Conserving a magical menagerie: the conservation and rehousing of the European Manuscripts collection
Written by Victoria Stevens, ACR The existence of manuscript fragment collections represents a fascinating snapshot of cultural and political points in history, showing the changing attitude and purpose of these beautiful objects over time. Although originally bound, the manuscript textblocks became separated into individual leaves or pairs of leaves, known as bifolia, when their intended […]
#StillSpecial: Google Arts & Culture launch
Written by UMASCS Librarian, Claire Clough We have some exciting news to share with you – we have become the newest member of the Google Arts & Culture family! The University of Reading Special Collections are now on Google Arts & Culture. For the first time, you can explore treasures and stories from the University of Reading Special Collections on the Google Arts […]
‘Embellish’d With Gold’: Crafting an Online Exhibition of Premodern European Manuscripts
Blog post written and online exhibition curated by Joanna Hulin, Reading Room Assistant. The European Manuscripts Collection held at the University of Reading’s Special Collections currently amounts to 143 items in total. When planning for the digital version of ‘Embellish’d With Gold’, I had thought that choosing just 15 items from the original 29 shown […]
Audio-Visual Beckett: Forgotten Gems from the Beckett Collection
Written by Dr Lucy Jeffery, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Samuel Beckett Research Centre When we think of Samuel Beckett and an audio-visual collection, Shades for ‘The Lively Arts’ series, broadcast on Sunday 17 April 1977 on BBC 2, comes to mind. And yes, Ghost Trio, …but the clouds…, and Not I are all worth watching, but […]
Postal Notation: Melanie Daiken and Samuel Beckett
Written by Xander Ryan, graduate student in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading When Melanie Daiken moved to Paris in 1966 she wrote to Samuel Beckett, a friend of her father’s, telling him that she was on her way. He replied that he was happy to meet her, and gave her […]
Street Fights and Radishes: the notebooks of Leslie Daiken
Written by Xander Ryan, graduate student in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading. Amongst the rich holdings of the Samuel Beckett Collection archives are the notebooks of Leslie Daiken. He was born Leslie Herbert Yodaiken in 1912 to Irish-Russian parents, part of the Jewish community centred around the ‘Little Jerusalem’ area of […]
New Exhibition: Embellish’d with Gold.Treasures from the European Manuscripts Collection
During 2018 the University was fortunate to make an important new acquisition, the European Manuscripts Collection. The collection consists of 141 folio illuminated manuscripts and 2 volumes: a seventeenth century Italian manuscript prayer book and a fifteenth century French Book of Hours. The strength of the collection comprises the number of Book of Hours folios […]
Recovering Publishing Histories: the Adam & Charles Black Letterbooks
By Amara Thornton (Research Officer, Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology) The publishing house Adam and Charles Black was established in 1834 in Edinburgh. Now its archive is held in University of Reading Special Collections, and over the last few weeks I’ve been looking at one part of the collection – the Letterbooks containing delicate copies […]
The Queen’s Resolve: Queen Victoria in the Special Collections
Following the 200th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s birth, Liaison Librarian Bethan Davies takes a closer look at our Special Collections and the surprising connections with the famous monarch. Housed in the red brick building designed by Alfred Waterhouse for Alfred Palmer, it is hard not to see the connection between the Victorians and Special Collections. […]
LGBT History Month: Publishing pacifism, ‘perversity’, and prosecution
Written by Anna Murdoch, Graduate Trainee Library Assistant. You never quite know what you could find browsing the shelves in the rare book store, and how you could reach into the archives of both Special Collections and the MERL to find connections to a particular work. As a former English Literature student, I particularly enjoy the […]