EXHIBIT CAPTIONS

SCIENCE & MEDICINE

Gregorio Dati (1362-1436)
La sfera
[Florence: Lorenzo Morgiani and Johannes Petri, for] Piero Pacini, [c. 1497-1500]

This popular cosmographical work in Italian rhyming verse was composed by a much-travelled merchant who held political office in Florence in the 1420s. The poem expresses the author’s interest in astronomy, cosmology, meteorology and navigation, treating of the pre-Copernican universe and its influence on man. It was first printed in Florence in about 1472 and went through a dozen further editions before this first illustrated version, of which the uniquely surviving copy is displayed here.

Inc.5.B.8.17
Purchased with the assistance of the Friends, 1995

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Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Il saggiatore
Rome: Giacomo Mascardi, 1623

Galileo’s masterful polemic was a reply to a bitter personal attack by the Jesuit Orazio Grassi in his Libra astronomica e filosofica (1619). The context was an ongoing debate on the nature of comets, occasioned by the appearance of three comets during the autumn of 1618. Galileo’s response set out his methods of natural philosophy, and famously described the universe as an open book to be read only by learning the language in which it is written – mathematics.

6000.c.13
Purchased with the assistance of the Friends, 1997

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Giovanni Camillo Glorioso (1572-1643)
De cometis dissertatio astronomico-physica
Venice: Varisciana, 1624

Glorioso succeeded Galileo in the chair of mathematics at Padua in 1613. This rare treatise on comets was prompted by the appearance of the third comet of 1618, which was unusually bright and visible from November to January the following year. Glorioso was firmly in favour of the ‘new’ astronomy and against the Aristotelians; the book lays out the theories of Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, and others. Amongst the competing ‘modern’ theories of comets, he inclines toward that of Kepler, and rejects Galileo’s erroneous interpretation.

6000.c.35
Purchased with the assistance of the Friends, 2001

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John Neale (fl. eighteenth century)
The description of the planetary machine, for which His Majesty has granted his royal patent
London: printed by J. Tilly for the author, 1745

The instrument maker John Neale lived at Leadenhall Street in London. In 1755, the young James Watt spent a short time with him after his arrival in the city.

Neale intended his planetary machine to appeal to the public by being cheaper than similar models – it ‘may be made of several prices, according to the size and number of the planets’. The book also advertises Neale’s ‘Lectures on the use of the orrery and globes’, which could be arranged for ‘any company of gentlemen at a convenient place, or a private family at their own house’, each gentleman subscribing half a guinea for the course.

7350.d.127
Purchased by the Friends, 1981

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Pascal Volino and Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann (b. 1946)
Virtual clothing: theory and practice
Berlin: Springer, c. 2000

The authors explain how to create and simulate clothes for virtual humans appearing in 3D computer-generated images and films. Starting with the origins of virtual clothing in the mid-1980s and the basic foundations from the field of mechanics, the reader is gradually introduced to the state of the art. Topics covered include how to create realistic effects by simulating wrinkles.

The book is accompanied by a CD-ROM providing software tools for making 3D clothes and fashion shows.

C201.c.1606
Donated by P. W. Hawkes through the Friends, 2004

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Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
Letter to John Collins
Cambridge, 2 October 1672

This is a rare, possibly unique, example of an unpublished letter by Newton. It is an addendum to a letter of 20 August 1672, an early copy of which also resides in the Library. Newton reiterates the main content of this previous letter (which he fears was lost in the post) and adds an alternative method for solving the geometrical problem they were discussing. John Collins was a mathematician who corresponded with most of the great scientific men of his day, including Isaac Barrow, John Flamsteed and James Gregory as well as Newton.

MS Add. 9597/2/12
Purchased with the assistance of the Friends, the Heritage Lottery Fund and others, 2001

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Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
‘De modo describendi conicas sectiones et curves trium dimensionum quando sint primi gradus etc.’
Cambridge, c. 1667

This treatise, the title of which may be translated as ‘The manner of describing conics and cubics when they are of the first grade, etc.’, is a highly developed example of Newton’s youthful researches into the organic construction of curves, a response to his reading of Schooten’s Exercitationes Geometricae in 1664. The recently-acquired Macclesfield Collection of Newton’s papers also contains two earlier worksheets on closely related subjects.

MS Add. 9597/2/3, pp. 2-3
Purchased with the assistance of the Friends, the Heritage Lottery Fund and others, 2001

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Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakaiya al- Razi (c. 865-923/932)
‘Kitab al-Mansuri’ (‘Liber Almansoris’)
England, possibly East Anglia, late twelfth century

The Persian author al-Razi, known in the West as Rhazes or Rasis, is regarded as the pre-eminent physician of the early Islamic world. His medical work ‘Kitab al-Mansuri’ was translated into Latin as the ‘Liber Almansoris’ in the twelfth century, probably by Gerald of Cremona or one of his circle, and in this form it became an important text in the medieval universities. This early manuscript of the translation is probably the one donated to Clare College by William de Acton in the fourteenth century; it later spent many years in the Tollemache family library at Helmingham Hall, Suffolk.

MS Add. 9213, ff. 4v-5r
Purchased with the assistance of the Friends and the Victoria and Albert/ Museums & Galleries Commission Purchase Grant Fund, 1994

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Johannes Dryander (1500–1560)
Anatomiae, hoc est, corporis humani dissectionis pars prior…
Marburg: Eucharius Cervicornus, 1537

This famous work on the anatomy of the head is one of the most important illustrated anatomies before Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica (1543), and one of the earliest devoted to a single part of the body. It is an expanded version of Dryander’s Anatomia capitis humani (1536), and was intended to be the first part of a complete illustrated anatomy, but the project was abandoned.

Dryander was professor of mathematics and medicine at Marburg, and was one of the first anatomists to make illustrations after his own dissections. The woodcuts are most likely by Georg Thomas of Basle, and form a sequence beginning with the removal of the scalp, as shown here.

5000.d.70
Purchased with the assistance of the Friends in memory of Sir Alan Cook, 2004

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Pietro Paolo Magni (fl. sixteenth century)
Discorso sopra il modo di fare i cauterij ò rottorij à corpi humani …
Rome: Barrolomeo Bonfadino, 1588

This early work devoted entirely to cauterization discusses techniques and equipment in detail, considering its merits for injuries to different parts of the body from head to toe and for wounds inflicted by various means – by rabid dogs, for example. The author is presented to us in a full-page woodcut portrait, and his instruments and dressings are fully illustrated.

F158.c.2.15
Purchased by the Friends, 1987

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MILITARY & NAVAL

Sieur du Praissac
Les discours et questions militaires
Dernière edition, reveue et corrigée
Paris: Chez Nicolas et Jean de la Coste, 1638

Both a history of, and a guide to, tactics in warfare, this influential treatise is liberally illustrated with detailed woodcut diagrams showing military sieges and formations recorded at European battles over the decades prior to its first publication in 1614. It also gives practical instructions for assembling cannon and taking a castle by treachery. Very little is known about Sieur du Praissac, despite the contemporary popularity of this work, which was translated into English in 1639.

F163.d.4.6
Purchased by the Friends, 1981

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[Richard Ames, d. 1693]
The siege and surrender of Mons: A tragi-comedy. Exposing the villany of the priests and the intrigues of the French
London: For Richard Baldwin, 1691

Richard Ames was a prolific author of satirical comic poems and plays, although the Library holds only a few of his works in original editions. The surrender of Mons by the Spanish to the army of Louis XIV took place on 29 March 1691, and this play claims to have been licensed for performance on 23 April; Ames was obviously as fast a writer as he was topical. This volume was acquired from the late John Brett-Smith as an addition to the Library’s Brett-Smith Collection of Restoration Drama.

Brett-Smith.11a
Purchased by the Friends, 1991

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Leopold Josef, Count von Daun (1705-1766)
‘Ordonnance pour les formation des bataillons et l’exercice avec les plans de la formation d’un bataillon en ordre de bataille ou parade ainsy que les differentes conversions’
Possibly Austria, 1766

Warfare in eighteenth-century Europe was revolutionised by the martial genius of Frederick the Great of Prussia. The new methods relied on soldiers being able to execute complex drill manoeuvres swiftly and accurately at company and battalion level. The Austrian general Leopold Josef, Count von Daun faced Frederick’s armies on the battlefield, and pursued reform in the Imperial forces. This manuscript, containing many diagrams of the ‘evolutions’ to be performed by the troops, was copied from one signed by von Daun.

MS Add. 8993, pp. 42-43
Purchased by the Friends, 1994

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Henry Duncan Grant (1834-1896)
Logbook of a voyage on H.M.S. Pearl
Various locations, 1855-1857

Drawn from the extensive Naval collections in the Library, this handsome ship’s log is the work of Lieutenant Henry Duncan Grant, an officer on HMS Screw Ship Pearl during a voyage from London to the Far East in the mid 1850s. Like so many of his Naval contemporaries, Grant was a talented artist. Seventeen full-page drawings, including a number of well-executed watercolours, are accompanied by smaller sketches of headlands, bays and other coastal features. The log is interesting in the information that it sheds on the performance of early steam boilers, but Grant also describes in some detail operations against ‘piratical junks’ off Hong Kong, and an exciting ride on the ‘Panama Rail Road’ in October 1856.

MS Add. 9531
Purchased by the Friends, 1999

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Lionel Charles Dunsterville (1865-1946)
Letters to his sister May
Cairo, 8-23 June 1885, and Mian Mir, 27 February 1887

A schoolboy friend of Rudyard Kipling, Lionel Charles Dunsterville was the prototype for Stalky Corkoran in Kipling’s Stalky and Co. tales. Thanks to the generosity of the Friends, the Library was able to purchase a fascinating collection of letters from Dunsterville to his sister May, written while at school at the United Services College Westward Ho!, and during his early days as a soldier in the Mediterranean and India. Dunsterville lived up to the Stalky persona, eventually taking command of ‘Dunsterforce’, an irregular formation of Indian Army troops operating on the Perso-Russian frontier in the last days of the First World War. An accomplished author in his own right, Dunsterville later became the first President of the Kipling Society.

MS Add. 9498/82 and 98
Purchased with the assistance of the Friends, 1998

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John Robert Monsell (1877-1952)
Sketches of military scenes
France, 1914-1919

These pen and wash sketches were made by John Robert Monsell while serving with the British Army in France during the First World War, and vividly evoke the logistical needs of the vast armies engaged on the Western Front. Monsell was an accomplished writer and illustrator of children’s books and a composer of light musical plays, but he was profoundly affected by his experience of combat: he had been zestful and outgoing as a young man, but in the post-war years his family described him as being drained of energy and worn out.

From MS Add. 9437/9/8
Purchased with the assistance of the Friends, 1997

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Hammond Innes (1913-1998)
Despatch on the invasion of Southern France
[France, August 1944]

By his own admission, Hammond Innes was no natural novelist. However, through a great deal of hard work and self-belief he made a name for himself as an author of gripping adventure stories, written for both adults and children, while also turning his hand to popular history. In the Second World War, after a spell as an artilleryman, he served as a correspondent and editor on British Army newspapers. This typewritten radio report from the Allied invasion of Southern France in August 1944 forms part of a very large collection of Hammond Innes Papers in the Library which shows in detail the gradual emergence of a successful writing talent, while telling the fascinating story of the author himself.

From MS Add. 9533
Donated by the executors of Hammond Innes through the Friends, 1998

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THE PERFORMING ARTS

Marco Antonio Ferretti (fl. seventeenth century)
Mirinda, favola pastorale
Venice: Domenico Ventuarti, 1612

This volume contains two Italian plays of the early seventeenth century, and was purchased to complement the Library’s Bute Collection, acquired in 1949. Part of the library of John Stuart, first Marquess of Bute, who was Envoy to Turin from 1779 to 1783, this collection is remarkable for its coverage of Italian theatre and the rarity of some of its editions. The action of the pastoral play Mirinda takes place on Crete, and each of its five acts is illustrated with a plate showing the main characters in their various costumes.

F161.c.2.5
Purchased by the Friends, 1989

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Charles Dibdin (1745-1814)
The ballads sung by Mr Dibdin this evening at Ranelagh
London: H. Fougt, [1770]

Whilst under contract to David Garrick at Drury Lane in the early 1770s, Dibdin was also in charge of the music performed in the pleasure gardens at Ranelagh. He composed, sang and published his own songs; a typical opening line is ‘Young Jockey he courted sweet Mog the Brunette’. The printer Henric Fougt worked in London from 1767, but his innovations for clear but cheap music printing made him unpopular in the trade and he returned to Sweden in 1770.

MRA.290.75.133
From the library of Edmund Poole, donated by Mrs R. Poole through the Friends, 1985

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Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
Letter to the Secretary of the Royal Society of Literature
Hebden Bridge, 2 June 1963

As part of its mission ‘to sustain all that is best, whether traditional or experimental, in English letters, and to encourage a catholic appreciation of literature’, the Royal Society of Literature has sponsored many performances of poetry. This letter from the future Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, gives a curious explanation for his failure to read at one such event. The Society’s archive was acquired by the Library in 1999 with the help of a sizeable subvention from the Friends.

From MS RSL
Purchased with the assistance of the Friends, the Victoria and Albert/ Museums & Galleries Commission Purchase Grant Fund, and the Friends of the National Libraries, 1999

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Pierce Egan (1772-1849)
The life of an actor
London: for C.S. Arnold, 1825

Egan was the author of a number of popular comic tales such as Life in London and Tom and Jerry, usually including much travel and alternating scenes of high and low life. The illustrations, usually coloured aquatints as here, added greatly to the books’ appeal. In this work, dedicated to Edmund Kean, the hero Peregrine Proteus is ‘completely unhinged on witnessing John Kemble’s performance as Hamlet’, and after many vicissitudes becomes ‘Manager of a Theatre Royal in the Metropolis’.

Syn.5.82.77
Purchased by the Friends, 1985

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Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)
Psyché, tragédie
Paris: René Baudry, 1678

This volume, containing ten librettos of operas and ballets by the great baroque composer Lully, was purchased at the sale of the library of Genevieve Thibault, comtesse de Chambure, one of the foremost French musicologists and collectors of the last century, along with manuscripts of two Lully operas. Psyché was first presented before Louis XIV as a tragédie-ballet, with a text by Molière and Corneille; by 1678 the work had become a tragédie en musique, with the spoken dialogue replaced by recitative.

MR463.c.65.4
Purchased 1993

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Jean-Baptiste Moreau (1656-1733)
Intermèdes en musique de la tragédie d’Esther
Paris: chez Christophe Ballard, 1696

The tragedy of Esther was written by Jean Racine for Madame de Maintenon, and performed before the Court in 1689 by the pupils of the Maison Royale St Louis at St Cyr. Racine envisaged Esther as ‘une espèce de poème où le chant fut mêlé avec le récit’, and the music for its first performance, as printed here, was composed by Moreau, who also provided music for the school’s performance of Racine’s Athalie in 1691.

MR260.b.65.702
Purchased with the assistance of the Friends, 1998

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Christian Joseph Lidarti (1730-after 1793)
Ester, oratorio …
Pisa, 1774

Racine’s Esther formed the basis for the text of Handel’s oratorio (1718), and hence for the setting by Lidarti, first performed in Pisa in 1774. When this unique manuscript was purchased, it was assumed that the text would be in Italian. However, it was recognised as romanised Hebrew, and the work itself as the largest-scale musical setting to a Hebrew text before the twentieth century. Dr Israel Adler, an eminent scholar in this field, arranged the preparation of a modern edition and a performance on 31 May 2000 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The work has since been recorded and released on Compact Disc.

MS Add. 9467
Purchased by the Friends, 1998

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TRAVEL AND TOPOGRAPHY

Constantino von Wahrenberg [Philipp Balthasar Sinold von Schütz] (1657-1742)
Die glückseeligste Insul auf der gantzen Welt, oder das Land der Zufriedenheit
Leipzig: Gottlieb Friedrich Fromann, 1723

This highly influential work of utopian fiction was reprinted five times before 1750, although only four other copies of this first edition are known. Sinold wrote under numerous pseudonyms and was largely responsible for the 1704 German baroque encyclopaedia Reales Staats- und Zeitungs-Lexicon as well as religious and moral works. He extols the Island of Happiness as a ‘pietistic, communistic, monarchical republic inhabited by virtuous citizens leading simple lives’, in contrast with Europe and especially America, which were corrupted by war, litigation and religious controversy.

7746.d.98
Purchased by the Friends, 1989

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Madagascar: or, Robert Drury’s journal during fifteen years captivity on that island
London: W. Meadows, 1729

Opinion is divided as to whether this story of a shipwrecked man enslaved by the natives of Madagascar was a fiction written by Daniel Defoe, or the work of Robert Drury himself subsequently edited by Defoe. Drury’s story is confirmed independently in contemporary sources, and many of his details of Madagascar are accurate, including a map of the island and a vocabulary of the Malagasy language.

7000.d.216
Purchased by the Friends, 1996

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Picturesque views in Devonshire, Cornwall, &c.
London: Howlett and Brimmer, 1826

This fine copy of a very scarce item forms part of the collection of books illustrated with hand-coloured aquatints assembled by John Harley-Mason, a member of the Friends of the Library. It contains 16 plates by William Payne depicting scenes in England and Wales, with brief letterpress descriptions; the original cost of the volume was £1/18/-.

Harley-Mason.b.133
Bequeathed by John Harley-Mason through the Friends, 2003

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The Intelligencer: or, Merchant’s assistant
London: W. Meadows, 1738

This pocket-book is an early bus timetable for businessmen, giving the times of stage-coaches between all parts of the country and London. It also lists ‘the names and places of abode of all the merchants and considerable traders’ in London, including two chocolate makers, several toymen, and the name of the City Sword-Bearer. This volume is one of only four extant copies, and scribbled sums on the flyleaves suggest that it saw active service.

7428.e.3
Purchased by the Friends, 1980

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Kupfersammlung zu Göthe’s sämmtlichen Werken
Sechste Lieferung
Leipzig: Friedrich Fleischer, 1829

In 1827 Goethe instigated the publication of his complete works, of which the first 40 volumes were completed before his death in 1832 and a further 15 published between 1832 and 1834. The plates to accompany this edition were issued simultaneously as a separate series and are now very scarce. The plate on display illustrates Goethe’s Italienische Reise, based on two years he spent touring Italy in the late 1770s.

8002.c.27
Purchased by the Friends, 1997

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Flora Tristan (1803-1844)
Promenades dans Londres
Deuxième édition
Paris: H.-L. Deloye : London: W. Jeffs; 1840

Flora Tristan was a feminist, a socialist and an active campaigner for workers’ and women’s emancipation. Her writings have recently been rediscovered by scholars who see her as anticipating the political theories of Marx. This work, based on three extended visits to London in the 1830s, is highly critical of the inequalities in London society and the dreadful conditions in slums and prisons; for Tristan, London is characterised by ‘une misère profonde dans le peuple … le mécontentement général’.

F184.c.4.1
Purchased by the Friends, 1984

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Anonymous cartographer
‘A platt, map, or geographicall description of divers lands in the parish of Uggeshall in the Cownty of Suff’…’
England, 1 January 1650

This fine manuscript map shows lands in the possession of Anthony Baker of Wrentham. The Parish of Uggeshall is five miles north-west of Southwold, in Suffolk. Field boundaries, many of which coincide with those of the present day, are shown in green, tracks in yellow. With its date of 1650 it is a rare early example of a type of plan which became more prevalent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Individual plans of rural areas continued until they were superseded by Ordnance Survey mapping. In the case of Uggeshall this was not until 1884.

MS Plans.904
Purchased by the Friends, 1996

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Aleksandr Dmitrievich Savinkov (1769-1835) and Gavriil Andreevich Sarychev (1763-1831)
Plan de la ville capitale de St Petersbourg (part)
[St Petersburg:] Aleksandr Savinkov, 1820

This finely engraved and detailed map of St Petersburg was published and engraved by Aleksandr Savinkov using survey material provided by Vice Admiral Gavriil Sarychev, a naval officer and explorer who had been appointed Chief Hydrographer to the Russian Navy in 1808. The map is in Russian and French – the latter being the language of the Russian ruling class of the time. It is accompanied by twenty views of the principal buildings and landmarks of the city, designed to fit around the map, two of which are displayed here.

Maps.c.18.H.90
Purchased by the Friends, 2001

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Giuseppe Gemmellaro (1787-1866)
Historical & topographical map of the eruptions of Etna from the æra of the Sicani to the present time, intended to show the origin, the direction & the age of each eruption
London: James Wyld, 1828

The thick branching lines show the path of lava flows during eruptions on Mount Etna over a period of three millennia. The eruptions are also detailed in lists running down the side of the map (one in English, the other in Italian). The earliest eruption listed took place in 1226 BC, in the time of the Sicani, the first inhabitants of Sicily. Even today the coastal cities like Catania (the birthplace of geologist Giuseppe Gemmellaro) live under the threat of further outpourings of lava.

Maps.bb.18.H.60
Purchased by the Friends, 2001

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THE CLASSICAL WORLD

Girolamo Franzini (fl. sixteenth century)
Icones statuarum antiquarum urbis Romae
Rome, 1599

This is one of four collections of woodcuts on the sculpture, ancient buildings, churches, and palazzi of Rome, bound together in this unusual pocket edition. The woodcuts were originally published by Francini in a new edition of Andrea Fulvio’s long-established guide to the city. The woodcut displayed here is of the Belvedere Apollo, probably a marble copy made in the second century A.D. of a bronze original by the Greek sculptor Leochares. It was in the Cortile del Belvedere at the Vatican by 1511.

F159.e.2.6
Presented by F. J. Norton through the Friends, 1984

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Louis de Montjosieu (fl. sixteenth century)
Gallus Romæ hospes
Rome: Joannes Osmarinus, 1585

Louis de Montjosieu was a scholar of wide interests. Tutor in mathematics to Francis, youngest brother of the French king Henry III, and to the Duc de Joyeuse, he accompanied the latter on a visit to Rome in 1583. During his stay he studied the city’s antique monuments, and this treatise is the result of his work. The first part describes various buildings, the second examines the Parthenon, the third and fourth discuss Roman sculpture and paintings, and the fifth the Forum and the Arch of Fabian. Its conclusions are still held in some esteem. The work is an elegant production, with six fine full-page engravings and two woodcut ground-plans.

F158.c.2.14
Purchased by the Friends, 1987

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Publius Terentius Afer (186 or 5 B.C.-c. 161 B.C.)
Comoediae
Rome: Zempel Press for Nicola Roisecco, 1767

This edition of the comedies of the Latin playwright Terence, remarkable for its fine typography and its illustrations, was edited by Carlo Cocquelines. It is based on the edition of Daniel Heinsius (1580-1655), one of the foremost classical scholars of his time, and has an Italian translation by Niccolo Forteguerri (1674-1735). The illustrations are based on the illustrations in a ninth-century manuscript of Terence (MS Vaticanus Latinus 3868), which are believed to have been copied from originals drawn in about the year 400.

F176.bb.2.1-2
Purchased by the Friends, 1986

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Josef von Stichaner
Römische Denkmäler in Baiern
Munich: Bavarian Academy of Sciences, 1808

This study of Roman remains found in Bavaria is especially remarkable for its numerous plates, many of them illustrating unspectacular objects such as these pottery fragments. Such lavishness was possible because Stichaner’s work employed the new and relatively cheap technique of lithography. This process had been invented by Alois Senefelder only twelve years before, in 1796, and Stichaner’s may have been the first scholarly or scientific work to employ it.

8000.a.24
Purchased by the Friends, 2004

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SCHOOL & UNIVERSITY

Martin Luther (1483-1546)
An die Radherrn aller stedte deutsches lands: das sie Christlische Schulen auffrichten und hallten sollen
Wittemberg: [Cranach und Döring], 1524

Luther’s appeal to the civic leaders of German towns outlined the importance of educating children in the liberal arts and classical languages, and the mutual benefit this offered to both Church and state. He believed schooling should be available to all groups in society, and that through studying history and politics children might be enabled to ‘take their own place in the stream of human events’. The work was reprinted across Germany ten times in 1524, and this is a rare copy of the first edition.

F152.b.1.2
Purchased by the Friends, 1983

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Lucas Loss (1508-1582)
Epitome bibliorum sacrorum utriusque testamenti
Frankfurt: Haeredes Christiani Egenolphi, impensis Adam Loniceri [et al.], 1579

While the Library would certainly not encourage modern readers to add marginal notes, pointing hands or red underlining of text, the annotations in this sixteenth-century student’s guide to the Bible are of considerable interest and show that it was actively used in teaching. The majority of notes are in the hand of Peter of Lautenberg, probably the first owner of the book, whose inscription is on the title page. Loss wrote numerous educational volumes during 50 years as a teacher and headmaster, and was a member of the intellectual circle of Luther and Melancthon.

Rel.d.57.6
Purchased by the Friends, 1987

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[J. G. van Heldoren], (fl. seventeenth century)
A new and easy English grammar / Een nieuwe en gemakkelijke Engelsche Spraak-konst
Amsterdam: Weduwe Mercy Bruining, 1675

This delightful book aims to teach English grammar to beginners, with some interesting choices of subject matter, as in the discussion here of possessive pronouns. As well as useful phrases for tourists, it includes a dialogue about the state of England, ranging from an account of the names and roles of the various parliamentary officers to a diatribe against that troublesome popular recreation, ‘The Foot-ball’.

F167.e.5.17
Purchased by the Friends, 1986

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George Whitehead (1637-1724)
The key of knowledge not found in the University Library of Cambridge…
London: Printed by M[atthew] I[nman] for Robert Wilson, 1660

This pamphlet was one of a series of heated exchanges on the subject of Quakerism between George Whitehead and Thomas Smith, theologian and, from 1659 to 1661, University Librarian. Whitehead, for the Quakers, declares that it is ‘to the great shame and dishonour of the University of Cambridge that such things as he hath uttered should proceed from a Library-Keeper’. The book was given through the Friends by J. C. T. Oates, himself a highly distinguished Library-Keeper, and complements the Library’s extensive holdings of Whitehead’s theological pamphlets.

Syn.7.66.136
Presented by J. C. T. Oates through the Friends, 1982

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Francis Blomefield (1702-1752)
Collectanea Cantabrigiensia
Norwich: Printed for the author, 1750

Blomefield’s Collectanea is an account of memorial inscriptions and the like in churches and college chapels in and around Cambridge. This copy was owned by Robert Masters (1713-1798), Fellow and historian of Corpus Christi College, who added extensive annotations and inserted a number of printed documents and other papers, including this humorous engraving, published by J. Bowles, London, 1756, of four antiquaries examining a cryptic inscription. This appears to include Latin words, e.g. bene (‘well’), et (‘and’), ter (‘three times’), but actually reads ‘Beneath this stone reposeth Claud Coster tripeseller of Impington as doth his consort Jane’. Almost certainly, this inscription is someone’s flight of fancy, and never actually existed.

Adv.a.63.2
Purchased by the Friends, 2002

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Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997)
Letter to Herbert Butterfield
London, 1 September 1953

Vigorous debate can be a way of deepening one’s understanding of a topic and testing the theories that underpin it. In this letter, the philosopher and historian Isaiah Berlin defended the making of moral judgements when writing history, in opposition to what he saw as Herbert Butterfield’s position that it was ‘arrogant and ignorant and dangerous to condemn’. Butterfield was Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, serving also as Master of Peterhouse and Vice-Chancellor. His papers were the first substantial archive to be given to the Library through the Friends.

From MS Butterfield 122/6
Donated by Lady Pamela Butterfield through the Friends, 1980

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William Spooner (fl. nineteenth century)
Spooner’s pictorial map of England & Wales arranged as an amusing and instructive game for youth. Illustrated with upwards of one hundred & twenty views
London: William Spooner, 1844
Accompanied by Instruction Booklet – London: William Spooner, 1848

To start the game the traveller was placed on the view of Berwick. Each player then rolled the dice to determine the view to which the traveller should move. The moving player was expected to name the county in which he had just landed, and to declare whether the town had a cathedral. Arriving in London (vignette no. 104) was the goal. Maps were first used as an essential part of a game (as opposed to just for decoration) in the eighteenth century. Such games were advertised as aids to the teaching of geography and were very popular.

Maps.18.G.79^1-2
Purchased by the Friends, 1999

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Franklin Kopitzsch and Dirk Brietzke, eds
Hamburgische Biografie Personenlexikon
Band 1
Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 2001

Reliable reference works are invaluable to research in any field. This biographical dictionary gives details of residents of Hamburg, some well-known, but others whose exclusively local importance would result in their omission from more general surveys. The volume, one of a pair, might never have entered the Library were it not for the generosity of one of our Friends in Germany: it is a good example both of how the Friends help to forge links between the Library and its well-wishers around the world, and of how the particular interests and circumstances of individual Friends can be reflected in the Library’s collections.

574.7.b.200.2
Donated by Martin Vorberg through the Friends, 2002

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THE ART OF THE PRINTED BOOK

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 B.C.-8 B.C.)
Opera
Venice: Filippo di Pietro, 18 September 1479

This is the Library’s earliest printed edition of Horace, whose works were first printed at Venice around 1471-2. Editions from Milan, Naples, Rome and Treviso soon appeared, and in September 1478 Filippo di Pietro printed a second Venetian edition, followed a year later by the one displayed here.

Very little is known of the printer. After a short period with his kinsman Gabriele di Pietro, he seems to have set up alone in 1474. His press is last recorded in 1482. He had a particular interest in books in the vernacular, but he also printed many of the more popular classics.

Inc.3.B.3.16
Purchased by the Friends, 1982

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Hymni per totum annum: item orationes dominicales, feriales, ac de sanctis, cum suis antiphonis & versiculis
Antwerp: ex Officina Plantiniana, apud Joannem Moretum, 1601

This is a book of the texts of hymns and prayers for all occasions from the renowned Plantin-Moretus press. It is printed in red and black throughout and has six finely engraved full-page plates in the style of Philip Galle. The volume is bound in vellum and has the arms of Prince d’Essling giltstamped on its front cover.

F160.c.6.3
Purchased by the Friends, 1987

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Les cent nouvelles nouvelles
Cologne [Amsterdam]: Pierre Gaillard, 1701

This collection of short amusing tales is attributed to the circle of literary courtiers of Louis XI. Popular interest in the work was revived by a series of Amsterdam editions with very free and spirited illustrations after designs by Romeyn de Hooghe (1645-1708), which are a mirror of the manners and costumes of the period. This first and best printing is in two volumes with 100 half-page plates.

7735.e.231-2
Purchased by the Friends, 1986

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Henry Morris (b. 1925)
Omnibus. Instructions for amateur papermakers
Newtown, Pa.: The Bird and Bull Press, 1967

In 1956 Henry Morris, who ‘was already in the commercial printing business’, found ‘a new hobby – hand papermaking’. Two years later he established, on a very modest scale, what was to become one of America’s most distinctive private presses. Papermaking remained a primary interest, and this book was issued ‘to give sufficient information to enable anyone who has the determined desire to do so, to make his own paper’.

This copy came from the library of the distinguished type historian and designer John Dreyfus, who has stuck a photograph of Morris (also recognisable in the illustrations) inside the front board.

CCC.52.439
Bequeathed by John Dreyfus through the Friends, 2003

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Poetry through typography
New York: Kelly/Winterton Press, 1993

Twelve groups of poems are here selected by Walter Schmiele and Peter Frank and interpreted typographically by Hermann Zapf (b. 1918). Each of the text leaves consists of a single sheet of paper folded into four sections, so that it can be stood upright for display; the design includes extensive use of various coloured inks. A number of presses contributed to the project, including Sebastian Carter, Cambridge, in Hunt Roman and Smaragd type for Emily Dickinson, and Martino Mardersteig, Vienna, in Polipilus Roman for Michelangelo. Zapf sent this copy to John Dreyfus ‘to keep in memory our friendship over so many years’.

CCC.52.470
Bequeathed by John Dreyfus through the Friends, 2003

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Diana Bloomfield
Woodcut blocks for Evelyn Ansell, Twenty-five poems
c. 1963

Seven woodcut blocks were designed and cut by Diana Bloomfield to illustrate Evelyn Ansell’s Twenty-five poems, privately printed in 100 copies by the Vine Press, Hemingford Grey, in 1963. The blocks are in boxwood and measure between 35 x 23 mm and 42 x 76 mm.

Donated by Meryl Moore through the Friends, 2002

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Edward Topsell (bap. 1572, d. 1625)
The historie of foure-footed beastes
London: William Jaggard, 1607

Extensive conservation work has recently been carried out on this book at the expense of a Friend of the Library. Members of the Library’s Conservation Department completed much paper repair work before resewing and rebinding the volume in native-dyed goatskin.

Syn.4.60.41

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