‘And then I said, “Those fairies we see – let’s take a picture!”‘ In the summer of 1917, cousins Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright claimed to have seen fairies by Cottingley Beck. The photographs they took would later be described by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as having the potential to ‘mark an epoch in human…
Tag: Rhian Isaac
Comic Art and Caricatures in our Collections
In today’s post our Senior Librarian for Special Collections, Rhian Isaac, explores the connection between comic books and some of the library’s prints, books and periodicals from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. This weekend is the annual Thought Bubble Comic Convention, a two day celebration of comics, their creators and their fans. We have…
HOD 2020: Uncovering Hidden Nature with our Historic Herbals
The last in our trilogy of articles to tie in with the final few days of this year’s Heritage Open Days festival: Collections Manager Rhian Isaac shares some of our herbals that have been teaching people about plants and nature for hundreds of years… This year’s Heritage Open Days (September 11-20) has looked a little…
Muir Than Just a Copy: The Beautiful Reproductions of William Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’
This week on the Secret Library Collections Manager Rhian Isaac tells us about another treasure that can be found in our special collections… This is one of the rare books in the collections that is really a pleasure to look at and read. William Muir’s reproductions of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience (1885)…
Yorkshire Star Chamber Stories
This week, Collections Manager Rhian Isaac explores the importance and the usefulness of stories from the Yorkshire Star Chamber in the Tudor era… The lives and exploits of the Tudor monarchs and nobility are well known and are often the subjects of films and TV shows but finding out about how every day people lived…
The History of Book Illustration
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…
Speed-dating our Library Treasures III
As part of our Library Fest 2018 programme, we once again ran our popular Speed-dating our Library Treasures event – this time twice: on Valentine’s Day in the Tiled Hall cafe and a day later at the Hyde Park Book Club. Both events proved very successful, with attendees taking great interest in the wide range of items…
Speed-dating our Library Treasures II: Small Books and Big Ideas
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Central Library You may recall that, during our 2016 Library Fest programme, we trialled a new event: Speed-date our Library Treasures. Put simply, this was an opportunity for the public to engage with a wide range of some of our most interesting and unique stock items, all curated by…
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