series. These are ‘long-form’ articles, where staff offer a curated and detailed look at areas of our book collections, usually based around a specific theme or subject. These posts aim to guide the interested reader through to those books that offer a…
It’s Grimm Up North
With Children’s Book Week starting on June 30th what better time to showcase our 1909 Grimm’s Fairy Tales¸ translated by Mrs Edgar Lucas & Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Originally printed in 1900 by Messers. Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd this edition was printed in 1909 after illustrator Rackham spent 10 years reworking the 40 illustrations…
Making a Mark – Leeds Libraries Style
In 2010 a certain Internet search engine estimated the number of books in the world to be around 129,864,880. I’m guessing in the years since that figure has grown somewhat. So how do we show which ones belong to Leeds Libraries? Well we brand them. Today it’s a pretty bland process, our name, phone number…
Beautiful Bindings – A Record of the Black Prince
Welcome to our new feature series ‘Beautiful Bindings’ where we dig out treasures from the library stacks to show you just how elaborate the art of book binding has been throughout the years. Today’s item is A Record of the Black Prince by Noel Henry Humphreys, 1849. The intricate book cover has been created using…
Lepidoptera in the Library
Spring is definitely here, trees are heaving with blossom, daffodils are swaying gently in the breeze and the butterflies are back. To celebrate this re-emergence of colour into the natural world we bring you a selection of our heritage Butterfly and Moth stock. Now those of you who don’t consider yourselves Lepidoptera fans shouldn’t flutter…
