Travel Thursday – Frederick de Wit’s Atlas
Written by Fiona Melhuish, UMASCS Librarian In seventeenth-century Europe, no library would be considered complete without a pair of globes and the provision of up-to-date maps and atlases as a source of information on new discoveries, and at the University of Reading we are lucky to have not only a large map collection at the […]
Topsell’s Fantastic Four-Footed Beasts
Written by Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian Edward Topsell, a Church of England clergyman, was born in Kent in 1572 and managed the parish of St Botolph in Aldersgate, London from 1604 until his death in 1625 (Lewis, 2004). Although he wrote several books, his most celebrated work is, ‘The History of Four-footed Beasts and […]
Travel Thursday: Thomas Thomson in Sweden
Written by Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian This week’s Travel Thursday takes us to Sweden with eminent scientist Thomas Thomson. As the first teacher of practical chemistry in a British university and an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Morrell, 2004) it is no surprise that much of Thomson’s travelogue has a scientific […]
Delightes for Ladies
Written by Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian Originally published in 1602, ‘Delightes for Ladies’ by Sir Hugh Plat is one of the earliest cookery and household recipe books produced in England. It contains a fascinating array of recipes, instructions and advice on everything from making almond butter and preserving roast beef to creating candles for ladies […]
Travel Thursday: John Todhunter Journal
Written by Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian John Todhunter (1839-1916) is best known as a poet and literary critic, but was also a doctor of medicine, painter, composer and traveller. The University of Reading’s Special Collections Archive contains a fascinating Todhunter collection consisting of roughly 350 items including: personal and literary correspondence, (such as letters […]
Travel Thursday – Great Western Railway
Written by Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian The Great Western Railway (GWR) was founded in 1833 and received an enabling Act of Parliament in August 1835 that allowed the company to provide a double tracked line from Bristol to London (Daniel, 2013). Five years ago, no man had ever travelled from London to Bristol, even […]
William Wordsworth: A letter to Longman, 1820
Written by Adam Lines, Reading Room Supervisor. Before I started working at the University of Reading Special Collections, I spent a year in Grasmere working with the collections at the Wordsworth Trust. Before that I studied for a BA and an MA in English Literature and centred both of my dissertations on William Wordsworth. So […]
Travel Thursday: Captain Cook and H.M.S Endeavour
Written By Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian This month sees the anniversary of the first European ship landing in Eastern Australia. Led by British explorer, Captain James Cook, the crew of the H.M.S. Endeavour reached Botany Bay at the end of April 1770. The Special Collections Library has a number of volumes on the voyages of […]
Incunables identified
Written by Erika Delbecque, UMASCS Librarian Last month we wrote about the process of identifying loose leaves from incunables, books printed in Europe before 1501. We also asked for your help in identifying the remaining four leaves. With help from Geert Lernout and the team behind the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, all leaves from incunables have now been identified! […]
Memoir on the Dodo
Written by Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian One of the interesting finds from our cataloguing and reclassification of the Cole Library Collection is ‘Memoir on the Dodo’ by Sir Richard Owen, an eminent English biologist and palaeontologist. The initial discovery of Dodo remains in the mid nineteenth century led to some controversy in the scientific community. Owen, […]