15 August 2025
The Scrapbooks of the Imprimerie Royale
The seven volumes of the Planches Gravées de l’Imprimerie Royale [Plates of the Royal Printing House], held by the British Library at shelfmark 1750.c.7., are essentially a series of scrapbooks. They house over 2300 prints, dating from the Imprimerie Royale’s inception in 1640 to 1789, just before its name change in 1790 to reflect revolutionary sentiment. Some are stand-alone prints, but most are illustrations taken from books published in this (nearly) 150-year period by the printing house.
Cut out of their works, these prints are stuck onto the leaves of the volumes and numbered in accordance with their original placement. Organising the works chronologically (broadly speaking), the scrapbookers also sought to index each individual work, listing all the plates that were printed, whether or not they are present in the scrapbook. A skim through these seven volumes will bring up the frequent use of ‘manque’ [missing] next to a number of the prints as well as a series of blank pages. In this attempt at bibliographic scrapbooking, we see a very human tendency: the desire to preserve.
The engraver's index on f. 36 of volume 1.1, detailing the prints included with Les Principaux poincts de la Foi Catholique (1642). Of the fifteen prints listed, four are marked as ‘manque’ [missing].
I say ‘broadly’ and ‘sought’ when describing this process because parallel to the human tendency to collect is the human tendency for error. Across the volumes, we find prints are stuck in the wrong place, some that come from the same work (but a different volume) are separated and placed under a totally different (and, sometimes, unsearchable) title, and others appear with no contextualisation at all. Such issues similarly puzzled the indexer, tasked with accounting for – what was meant to be – over 3000 prints upon acquisition. In the frequent use of square brackets and English in nominally French volumes, the indexer tried to correct the scrapbookers’ mistakes.
The sixth volume showcases the convergence of human error from two centuries. Housing ‘[p]lanches appartenantes à des ouvrages encore inconnus’ [plates belonging to works still unknown], this volume contains a secondary index, about halfway through, created by the original scrapbooker that details the prints still unknown but, in a brief moment of celebration, crosses out those whose works they have found. On pages of ‘vignettes’ [headpieces], ‘fleurons’ [cul-de-lampes], and ‘lettres grises’ [initial letters] are ‘[l]es trous’ that, a note tells us gleefully, ‘désignent que les sujets ont été reconnus’ [the gaps mark that the subjects are now known].
The secondary index in volume 6, ‘Planches appartenantes à des ouvrages encore inconnus’. Several prints are crossed out on this index, indicating that they have been reunited with their original work.
A collection of initial letters taken from volume 6 (f. 653). The gaps mark the prints that have been removed and returned to their original work.
This volume is further subject to human error from the 20th century. The volumes have been held in the British Museum Library since approximately 1853, suffering fire and water damage, probably from the Second World War. As a result, the volumes were rebound in 1949. With the help of the handy indexes at the beginning of the volumes, prints have often gone to their rightful place and the leaves are in order. The sixth volume is an exception: adding to its confusion with its unknown prints, several of its leaves were placed incorrectly in the rebinding process.
Despite such errors, the Planches Gravées de l’Imprimerie Royale prove, no matter the century, that a love of scrapbooking is eternal.
Caitlin Sturrock, PhD student at the University of Bristol and PhD placement student in Western Heritage Prints and Drawings
Further Reading:
BNF Gallica has several ‘notices historiques’ of the Imprimerie Nationale (previously the Imprimerie Royale); see for example, Auguste Bernard, Notice historique sur l’Imprimerie Nationale (Paris, 1848) BL copy at 822.a.8.
E. C. Bigmore and C. W. H. Wyman, Bibliography of Printing, 3 vols (London, 1880-1886). 2703.a.50. Volume 1 (1880) references ‘Épreuves de Planches gravéés. Table chronologique des Planches’ (p. 358).
06 August 2025
Not lost in translation
Reviewers in the Sunday papers commonly praise newly appeared translations of novels for masterfully capturing the colourful/pithy/zesty style of the Basque/Chinese/Māori original.
Counterwise, people as often say that “poetry is what gets lost in translation”. Or as the Marquis of Santillana wrote around 1452, “if we cannot have the forms, let us be content with the matter”.
Flora Ross Amos points out that early translators didn’t attempt to capture the style of their original:
While it may be that both Caxton and Lydgate were trying to reproduce in English the peculiar style of their originals, it is more probable that they beautified their own versions as best they could, without feeling it incumbent upon them to make their rhetorical devices correspond with those of their predecessors.
Translations also tended to incorporate explanatory glosses which blurred the lines of the original.
But the time came when translators became aware of what Cicero said in the De optimo genere oratorum (‘On the best sort of orators’). This was the prologue to his lost translation of the Greek orators Demosthenes and Aeschines, and there he claimed to have translated not like an interpreter but an orator, capturing the style and rhetorical figures of the original.
I’d like to point to an example of a book which (like many others) lost nothing in translation, the Reloj de príncipes (Dial of princes) of Antonio de Guevara, a fictionalised life of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Guevara was famous for his amplificatory style, was an undoubted best-seller in various languages, and used to be thought a big influence on Euphuism, a mannered English prose style which took its name from John Lyly’s romance Euphues and his England (London, 1580; C.56.d.16.).
Title page of Antonio de Guevara, Libro del emperador Marco aurelio cō relox de principe (Valladolid, 1529) C.38.h.8
The English translation by Thomas North does I think match the style of the original, and this despite the fact that he worked from the French version of Nicolas de Herberay.
North also translated Plutarch’s Lives and in the prologue himself advocated the Ciceronian style: “The office of a fit translator consisteth not only in the faithful expressing of his author’s meaning, but also in a certain resembling and shadowing out of the form of his style and the manner of his speaking”. Ironically, the prologue was translated from Jacques Amyot’s French Plutarch.
Judge the effect for yourself:
Guevara, book III, ch. Vi
Aplicando a lo que emos dicho a lo que queremos dezir, digo que no queremos de los principes y grandes señores que se maten con los leones en la caça, ni aventuren sus personas en la guerra, ni pongan sus vidas en peligro por la republica, sino que solamente les rogamos tengan cuydado de proveer las cosas de justicia; porque mas natural oficio es de los principes andar a caça de viciosos en su republica, que no andar a caça de puercos en la montaña … No consiste la governacion de la republica en que trabajen hasta sudar las carnes, fatiguen sus personas, derramen su sangre, menosprecien sus vidas y pierdan los passatiempos, sino que toda su buena governacion esta en que con atencion miren los daños de sus republicas y conforme a ellos provean los ministros de Guerra
Herberay, L’Orloge des princes
Appliquant ce que nous auons dit à ce que nous voulons dire, ie dy que nous ne desirons, ny voulons que les princes & grands seigneurs se tuent auec les lions à la chasse, ny aduenturent leurs personnes en guerre, ny mettent leurs vies en peril pour la Republique, ains que nous les prions seulement qu’ilz ayent aucun soucy de pouruoir aux choses de la iustice car plus naturel office des princes est aller à la chasse des vicieux en leurs republiques, que non à la chasse des sangliers es montaignes … Le gouuernement de la Republique ne consiste en ce qu’ilz trauaillent iusques à suer & molester leurs corps, espandent leur sang, mesprisent leurs vies, & perdent leurs passetemps, ains tout leur bon gouuernement consiste à ce qu’ilz soyent attentifs à regarder les dommages de leur Republique, & conformant à eux pouruoyent de bons maistres de iustice
North, Dial of princes
Applying that we have spoken to that we will speak, I say, that we do not desire, nor we will not, that princes and great lords do destroy them selves with lions in the chase, neither adventure their persons in the wars, nor that they put their lives in peril for the common weal but we only require them that they take some pains and care to provide for things belonging to justice, for it is a more natural hunting for princes to hunt out the vicious of their common weals then for to hunt the wild boars, in the thick woods … The government of the common weal consisteth not in that they should travail until they sweat and molest their bodies, shed their blood, shorten their lives and lose their pastimes but all consisteth in that they should be diligent to foresee the domages of their common wealth and likewise to provide for good ministers of justice
How can we explain this accuracy? I wonder if it’s because at this period everybody followed the same classical norms in their writing, so that it was easy for the translator to recognise in his original the rhetorical figures which he had been trained at school to use.
Guevara’s style is copious. Copia (‘abundance’) is most closely associated with Erasmus, although it wasn’t his invention. His De copia (1512) might have been his most influential work. He argued that a writer’s skill derived from a rich vocabulary, which he demonstrated by saying the same thing in a variety of ways. Every schoolboy (on boys, see Ong) knew this as the smart way to write, whether he was Spanish, French or English.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections
References/Further Reading
Flora Ross Amos, Early Theories of Translation, Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature, 29 (New York, 1920) Ac.2688/16.(29.)
Walter J. Ong, ‘Latin Language study as a Renaissance Puberty Rite’, Studies in Philology, 51 (1959), 103-123 Ac.2685.k/2.
Iñigo López de Mendoza, Marqués de Santillana, Obras completas, ed. Ángel Gómez Moreno and Maximilian P. A. M. Kerkhof (Barcelona, 1988) YA.1990.a.16843
Barry Taylor, ‘Learning Style from the Spaniards in Sixteenth-Century England’, in Renaissance Cultural Crossroads: Translation, Print and Culture in Britain, 1473-1640, ed. S. K. Barker and Brenda M. Hosington (Leiden, 2013), pp. 63-78. YD.2013.a.758
26 June 2025
New Italian Literature: Premio Strega 2025
For the second consecutive year, I have the honour of being a judge at Premio Strega, the main literary prize in Italy. It is an extraordinary opportunity to immerse myself in Italian literature for a few weeks and see how it is evolving. I like the style of the new Italian fiction. It is braver, more instinctive, daring. The language is more natural.
The twelve books I read are the ‘best’ works of fiction published in Italy in 2024, according to the Premio Strega committee. These are very personal works, almost always containing autobiographical elements. The themes that dominate this edition are the Italian family – or what is left of it – and the city.
The urban landscape takes centre stage: Bari, Messina, Napoli, Portofino, Torino are the true protagonists, vulnerable, exposed in their worst moments. Messina is devastated by the 1908 earthquake in Nadia Terranova’s Quello che so di te, Naples struggles after the Second World War in Elisabetta Rasy’s Perduto è questo mare, Portofino in winter in Valerio Aiolli’s Portofino Blues is far from the touristic hotspot that it becomes in summer, Bari is afflicted by speculative urbanism in Elvio Carrieri’s Poveri a Noi.
Carrieri, at 21 years old, is the youngest of the competitors, who are truly of all ages, and are published by a great variety of small and medium publishers: the big houses are in a minority this year. It is a great victory for bibliodiversity and authors come from the whole of the peninsula, and beyond.
Poster with the ‘dozzina’, the 12 books nominated for this year's Premio Strega Prize
Academic and novelist Renato Martinoni is the most prominent Swiss-Italian author of his generation. In Ricordi di suoni e di luci, Martinoni tells the story of poète maudit Dino Campana and of the very rare first edition of his Canti Orfici (we own the second edition: Florence, 1928; 20009.f.11, published in 1928, when Campana was in a mental institution), giving a voice to Giovanni Segantini’s alpine landscapes and offering a very well researched work of literature.
Giovanni Segantini, Pascoli alpini, 1893, Kunsthaus Zürich. Image from Wikimedia Commons
Paolo Nori’s Chiudo la porta e urlo succeeds in being at the same time a diary, a collection of translations of poems by Raffaello Baldini, a dialectal poet from Romagna, and a love letter for Russian culture and literature – a subject in which Nori is an expert, often referring to his biography of Dostoevsky and to his more recent book on poet Anna Achmatova. Some of Nori’s earlier works are in our collections and he is a very witty and original author.
Who will win this year? A favourite is Nadia Terranova with Quello che so di te, a personal work that talks about the author’s own experience of motherhood and links it with the mental health issues suffered by her great-grandmother. It is a well accomplished work, and Terranova is not new to Strega, her book Addio fantasmi (‘Farewell, Ghosts’) was finalist in 2019 and Trema la notte has just been translated as ‘The Night Trembles’.
My personal preference goes to Andrea Bajani’s L’anniversario, a moving story of estrangement from his family and overcoming trauma through writing. I found it a perfectly written book and reading it has been an absolute joy. The winner will be announced on 4 July, but I am already looking forward to reading next year’s books!
Valentina Mirabella, Curator, Romance Collections
References:
Dino Campana, Canti Orfici (Florence, 1928) 20009.f.11
Paolo Nori, Sanguina ancora: l’incredibile vita di Fëdor Michajlovič Dostoevskij: romanzo (Milan, 2021) YF.2021.a.14813
Nadia Terranova, Addio fantasmi (Turin, 2018) YF.2022.a.16235
Nadia Terranova, Trema la notte (Turin, 2022) YF.2023.a.6732
29 May 2025
Italian Connections Unearthed
Earlier in May we opened the exhibition Unearthed, The Power of Gardening at the British Library. The exhibition, of which I am a co-curator, explores and celebrates the social and political history of gardening in British history and how gardening can be a force for change. It has been a great opportunity to showcase some of the British Library’s botanical and horticultural treasures, and curating it made me think of Italian collection items that could well dialogue with some of the exhibits.
Trees
Planting trees is one of the most sustainable things that we can do for the environment, as they play a crucial role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. The exhibition shows The Crafte of Graffynge and Plantynge of Trees, one of the earliest publications about planting and propagating trees, printed during the reign of King Henry VIII.
Title page of The Crafte of Graffynge and Plantynge of Trees (London, 1518. C.122.bb.42.)
I would have shown it next to L’architettura degli Alberi, a botanical drawing masterwork written and illustrated by landscape architects Cesare Leonardi and Franca Stagi over 20 years. It features 212 tree species hand drawn with and without foliage and with tables of seasonal colour variation. It has been defined ‘a Bible for tree lovers’ and is an essential tool for planning gardens and integrating trees in the urban landscape.
Pages from L’architettura degli Alberi (Milan, 2018) Awaiting shelfmark
The Garden City
Unearthed, The Power of Gardening looks at the pioneering ideas of Ebenezer Howard, who put forward the idea of garden cities in this 1898 book To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform. Howard wanted to create new planned communities across Britain that established a ‘joyous union of town and country’ and his ideas have influenced urban planning ever since.
Plan of an ideal garden city from Ebenezer Howard, To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform (London, 1898) 08275.i.25.
One of the most recent developments on the concept of garden city is Fitopolis, la città vivente, a book by neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso, that envisions a future where cities are transformed into ‘living cities’ integrated with nature. Mancuso proposes a radical shift from current urban models, emphasizing the importance of incorporating plants and nature into urban spaces.
Fitopolis, la città vivente (Bari, 2024) Awaiting shelfmark
The Botanical Garden
The botanical gardens at Kew and Calcutta, as well as those of Mary Somerset, are described in a section titled Gardening and the global exchange, as places to display plant knowledge and the British Empire’s botanical advancements from the 18th century onwards. The map below shows how Kew Gardens originated as gardens of separate royal residences in Richmond and Kew, which merged at the time when it was produced, under the rule of King George III. The gardens continued developing to host the ‘largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world’.
The Royal Gardens of Richmond and Kew (1771) Maps.K.Top.41.16.k.2.TAB.
This made me think of the oldest surviving botanical garden in the world, in Padua. The first Orto dei Semplici (the garden of ‘simples’, where the simples are the principles derived from medicinal plants) was built in 1545 by the Venetian Republic, to grow medicinal and exotic plants, and to teach students at the University of Padua how to use them.
The 1591 book which describes L’Horto de i Semplici di Padoua comes from Sir Hans Sloane’s personal library. It illustrates the garden’s unique design, still unchanged nowadays, and lists all the plants included. The original design consists of a central circumference, symbolizing the world, surrounded by a ring of water. A square is inscribed in the circumference, divided into four units by orthogonal paths, oriented according to the main cardinal directions. This shape is a representation of the universe adopted since ancient times and recalls the scheme of the ideal city of the Renaissance.
L’Horto de i Semplici di Padoua, oue si vede primieramente la forma di tutta la pianta con le sue misure (Venice, 1591) 972.b.3.(1.)
These two examples show how the concept of ‘botanical garden’ can be interpreted in different ways. I hope this blog makes you want to visit the exhibition and think of how old and new foreign language books can tell many more stories around the theme of gardening.
Valentina Mirabella, Curator, Romance Collections
Unearthed, The Power of Gardening is at the British Library until 10 August 2025.
15 May 2025
Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages
The annual Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages will take place on Monday 9 June 2025 in the Foyle Room at the British Library in London. The programme is as follows:
11.00 Registration and coffee
11.30 Alyssa Steiner (London): Caught in the middle? Block books at the British Library
12.25 Lunch (own arrangements)
1.30 Jack Nunn (Oxford): Anthology making in an age of discovery: French maritime poetry in the print shop
2.15 Simone Lonati (Chichester): Public representation and interpretation of ‘monsters’. From the Monstrorum Historia to the dissemination of news during the English Civil War
3.00 Tea
3.30 John Goldfinch (London): Dr Rhodes, Dr Sloane and Dr Dee: a trail of catalogues and provenance
4.15 Yvonne Lewis (London): Languages for travel: John and Ralph Bankes in the 1640s and beyond
The seminar will end at 5.00 pm.
Attendance is free and all are welcome but please register in advance by contacting Barry Taylor ([email protected]) and Susan Reed ([email protected]) if you wish to attend.
Vignettte from Cornelio Desimoni, Nuovi studi sull’Atlante Luxoro (Genoa, 1869) 10003.w.4.
25 March 2025
Small and rare: a Spanish love story
Novela famosa, y exemplar, no hay contra el amor venganza. Recopilada por Isidro de Robles … En la qual se refieren los tragicos sucessos de un caballlero ingles, llamado Eduardo, por los amores de una dama inglesa, llamada Isabela, muger de el almirante de Inglaterra, y de el dichoso fin, que tuvieron sus trabajosos quebrantos, como vera el curioso lector (Sevilla: en la imprenta Castellana, y Latina de Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla, [1720?])
[Famous and exemplary novel, there is no revenge against love. Collected by Isidro de Robles … In which are told the tragic experiences of an English gentleman named Edward for love of an English lady named Isabella, wife of the Admiral of England, and of the happy end to their sufferings, as the curious reader will see.]
Title page of Novela famosa, y exemplar, no hay contra el amor venganza (Sevilla, [1720]) RB.23.a.40411
The plot: In England, the good English knight Eduardo is imprisoned for injuring the Scottish Ambassador in a joust. In prison, he falls in love with a picture of Isabella. The Admiral of England replaces Eduardo in a joust and King Ricardo (The Lionheart) rewards him with Isabella’s hand. Eduardo spies on Isabella. Her Spanish maid Rosaura sings a song in Spanish which Eduardo had written. Isabella knows Eduardo by reputation. The Admiral comes home unexpectedly and Eduardo kills him. He flees to the court of Alfonso VIII in Toledo. Eduardo rescues Alfonso when he is ambushed by Baron Belflor. Isabella wants revenge on her husband’s murderer. Dagger in hand, she finds Eduardo asleep and ‘like Psyche’, falls in love with his beauty. Love overcomes revenge. She imprisons him to protect him from execution. King Richard visits Alfonso to plan a crusade. Eduardo reminds Richard he saved his life and asks him to make Isabella pardon him. Isabella says she wants revenge, but asks the Princess to ask the King for a pardon. The King tells Isabella to pardon Eduardo and marry him.
Not an entirely accurate picture of medieval England: hunting can only take place early in the morning because of ‘the rigour of the Sun’; they arm themselves with pistols.
As you might imagine, the importance of this text is bibliographical rather than literary.
This blog celebrates the acquisition of a small book. By small book I mean a chapbook, made by folding one or two sheets twice to make a pamphlet. These were news reports (relaciones), ballads, plays (including monologues excerpted from plays, called ‘relaciones de comedia’: see Gabriel Andrés) and novels, plus works of popular religion. By novel I mean what Dr Johnson meant: ‘a small tale, generally of love’. Among famous readers of Spanish chapbooks were Samuel Pepys and Queen Christina of Sweden.
The subjects of ballads, plays and novels often overlapped (we might note the sympathetic servants in our novel), and so did their form of publication. There was a ban on printing plays and novels (from 1625 to 1634), which the publishers tried to circumvent by passing their sometimes sensational stories off as exemplary history. (Our book is ‘exemplar’ and ‘tragico’.) People were still reading these 17th-century texts in the 18th century.
Ballads, plays and novels could be published in collections (single- or multi-authored) or as chapbooks (pliegos sueltos [‘independent quires’] or when appropriate, [comedias] sueltas [‘independent plays’])).
Separately printed ballads and plays are much more common than separately printed novels, which I think it’s safe to say are rare: hence the interest of this item. Today’s book is a novel, but it has a woodcut and layout in two columns which make it resemble a ballad. And its title could be a play.
It’s difficult to know who the author is. Ripoll (pp. 54-57) confuses our No hay contra el amor venganza with El amor en la venganza by the fertile Alonso de Castillo Solórzano (1584-c.1648). Our text was first published in the collection Varios efectos de amor en onze novelas exemplares … recogidas por Isidro de Robles (1666; with reprints up to 1760) (Ripoll, pp. 165-66). So Robles is just the compiler. This suelta appears to be the only separate printing of No hay contra el amor venganza.
Alonso de Alcalá y Herrera wrote five lipogrammatic stories which were included in Varios efectos de amor of 1666: this explains why someone has written his name in pencil at the head of the title page.
The printer, Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla printed large books and small books. Indeed, he printed in Latin as well as Spanish. It’s tempting to suppose that the small books, quick and easy to print and sold at low prices but in large numbers, subsidised the bigger books (Griffin). Small books are rarely dated, but big books are (indeed, it was a legal requirement) and approximate dates for one can be deduced from the other.
Hermosilla printed a good number of comedias sueltas, all undated (Whitehead, STC, III, 51; Escudero, pp. 616-17). Novelas sueltas from his press are rare, but two are known, to which ours should now be added. The Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, has a novela suelta:
Novela famosa, y exemplar, la Peregrina Hermitaña, escrita sin la letra O, recopilada por Isidro de Robles. (Seville, [s.a.]) 32 p.; 4º. CCPB000038807-6
To which (Ripoll, p. 166) adds Novela famosa y burlesca; Los tres maridos burlados … (Seville, [s.a.])
Hermosilla indeed advertises on the last page that he specialises in small books:
En la imprenta castellana, y latina, de Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla, Mercader de libros en Calle de Genova, donde se hallarán otras muchas Relaciones, Romances, Entremeses, y comedias, corregidas fielmente por sus legitimos Originales.
[In the Spanish and Latin press of Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla, bookseller in the Calle de Génova, where many other newsbooks [or monologues], ballads, interludes and plays may be found, faithfully corrected against their genuine originals]
Harold Whitehead records just one dated book printed by Joseph Antonio de Hermosilla: El león prodigioso of 1732 (item G162; shelfmark 1456.f.7); significantly this is a book and not a chapbook. Whitehead ascribes a date of [c. 1720] to many of Hermosilla’s comedias sueltas, and I follow his lead.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections
References/further reading:
Gabriel Andrés, ‘Relaciones de comedia en Cerdeña: los pliegos del taller sevillano de los Hermosilla (1684-1730) en la Biblioteca Universitaria de Cagliari’, Janus, 2 (2013), 48-73. Available at Researchgate.net
Francisco Escudero y Perosso, Tipografía hispalense (Madrid, 1894). 11906.c.1.
Clive Griffin, ‘Literary Consequences of the Peripheral Nature of Spanish Printing in the Sixteenth Century’, in Literary cultures and the material book, edited by Simon Eliot, Andrew Nash and Ian Willison (London, 2007), pp. 207-14. YC.2008.a.8654
Begoña Ripoll, La novela barroca: catálogo bio-bibliográfico (1620-1700) (Salamanca, 1991). YA.2003.a.1512
Barry Taylor, ‘Exemplarity in and around the Novelas ejemplares’, Modern Language Review, 110 (2015), 456-72. P.P.4970.ca.
H. G. Whitehead, Eighteenth-century Spanish chapbooks in the British Library: a descriptive catalogue (London, 1997). YC.1997.a.2900
H. G. Whitehead, Short-title catalogue of eighteenth-century Spanish books in the British Library (London, 1994) 2725.e.2791
19 February 2025
For the Love of Books: European Collections at the British Library Doctoral Open Days
On February 14, European Collections featured at Doctoral Open Day themed ‘Global Languages, Cultures and Societies’. Marja Kingma, Curator of Germanic Collections, delivered a presentation introducing PhD students from across the UK and beyond to navigating the collections and identifying resources to support their research. In the afternoon, our curators hosted a show-and-tell session, offering the students a glimpse into the Library's unmatched holdings from continental Europe. The selections ranged from a quirky bottle-shaped Czech book to a Russian glossy LGBT magazine and a modern illuminated manuscript from Georgia. Spoiler alert – love-themed curatorial picks proved crowd pleasers. For those who could not make it, here is a taster of what you might have missed.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator of Slavonic and East European Collections, Olga Topol and Hanna Dettlaff-Kuznicka, Curators of Slavonic and East European Collections, turned the spotlight on minority languages and cultures, giving voice to the Evenks, Sakha, Kashubians, Silesians, and the Gagauz people of Ukraine. It was a revelation to many of the students to learn that Eastern Europe was both linguistically and culturally diverse, with a plethora of languages, ethnicities, and religious traditions across the region.
V. A. Dʹiachenko, N. V. Ermolova, Evenki i iakuty iuga Dalʹnego Vostoka, XVII-XX vv. (St. Petersburg, 1994) YA.1997.a.2298.
Marcin Melon, Kōmisorz Hanusik: we tajnyj sużbie ślonskij nacyje (Kotōrz Mały, 2015) YF.2017.a.20547. An interesting example of a crime comedy written in the Silesian ethnolect.
Milan Grba, Lead Curator of South-East European Collections, highlighted a groundbreaking work by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Srpski rječnik (‘Serbian Dictionary’), which proved very popular among researchers with an interest in linguistics.
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Srpski rječnik (Vienna, 1818) 12976.r.6.
It was the first book printed in Karadžić’s reformed 30-character Cyrillic alphabet, following the phonetic principle of "write as you speak." The dictionary contained over 26,000 words and was trilingual, with Serbian, German, and Latin entries. It standardised Serbian orthography but also preserved the nation’s oral tradition. The dictionary’s encyclopaedic entries encompassed folklore, history, and ethnography, making it a pivotal text in both linguistic reform and cultural preservation.
Anna Chelidze, Curator of Georgian Collections, showed the students a contemporary illuminated manuscript created in 2018 by the Georgian calligrapher Giorgi Sisauri. The Art Palace of Georgia commissioned the work especially for the British Library to enrich our Georgian collections. The poem Kebai da Didebai Kartulisa Enisa ('Praise and Exaltation of the Georgian Language') was written in the 10th century by John Zosimus, a Georgian Christian monk and religious writer. It is renowned for its profound reverence for the Georgian language, employing numerological symbolism and biblical allusions to underscore its sacredness.
(Giorgi Sisauri), John Zosimus, Kebai da Didebai Kartulisa Enisa, (2018) Or. 17158
Sophie Defrance, Valentina Mirabella and Barry Taylor, Curators of Romance Language Collections, treated the students to some ... romance.
Sophie Defrance took a tongue-in-cheek approach to the theme by suggesting another way to look at (some) love letters with Le rire des épistoliers.
Cover of Charrier-Vozel, Marianne, Le rire des épistoliers: XVIe-XVIIIe siècle (Rennes, 2021) YF.2022.a.9956
The volume gathers the proceedings of a 2017 conference at the University of Brest on the expression, manners, and importance of laughing and laughter in 16th- and 17th-century correspondence, with examples from Diderot’s letters to his lover Sophie Volland, or from the exchanges between Benjamin Constant and his confidante Julie Talma.
Valentina Mirabella decided to revisit the Boris Pasternak’s timeless love story ‘Doctor Zhivago’. Turns out, the history of the novel’s publication in Italy was nearly as turbulent as the story itself! It was first published in Italian translation as Il dottor Živago in 1957 by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Although an active communist, Feltrinelli smuggled the manuscript out of the USSR and resisted pressure against its publication. The demand for Il dottor Živago was so great that Feltrinelli was able to license translation rights into 18 different languages well in advance of the novel's publication. The Communist Party of Italy expelled the publisher from its ranks in retaliation for his role in the release of the book they felt was critical of communism.
Cover of the 34th (in the space of just two years!) edition of Il dottor Živago by Boris Pasternak translated from Russian by Pietro Zveteremich (Milano : Feltrinelli, 1959) W16/9272
Barry Taylor drew attention to the epistolary relationship and an electric bond between the Spanish author Elena Fortún (1886-1952) and the Argentine professor Inés Field (1897-1994) with the book Sabes quién soy: cartas a Inés Field (‘You know who I am: letters to Inés Field’).
Elena Fortún, Sabes quién soy: cartas a Inés Field (Seville, 2020) YF.2021.a.15259
Fortún was the author of the popular Celia books, which followed the heroine from a seven-year-old in well-to-do Madrid to a schoolteacher in Latin America. The books give a child’s-eye-view of the world. They were censored by Franco and the author was exiled, but the books have been re-published by Renacimiento of Seville in the 2000s. Fortún’s novel Oculto sendero (‘The hidden path’) published in 2016 is seen as a lesbian Bildungsroman.
Fortún met Inés Field in Buenos Aires. Now that both women are dead, critics feel free to read the correspondence through the prism of the Bildungsroman.
Ildi Wolner, Curator of East and South-East European Collections, explored the representations of love in art with Agnes’s Hay Sex : 40 rajz = 40 drawings.
Agnes Hay, Sex: 40 rajz = 40 drawings ([Budapest, 1979]) YA.1997.a.2586
Ágnes Háy is a Hungarian graphic artist and animation filmmaker, who has lived in London since 1985. Her unique experimental style of drawing uses simple lines and symbols to convey complex meanings and associations, and this booklet is no exception. Considered rather bold in Communist Hungary at the end of the 1970s, this series of sketches explores the diverse intricacies of gender relations, without the need for a single word of explanation.
Page from Sex : 40 rajz = 40 drawings [Budapest, 1979] YA.1997.a.2586
Susan Reed, Curator of Germanic Collections, shared a fascinating collection of essays examining aspects of the love letter as a social and cultural phenomenon from the 18th century to the present day.
Cover of Der Liebesbrief: Schriftkultur und Medienwechsel vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, herausgegeben von Renate Stauf, Annette Simonis, Jörg Paulus (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008) YF.2010.a.14652
The authors scrutinised letters from historical and literary figures including Otto von Bismark, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Rainer Maria Rilke. The book ends with a consideration of how online messaging forms might transform the way we write love letters.
Ela Kucharska-Beard, Curator of Baltic Collections, displayed a mysterious metal box containing a booklet in English and Lithuanian, some photographs, posters and letters.
Vilma Samulionytė, Liebe Oma, Guten Tag, or The Pact of Silence (Vilnius, 2018) RF.2019.a.120
Liebe Oma, Guten Tag, or The Pact of Silence is a moving tribute from the Lithuanian photographer Vilma Samulionyė to her grandmother, a Lithuanian German Elė Finkytė Šnipaitienė. When Vilma’s grandmother took her own life in her 70s, Vilma and her sister Jūrate decided to delve into the family history. Their research resulted in a documentary film, an exhibition, and an artists’ book. Along the way the sisters face taboos, one of them being a chain of suicides in the family.
The journey into the family’s German history and their post-war life in Lithuania left them with some unsettling questions. Who was Kazimieras and was he the reason why Ella Fink left her family behind? Throughout the story letters and photographs create a link between the family in the West and in the East, between the living and the dead.
We hope you have enjoyed this virtual show-and-tell of highlights in our European collections. We look forward to welcoming you to the next Doctoral Open Days in 2026!
11 February 2025
Medieval Women at the Press
One of the exhibits in our current exhibition Medieval Women: in their own Words is the first European printed book ascribed to a female printer. The printer in question is Estellina Conat, who worked with her husband Abraham printing Hebrew books in Mantua in the 1470s. The book is an edition of a 14th-century poem by Jedaiah ben Abraham Bedersi entitled Behinat ha-‘Olam (‘The Contemplation of the World’). It was printed around 1476 and in the colophon, Estellina states: “I, Estellina, the wife of my worthy husband Abraham Conat, printed this book”. (In fact she says she “wrote” the book since the Hebrew language had not yet settled on a word for the relatively new technology of printing.) She adds that she was assisted by Jacob Levi, a young man from Tarrascon in Provence.
Final page of Behinat ha-‘Olam (Mantua, ca 1476) C.50.a.5. (ISTC ij00218520) The colophon at the foot of the page names Estellina Conat as its printer
No other book from the Conat press survives with Estellina’s name in the colophon, and she has often been overlooked as the first woman printer in Europe, perhaps because she printed in Hebrew rather than in classical Latin or Greek or the contemporary European vernaculars more familiar to western scholars of early printing. Many sources still give the name of Anna Rügerin as the first woman printer instead.
Anna is named in the colophons of two books printed in Augsburg in 1484 (around 8 years after Estellina’s work!). She was part of a family of printers: her widowed mother had married the printer Johann Bämler, and Anna’s brother Johann Schönsperger, perhaps encouraged by Bämler, set up a press with Anna’s husband Thomas. After Thomas died, Anna appears to have taken over from him and printed in her own name editions of the historic German law book, the Sachsenspiegel and of a handbook for writers of legal and official documents entitled Formulare und deutsch rhetorica (Augsburg, 1484; IB.6605; ISTC if00245500).
Colophon naming Anna Rügerin as the printer of an edition of the Sachsenspiegel (Augsburg, 1484) IB.6602 (ISTC 00024000). Image from Wikimedia Commons, from a copy in the Bavarian State Library.
Another woman printer emerged in the 1490s in Stockholm. Anna Fabri, like Anna Rügerin, took over the work of printing on the death of her husband, a common pattern for female printers in the early centuries of the industry. In 1496 she put her name to the colophon of a Breviary for the diocese of Uppsala. Here she explicitly states that she completed the work begun by her husband. As in the case of Estellina Conat, no other book survives bearing her name.
Final Page of Breviarium Upsalense (Stockholm, 1496; ISTC ib01187000), naming Anna Fabri in the colophon. Image from a copy in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris. The British Library holds a single leaf inserted in a copy of G.F. Klemming, Sveriges äldre liturgiska literatur (Stockholm, 1879) C.18.c.13.
We don’t know exactly what role Estellina and the two Annas played in the production of the books that bear their names, but it’s certainly possible that it was more than merely overseeing the work and that they were involved in the physical processes of the print shop. We know that nuns of the Florentine convent of San Jacopo in Ripoli worked as typesetters in the printing house associated with the church and its Dominican community, and a Bridgettine abbey at Vadstena in Sweden printed a Book of Hours in 1495, although their press apparently burned down soon after and was not restarted. The current BL exhibition also features woodcut prints made and coloured by another Bridgettine community at Mariënwater in the Netherlands. All this work carried on the long tradition of medieval nuns working as scribes, artists and illuminators (also richly evidenced in the exhibition), bringing it into the new age of printing.
A leaf from a music book for use in the Latin Mass, illuminated by nuns of the Poor Clares convent in Cologne in the late 14th or early 15th century. Add MS 35069
The 18th-century scholar of early Hebrew printing, Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi, criticised Estellina Conat’s edition of the Beh.inat ha-‘Olam as unevenly printed, and scornfully suggested that it might be “the effort of a woman attempting something beyond her powers.” But as Estellina and her sister-printers show, printing was indeed within the power of women and they played a part in it from the early decades of the industry. Thanks to ongoing research, and publicity such as the Medieval Women exhibition, these woman printers and their work are ever more visible today.
Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections
References/Further reading
Adri K. Offenberg, ‘The Chronology of Hebrew Printing at Mantua in the Fifteenth Century: A Re-examination’ The Library, 6th series, 16 (1994) pp. 298-315. RAR 010
Hanna Gentili, ‘Estellina Conat, Early Hebrew Printer’, in Medieval Women: Voices & Visions, edited by Eleanor Jackson and Julian Harrison (London, 2024) [Not yet catalogued]
Sheila Edmunds, ‘Anna Rügerin Revealed’, Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History 2 (1999) pp. 179-181. 2708.h.850
Anabel Thomas, ‘Dominican Marginalia: the Late Fifteenth-Century Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli in Florence’, in At the Margins: Minority Groups in Premodern Italy, edited by Stephen J. Milner (Minneapolis, 2005), pp. 192-216. YC.2005.a.12149
30 January 2025
European Collections: From Antiquity to 1800 – Uncovering Rare Books at the British Library Doctoral Open Days
What do a censored Spanish classic, a mathematics textbook from Tsarist Russia, and the first national education textbook from Poland have in common? They are all part of the British Library’s European Collections, spanning from antiquity to 1800. These fascinating books do more than preserve history – they provide valuable insights into the intellectual, political, and cultural dynamics of their era, offering opportunities for research and discovery.
As part of the Doctoral Open Day on 31 January, we are showcasing a selection of remarkable books. Each tells a unique story – of censorship, of scientific progress, of the development of national identity. Here, we explore some of the fascinating books you may encounter during the Doctoral Open Day.
Poland: Enlightening the Nation
In 1773, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth established the Commission of National Education (Komisja Edukacji Narodowej, KEN), the first state-run educational authority in the world. Its goal was to create a modern, secular education system that was accessible to all social classes, moving away from the traditional church-dominated schooling.
Krzysztof Kluk 1739-1796, Paweł Czenpiński, 1755-1793, Botanika dla szkół narodowych, etc. (Dzieło, ... podług Prospektu ... Pawła Czenpinskiego, ... przez ... Krzysztofa Kluka ... napisane; od Towarzystwa do Xiąg Elementarnych roztrząśnione, etc.)., w Warszawie 1785 (Warszawa, 1785) 988.d.29.
A prime example of KEN’s publishing efforts is Botanika dla szkół narodowych (‘Botany for National Schools,’ 1785) by Krzysztof Kluk and Paweł Czenpiński. This textbook was designed to teach practical botany, bringing Enlightenment ideas into the classroom. The book was one of many created by KEN’s Society for Elementary Books, which commissioned mathematics, science, and literature textbooks to standardize education across Poland.
Russia: The First Mathematics Textbook
The first Russian textbook on mathematics by Leonty Magnitsky, Arifmetika (‘Arithmetics’), was written in the early Slavonic language and published in 1703. Its first edition of 2,400 copies was extraordinarily large for that time and served as the primary mathematics text for instruction in Russia until the mid-18th century. The book was in effect an encyclopaedia of the natural sciences of its day. It emphasized the practical applications of mathematics, demonstrating how it could be used in various real-life situations, from laying a brick wall to calculating loan interest. The origins of the manual lie in Peter the Great's establishment of the School of Navigation in Moscow, and the subsequent appointment of Magnitsky at the school's helm.
Leonty Filippovich Magnitsky, Arifmetika (Moskva, 1703) 8531.f.16
Hungary: The First Gold-Painted Book
This is the second work published about Hungarian history, although published outside the country. It tells the story of the Magyars from the earliest times to the 1480s and is illustrated with lavish hand-coloured woodcuts, that have retained their brilliance through the centuries. This Augsburg edition, printed on vellum, is the very first printed book in history known for using gold paint.
Johannes Thuróczy, Chronica Hungarorum (Augsburg, 1488) IB.6663
Romania: A Scholar-Prince’s Masterpiece
Among our most treasured Romanian books is Divanul sau gâlceava înţeleptului cu lumea (‘The Wise Man’s Parley with the World’, 1698), written by Dimitrie Cantemir, a scholar, philosopher, and Prince of Moldavia.
Printed in both Romanian Cyrillic and Greek, this was the first secular book published in Romanian. It discusses morality, philosophy, and the human condition, presenting a dialogue between reason and worldly desires.
The copy comes from the collection of Frederick North, Fifth Earl of Guilford, a noted philhellene and collector of early printed Romanian books. The front cover is in its original binding, made of red goatskin over pasteboard. It features a panel design showcasing the coat of arms of Dimitrie Cantemir, with corner tools incorporating floral motifs and bird designs.
Dimitrie Cantemir, Divanul sau gâlceava înţeleptului cu lumea (Iaşi, 1698) C.118.g.2.
Italy: The Beauty of St Mark’s Basilica
A magnificent and exhaustive work documenting the Basilica of St Mark in Venice, undertaken with the support of John Ruskin, following disputed restoration work to the Basilica's south facade in 1865-75. One of 16 volumes, this volume contains 69 hand-coloured engraved plates that painstakingly represent every detail of the floor of the Basilica. Ferdinando Ongania was a publisher and editor who worked with John Ruskin on a project to document the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice. Ongania also ran an antiquarian bookshop in St. Mark's Square and supplied Ruskin with books.
Ferdinando Ongania, La Basilica di San Marco in Venezia. Dettagli del pavimento ed ornamenti in mosaico della Basilica di San Marco in Venezia (Venezia, 1881) Tab.1282.a./ Tab.1283.a.3.
Spain: Censorship and Forbidden Texts
Censorship was an everyday reality in Habsburg Spain, where the Inquisition closely monitored books. Even seemingly harmless works like Don Quixote were subject to scrutiny.
Our copy of the 1650 edition El Parnasso Español, y Musas Castellanas de D. Francisco de Quevedo Villegas was censored according to the Index of 1707, with passages inked out due to their “disrespectful references to the clergy”. Interestingly, Spanish censors had strict rules against religious criticism but showed little concern for nudity or crude humour.
Lost Books: Replacing What Was Destroyed
During World War II, a German bombing raid on the British Museum (where the British Library was then housed) destroyed many books. One of these was Zeeusche spectator over de boedel en het testament van capitein Willem Credo (‘The Zeeland Spectator on the Estate and Will of Captain Willem Credo’, 1734).
After the war, the British Library painstakingly reconstructed lists of lost books, marking them with a ‘D’ for ‘Destroyed’. Now, decades later, we have finally been able to replace this book and restore it to our collections, removing it from the list of war losses.
Gerard Bacot, Zeeusche spectator over de boedel en het testament van capitein Willem Credo onder toezigt van Gerard Bacot Predikant te Koudekerk en syn vrou Paulina Credo nevens een Journaal of DAg-Lyst van een bedroefde reis naa het vermakelyk Alphen (Amsterdam, 1734)
Why These Collections Matter
These books are not only historical artifacts – they are invaluable resources for research. By preserving both original texts and modern scholarship, the British Library provides a gateway to exploring the past. Whether you’re investigating the development of education, scientific advancements, or literary censorship, our European Collections offer a wealth of material to uncover.
If you’d like to explore these fascinating books and more, visit the British Library and discover Europe’s intellectual heritage, from antiquity to 1800! And if you are a new doctoral student whose research interest is more contemporary, why not join us for our session on Global Languages, Cultures and Societies on 14 February.
02 January 2025
New Year, Old Years: a Look Back
Usually around the start of a new year we look back over our previous year’s blogging before turning our faces to the future. This time we’re actually looking back over 2023 as well as 2024 because BL blogging activity was suspended for a while following the cyber-attack on the Library in October 2023, so we couldn’t do a review of that year at the time. And to break up the prose, we include some wintery scenes from the BL’ s Flickr stream.
Reindeer from Sophus Tromholt, Under Nordlysets Straaler. Skildringer fra Lappernes Land (Copenhagen, 1885) 10280.eee.13.
Both years saw our usual excitement over the annual European Writers’ Festival held in May. In 2023 we featured an interview with Greek Cypriot writer Anthony Anaxagorou, winner of the 2024 RSL Ondaatje Prize, while in 2024 we published a series of posts, beginning with this one, profiling some of the authors featured in the festival. As usual, literature featured in many other posts. We celebrated the award of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature to Norway’s Jon Fosse and mourned the death in 2024 of Albanian author Ismail Kadare. We were proud to learn that our Curator of Italian, Valentina Mirabella, was one of the judges of the 2024 Premio Strega, a major Italian literary prize, and she wrote about her experience for us.
A theme that ran through both years was the work of the Endangered Archives Project to preserve cultural heritage from Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Our coverage included posts on the indigenous peoples of Siberia, minority communities in Bulgaria, an important Serbian family archive, and material relating to the Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko, who was also the subject of a small display in our Treasures Gallery.
Polar scene from Die zweite Deutsche Nordpolarfahrt in den Jahren 1869 und 1870, unter Führung des Kapitän Karl Koldewey, edited by Alexander Georg Mosle und Georg Albrecht (Leipzig, 1873-4) 10460.ff.11.
Events in the library are a regular source of inspiration for our blog posts. In 2023 we highlighted events commemorating two colleagues who died in recent years: a symposium on Italian Futurism was dedicated to the memory of Chris Michaelides, former curator of Italian and Modern Greek, who did much to build our collection of Futurist books. The Graham Nattrass Lecture, in memory of the former Head of Germanic Collections is an annual event, and in 2023 marked the 80th anniversary of the arrest and execution of members of the German resistance group ‘Die Weisse Rose’. A conference on European political refugees in Britain generated posts on the same topic, including one on how the then British Museum Library became ‘a lifeline of books’ for Polish refugees from Soviet and Nazi occupation. On a lighter note, we celebrated the BL’s annual Food Season in May 2024 with a post introducing a selection of cookbooks from around the continent.
In summer 2024 we went a bit sports mad with both the European Football Championships and the Summer Olympics taking place. We highlighted the world-beating football tactics of the Hungarian ‘Golden Team’ in the early 1950s and the ‘Miracle of Bern’ that saw them unexpectedly beaten by West Germany in 1954’s World Cup, as well as exploring why the Dutch fans show symptoms of ‘orange fever’ at international matches. Our Olympic posts included explorations of the political side of the supposedly apolitical games in Czechoslovakia and the two German states during the Cold War, and a look at the Baltic States’ love for (and proud record in) basketball.
The northern lights, from Emmanuel Liais, L’Espace céleste et la nature tropicale, description physique de l’univers (Paris, 1866) 10003.d.10.
But not all our blog posts are driven by events and unifying themes. As ever, we continued to write about items from our vast and varied collections, from Georgian manuscripts to contemporary Queer writing in Poland, via a Russian Braille edition of The Hobbit, French caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War, and pamphlets from the Cypriot independence campaign. We also explored stories of the Slovenian Enlightenment and the first Professor of Spanish in Britain, and discovered the hidden but crucial role played by women in underground publishing under the Polish Communist regime.
As we head into 2025 we would like to wish all our readers and contributors a very happy new year. We look forward to bringing you another year of stories and discoveries from the Library’s European Collections.
Susan Reed and Hanna Dettlaff-Kuznicka, European Studies Blog Editors
Ice-skating, from A.J. van der Aa, Ons Vaderland en zijne Bewoners (Amsterdam,1855-57) 10270.f.5
European studies blog recent posts
- The Scrapbooks of the Imprimerie Royale
- Not lost in translation
- New Italian Literature: Premio Strega 2025
- Italian Connections Unearthed
- Seminar on Textual Bibliography for Modern Foreign Languages
- Small and rare: a Spanish love story
- For the Love of Books: European Collections at the British Library Doctoral Open Days
- Medieval Women at the Press
- European Collections: From Antiquity to 1800 – Uncovering Rare Books at the British Library Doctoral Open Days
- New Year, Old Years: a Look Back