UPDATED 13 March 2013 One of the rare book team’s long-standing projects has been the creation of a rare Children’s Book Collection, assembled from a… Read More »J. M. Barrie inscription found in the Children’s Book Collection
Francis Pringle’s copy of Poetae minores Graeci (1635) and Robert Balfour’s copy of Juvenal’s Satires (1552) The University Library Department of Special Collections has recently… Read More »Two books used by two esteemed Classical scholars come back to St Andrews
This week’s illustration post focuses on perhaps the most popular illustrated genre of the Renaissance: the emblem book. Emblem books were a genre developed in… Read More »52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations, Week 32: the emblem book of Sebastián de Covarrubias y Orozco (1610)
As 2013 promises to be an interesting year astronomically and we take to gazing at the stars again, I thought it would be good to… Read More »52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations, Week 29: the heavens, according to Hevelius
For our New Year post it seems appropriate to look at some quintessentially Scottish images. There are some images of the Scots that we prefer… Read More »52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations, Week 28: the Scottish Self-image
A very merry Christmas to all of our readers! For this Christmas Eve illustration post we picked a lovely little book from the heart of… Read More »52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations, Week 27: Robert Seymour’s “Book of Christmas” illustrations (1836)
We couldn’t resist celebrating St Andrews day with some ‘inspiring illustrations’ of our eponym himself. The cult of St Andrew was actively pursued in Scotland… Read More »52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations, Week 23: Images of St Andrew
This June, the Department of Special Collections launched Lighting the Past, a project to catalogue the 150,000 books not currently represented in the University Library’s… Read More »Completed: a Grand Gathering of the Geographical Gallimaufry!
To celebrate the first meeting of the Lectura Dantis Andreapolitana (the St Andrews Lectura Dantis) of this academic year, I spent a bit of time… Read More »52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations, Week 21: images inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy
This week’s illustration post is a wonderful blend of the earlier photographic and the highly skilled engraving arts of the 19th century. The beautiful engravings… Read More »52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations, Week 20: Excursions daguerriennes (1842)
On Thursday, 1 November 2012, a day conference dedicated to Andrew Lang will be held in Upper College Hall, St Salvator’s Quad, University of St… Read More »Andrew Lang (1844-1912): a Centenary Celebration
In every working library, each day sees a struggle played out between order and chaos. It’s a fact of life that however hard librarians work… Read More »Theft, vandalism and hatred: 400 years of bad behaviour in the King James Library, part 2
