A full and digitised description of the Housman papers at St John’s is in the works. Connie Bettison, St John’s library trainee from 2016-17, writes about her experience beginning the digital cataloguing process. A.E. Housman A.E. Housman (1859-1936) is best known today for his poetry but in his own time he was highly regarded asContinue reading “Cataloguing A.E. Housman’s Personal Papers”
Author Archives: St. John's Library
Scandinavia in the Special Collections
This month, we gather together a number of different items which share a northern theme: twentieth-century cartoons, seventeenth-century astronomy, nineteenth-century literature, sixteenth-century history, eighteenth-century exploration, and a seventeenth-century Bible. Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus [Description of the Northern people], Olaus Magnus (1550) ∑.2.14 Olaus Magnus (1490-1557) was a Swedish writer and Archbishop of Uppsala, and thisContinue reading “Scandinavia in the Special Collections”
“excuse the scrawl”: literary letters from St. John’s special collections
Alongside collections of manuscripts and early printed books, St. John’s College’s Special Collections include personal papers of a number of well-known literary figures: Robert Graves, A.E. Housman, Jane Austen, Philip Larkin, Spike Milligan and Professor J.B. Leishman. Included in these papers is a great deal of correspondence, occasionally between other literary figures, or concerning literaryContinue reading ““excuse the scrawl”: literary letters from St. John’s special collections”
Album of Prints, William Hogarth (1756)
One of St John’s treasures from the eighteenth-century is an album of 77 of William Hogarth’s prints, a seemingly unique contemporary collation including a broad range of his works. William Hogarth (1697-1764) A painter and printmaker who used his art to make satirical commentary on eighteenth-century social issues, Hogarth was an innovator in the field.Continue reading “Album of Prints, William Hogarth (1756)”
Robert Hooke, Micrographia (1667), and Lectures and Collections (1678)
The works of Robert Hooke are well preserved at St John’s College Library with the library holding copies of 17th-century publications of Hooke’s work on microscopy, observations of comets, and the proposition of his eponymous law of elasticity. Robert Hooke (1635-1703) was renowned in his day for being an early member of the Royal SocietyContinue reading “Robert Hooke, Micrographia (1667), and Lectures and Collections (1678)”
Mamusse wunneetupanatamwe up-biblum God (the Massachusett Bible), 1661-1663
St John’s College library has a copy of the first Bible published in America. It is written in the Massachusett dialect of Algonquian, a Native American language which missionary John Eliot learnt in part of his attempt to convert the Massachusett people to Christianity and literacy. In 1663, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Samuel Green published JohnContinue reading “Mamusse wunneetupanatamwe up-biblum God (the Massachusett Bible), 1661-1663”
Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum
In St John’s College Library’s Special Collections there are four copies of Ortelius’s world atlases. These were the first attempts at mapping the known world in its entirety which demonstrate a balance between striving for accurate cartography and presenting the wondrous elements of the distant world. Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598) From Antwerp, Brussels, Ortelius was partContinue reading “Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum”
Ælfric and Ælfric Bata, Grammatical Texts, Manuscript 154
Ælfric and St John’s College At St John’s College special collections and manuscripts are the treasures of the Library. These are often invaluable for research purposes and, in some cases, are unique volumes. Such irreplaceable objects require equally distinctive care and treatment, and St John’s is a member of the Oxford Conservation Consortium which providesContinue reading “Ælfric and Ælfric Bata, Grammatical Texts, Manuscript 154”
Do we need pictures? Illustration of the earliest printed books.
St. John’s holds an important collection of incunables, i.e. books printed before 31st December 1501. The process of printing with movable type was invented around 1450 in Mainz by Johannes Gutenberg, as recorded by the Cologne Chronicle of 1499, a text which preserves the testimony of the first printer of Cologne, Ulrich Zell, who hadContinue reading “Do we need pictures? Illustration of the earliest printed books.”
In the Library
A selection of livres d’artiste from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is on temporary display in St. John’s College Library. It has been drawn from the college’s collection of such books, a collection which Dr Peter Hacker built when he was the Library Fellow at the college. In the glossary of French Livres d’artiste inContinue reading “In the Library”