We are delighted to announce the opening of our new exhibition 'Her booke': Early Modern Women and their Books at Lambeth Palace Library! Admission is FREE and we welcome you to browse the exhibition during our opening hours or attend one of our events. lambethpalacelibrary.info/exhibitions/he…

#Practice, practice! Evidence of a book artisan perfecting their technique in the margin of this Cambridge University Library Cambridge UL Special Collections statute book. #MedievalManuscripts #LegalHistory #HistLaw #Law #Art

So many gorgeous bookbindings in this picture 😍

Sorry for horrid photo, but if readers or librarians have come across this bookplate or similar, please let me know! I am trying to reconstruct the library of Haughton James, d. 1813

A 'new-fashioned' printing press from Joseph Moxon's 'Mechanick exercises on the whole art of printing', the first printing manual published in English.

Loving this happy little knight, from the title page of Jacob Reenhielm’s ‘Thorstens Viikings-sons saga’ (Uppsala, 1680), a collection of Icelandic & Swedish sagas. Now Cambridge UL Special Collections F168.d.11.1.

Tickets are now on sale for our major exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words (25 October 2024 to 2 March 2025) Check out today's blogpost for a sneak preview of some of the incredible items going on display! blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanus…

Fun to look at some manuscript pattern poetry, c.1600, Bodleian Libraries this afternoon (Bodleian MS Lat misc e.23). They were mostly written by Wykehamists in anticipation of Elizabeth I’s visit to Winchester. My favourite is this star:

Great stuff from Archivist Emma on Elizabeth I's visit - plus the Old Library looking splendid!

Really pleased to see Information Studies's revamped 'Rare books & Special Collections' course. If you're musing on a career in rare books librarianship, sign up! aber.ac.uk/en/dis/courses…

Recently, we hosted the The Attingham Trust Summer School for a day. Here's a photo of us examining one of the book displays in the Old Library (photo credit: Tom Anders).

Lower right: Me, skulking in a corner of the Reading Room with My Precio— er, one of my #MedievalManuscripts. #PortraitOfTheCodicologistAsANotSoYoungFellow #BookGollum

We're delighted to be able to announce our great speaker list for 2024-5 -- bibliographers, artists, textual scholars, book historians, book trade specialists, librarians, rare book cataloguers ... All talks in person and online: please come along! 📚

We recently acquired of copy of the 1644 edition of the "De Arte Gymnastica" by the Italian physician Girolamo Mercuriale (1530-1606). And because the Olympics are still going on, we show you some images, including swinging and rope climbing. #tomorrowsresearch #rarebooks

It was a wonderful week passed on Rare Book School's 'Seminar in Western Codicology'. Many thanks to our tutor, Michèle Mulchahey, to the well-oiled machine of RBS, and to Small Special Collections Library (UVA) for sharing their mss. Very grateful for the scholarship to attend.

Target audience reached

What did #earlymodernwomen read? Where did their books come from? 🔎📚🌍 The Reading Women project maps the books of Danish collector Karen Brahe: readingwomen.sdu.dk/map The map features hundreds of titles in multiple languages, from 16th-18th c #herbook #bookhistory #DH

This early printed book is full of colourful woodcut engravings of historical and mythological women. 'De Claris Mulieribus’ is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in post-ancient Western literature. 106 women are featured. MS Douce 287

A playful way of dating books: the chronogram - very popular in particular during the later Renaissance and throughout the Baroque era, especially in the Germanic world... ⬇️

At one of my favourite places; the amazing Mussenden Temple at Downhill, on the north coast of Ireland. This was the library of Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry. I published a chapter about it in 2011. Weather not usually like today!