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
01 October 2024
How Bitter the Savour is of Other’s Bread? International Conference on European Political Refugees in the UK from 1800
Join us on Friday 15 November 2024 for the ‘European Political Refugees in the UK from 1800’ conference taking place in Pigott Theatre, Knowledge Centre at the British Library. This one-day in-person event will explore the rich history of political refugees from Europe who sought asylum in the UK from the 19th century onwards. International academics, scholars, and curators will investigate how European diaspora communities have woven themselves into the fabric of British society, fostering intercultural exchange and contributing to the shaping of modern Britain.
‘European Political Refugees in the UK from 1800’ conference poster
The conference is organised by the European Collections section of the British Library in partnership with the European Union National Institutes of Culture (EUNIC) London. It will be accompanied by the exhibition ‘Music, Migration, and Mobility: The Story of Émigré Musicians from Nazi Europe in Britain’ and by events run by the conference partners.
The event is open to all and attendance is free, but registration is required. Booking details can be found here.
Programme
10:00 Welcome
10:05 Session 1: Artists
Moderator: Olga Topol, British Library
‘Leaving Home’ – Franciszka Themerson and Her Artistic Community in the UK, Jasia Reichardt, Art Critic and Curator
Austrian Musicians and Writers in Exile in the 1930s and 1940s, Oliver Rathkolb, University of Vienna and Vienna Institute of Contemporary and Cultural History and Art (VICCA)
On the Rock of Exiles: Victor Hugo in the Channel Islands, Bradley Stephens, University of Bristol
Music, Migration & Mobility, The Story of Émigré Musicians from Nazi Europe in Britain, Norbert Meyn, Royal College of Music, London
12:00 The stone that spoke screening
Introduction by Gail Borrow, ExploreTheArch arts facilitated by EUNIC London
12:15 Lunch
13:00 Session 2: Governments in Exile
Moderator: Valentina Mirabella, British Library
London Exile of the Yugoslav Government during the Second World War and its Internal Problems, Milan Sovilj, Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
The Spanish Republican Exile in Great Britain: General Characteristics and the case of Roberto Gerhard, Mari Paz Balibrea, Birkbeck, University of London
Fascism and anti-fascism in London's 'Little Italy' and Giacomo Matteotti's secret visit to London in 1924, Alfio Bernabei, Historian and Author
14:30 Break
14:45 Session 3: Building Communities
Moderator: Katya Rogatchevskaia, British Library
Tefcros Anthias: poet, writer, activist, and public intellectual in Cyprus and the Cypriot Community in London, Floya Anthias, University of Roehampton, London
The Journeys in Stories: Jewish emigration from Lithuania via United Kingdom, Dovilė Čypaitė-Gilė, Vilna Gaon, Museum of Jewish History, Vilnius University
Political migration from Hungary, 1918-1956, Thomas Lorman, UCL's School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London
16:15 Break
16:30 – 17:00 Session 4: Writing Diaspora
Moderator: Anthony Chapman-Joy, Royal Holloway, University of London, British Library
Newspapers published by 19th-century German political exiles in England, Susan Reed, British Library
Clandestine WWII pamphlets, Marja Kingma, British Library
We look forward to welcoming you to the conference in November. In the meantime, we invite you to discover a new display of works by Franciszka Themerson ‘Walking Backwards’, currently on show at Tate Britain, and to explore the history of Lithuanian Jewish immigration to the UK at the annual Litvak Days in London.
01 July 2024
Premio Strega 2024: behind the scenes
This year, I have been nominated as a judge for the Premio Strega 2024, Italy’s most prestigious literary prize. I had just over six weeks to read the dozzina, the best 12 books published in Italy in the past year, and help choose the winner.
12 books nominated for this year's Premio Strega Prize (Image from https://www.illibraio.it/)
On April 15, I received the link to download the books and felt immediately overwhelmed by the task. First to attract my attention was Valentina Mira, partly for the semi-homonymy with yours truly, but also because her both personal and political story Dalla stessa parte mi troverai had been accused of revisionism.
Personal, almost biographical narratives feature heavily in this year’s dozzina. Melissa Panarello in Storia dei miei solid, mixes the story of her early literary fame with women’s taboo relation with money. Tommaso Giartosio astonishes with Autobiogrammatica, a bildungsroman and memoir about his relationship with language and a tribute to the 1963 Premio Strega winner, Natalia Ginzburg’s Lessico Famigliare (first Italian edition at 10765.k.23., English translation, Family Sayings, YC.1987.a.5661). The most personal and brave of all is Antonella Lattanzi, who in Cose che non si raccontano tells her cruel story of missed maternity with unapologetic honesty; a cathartic act to raise awareness in hope to help all women. I hope this book will be translated into English very soon.
Part family history, part essay, Daniele Rielli’s Il fuoco invisibile. Storia umana di un disastro naturale is a blend of many genres. It is a choral novel with Puglia’s millenary olive trees threatened by the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa as its protagonists.
Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s L’età fragile is the favourite for this year. Like her last success, L’Arminuta, 2017 (first Italian edition at YF.2019.a.15048, English translation by Ann Goldstein, A Girl Returned, at ELD.DS.428465), this book talks about the relationship between mother and daughter and is set in her native region of Abruzzo, in a very rural environment which is echoed by her dry and simple writing style.
These works give a fantastic overview of the state of the art of Italian narrative and of the literary genres that evolve and intermix. They show an ageing country deeply affected by climate change, with younger generations abandoning the province and women and LGBTQ+ people fighting for their rights and their freedom. They tell of strong ancestral bonds and a passion for the Italian language and culture.
The winner will be announced on July 4, chosen by 700 jurors, 245 of which were nominated by the Italian Cultural Institutes worldwide for their interest in Italian language and literature.
Premio Strega was established in 1947, and among its winners are some of the best-known works of contemporary literature, such as Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) (1959) and Umberto Eco’s Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose) (1981). Awarded authors include Cesare Pavese (1950), Alberto Moravia (1952), Elsa Morante (1957), Alessandro Barbero (1986), Antonio Pennacchi (2010), and Sandro Veronesi (2020).
Valentina Mirabella, Curator, Romance Collections
02 October 2023
Forgotten stories still to be uncovered
What do you think links audio recordings of Italian traditional theatre from Florence, card diaries written in 1932 by archaeologists in Soviet Ukraine, a typescript of a play on the life of Romani people in Bulgarian, a photo album that belonged to a Roma family from Moldova, a page from a Muslim religious text originated in Bulgaria, and a journal published by Serbs in exile?
Card diaries by T.M. Movchanoskiy, 1932 (EAP220/1/3) - Archival records from Saving archival documents of archaeological researches conducted during the 1920s and 1930s in Ukraine
Catalogue record of the digital audio collection
All these image and many more were digitised through the Endangered Archives Programme. The physical archives that were under a threat of disappearance remain where they were, but digital images are available freely to anyone who would like to do research or learn. In the words of the Programme’s co-founder, Lisbet Rausing, and much echoed by the Head of the EAP Sam van Schaik , “the Endangered Archives Programme captures forgotten and still not written histories, often suppressed or marginalised. It gives voice to the voiceless: it opens a dialogue with global humanity’s multiple pasts. It is a library of history still waiting to be written”.
Ismail Osmanov. “Gypsy on the new way. A play in two parts, 1953” (EAP067/4/1) –
Archival records from Preservation of Gypsy/Roma historical and cultural heritage in Bulgaria
Roma family album No 1 (EAP699/23/2) – Archival records from Safeguarding of the intangible Romani heritage in the Republic of Moldova threatened by the volatilisation of the individual unexplored collections (EAP699)
Here in the British Library, we research the collections and try to tell more people about them. Here is the most recent report from Anna Maslenova, a PhD student who came to work with us for three months on placement: ‘Contextualising a digital photographic archive of Siberian Indigenous peoples: PhD placement report’ . A Chevening fellow from Ukraine Nadiia Strishenets helped us to improve metadata for image related to the project Saving the original lifetime archive of the well-known Ukrainian poet, artist and thinker, T.H. Shevchenko (EAP657). If you have used any of the EAP collections in your research, we would be extremely grateful if you could tell us about your research and experience.
Muslim religious texts (EAP1392/5/2) – Archival records from Rediscovering the cultural heritage of the Muslims in Bulgaria (1920-1950) (EAP1392)
The Serbian Fatherland: a monthly magazine for Serbian youth in exile [1918] (EAP833/1/2/1/7) – Archival records from Safeguarding the fragile collection of the private archive of the Lazic family (EAP833)
The call for the 19th round of applications is open.
We hope that readers of this blog will help us to promote EAP, so that we could save more disappearing archives, uncover fascinating stories and capture forgotten voices from all over the world.
Katya Rogatchevskaia Lead Curator, East European Collections
25 August 2023
New light on the earliest ‘professor’ of Spanish in the UK?
Antonio Vieyra Transtagano – he used his toponymic ‘Transtagano’ ‘of Tras os Montes’ to distinguish himself from the baroque preacher Antonio Vieira SJ (1608-97) – was the first professor of Spanish at Trinity College Dublin and the first in the UK. (Ann Frost reminds us that at the time ‘professor’ was not the lofty title of today, and was largely used to mean ‘teacher’.)
Vieyra, like nearly all the language teachers in London, was a Protestant exile. His date of birth is often given as 1712. His first publication was in London, printed by John Nourse, who seems to have specialised in foreign languages (see ESTC and Foreign-language Printing in London).
A new Portuguese grammar (London, 1768). 1568/3986
A dictionary of the Portuguese and English languages (London, 1773). 1502/272
But he was a man of parts, who also wrote on Persian:
Brevis, clara, facilis ac jucunda, non solùm Arabicam linguam; Sed etiam hodiernam Persicam, cui tota ferè Arabica intermixta est, addiscendi methodus; quam non ita pridèm quinque speciminibus comprehensam, editamque; nunc autem novis, ac berè multis vocabulis locupletatam, (inter quae plurima celtica, imò et aliquot Asiatica et Americana, quo nonnullorum Asiae, Novique Orbis populorum felici origines investigentur exitu, reperiuntur) cum Arabicis aut Persicis affinitatem habentibus, in usum utriusque ling. tyronum, denuò edit ejusdem methodi auctor Antonius Vieyra, L.L. hisp. ac Ital. prof. reg. in Col. S.S. et ind. Trin. Dublin
(Dublin, 1789) 12903.c.20
He arrived in Dublin in 1779 to teach at Trinity College, a Protestant stronghold.
Andrew Wakeley’s best-selling textbook on the use of the compass (first printed 1665) was translated into Portuguese by one ‘Antonio Vieira’ for Antonio Fernandes, merchant of London, in 1762.
A agulha de marear rectificada … composto por Andre Wakeley, mathematico … traduzido do original ingles, por Antonio Vieira, Professor de Geometria na Academia Magnanense (London, 1762) RB.23.a.40456 [The Mariners-compass rectified … composed by Andrew Wakeley, mathematician … translated from the English original by Antonio Vieira, professor of geometry in the Magnanensian Academy]
Could they be related – or even one and the same?
Our Vieira writes in his dedication to Fernandes that he left his homeland in his third lustrum: as a lustrum was a period of 5 years, his age on departure was between 11 and 15.
He calls himself (in 1762) ‘professor of geometry at the Academia Magnanense’ (Orbis Latinus identifies this as Meinvelt (or Mayenfeld), a region between the Rhine and Moselle rivers). He also calls himself ‘chaplain’.
He says explicitly that he turned to translating Wakeley ‘and others’ and needed a patron: a role which Fernandes fulfilled.
Although the humanities and sciences weren’t as divided as they are now, our man’s prologue is stuffed with literary references far beyond the needs of a work of Fachliteratur. He cites Camões – well chosen on account of the maritime feats sung in the Lusiads. He refers to his annotations on the Satires of Horace, Juvenal, Persius and Petronius and draws on classical culture to praise Fernandes as a new Cicero and Juvenal among the ancients and Salignac and Locke among the moderns.
The book has no printer or publisher named: did Vieira publish it himself?
The fullest account of the Professor’s life I have been able to see is the obituary in the Dublin Evening Post, Thursday 16 March 1797:
Doctor Vieyra, who died at the College, some short time since, was King’s Professor of Spanish and Italian. He was a most worthy man, an excellent scholar, and had a perfect knowledge of almost every existing language. Having outlived his family, and most of his acquaintance, he spent his latter days almost in retirement, but his name is well known, in the literary world. His Portuguese Dictionary is the best that has been published of that language. He was born at Estremor, [sic] in Portugal, in the year 1712, and tho’ certainly deserving a more fortunate lot, met with various calamities during his whole life. His father had been taken up by the inquisition, and a small estate he had of course seized. Dr. Vieyra was sent to Padua, and from thence to Rome, where he took the vows and entered in the order of Conventuales. Ganganelli (afterwards Pope [Clement XIV]) was in the same convent at that time, and they were of course well acquainted. The Doctor, after a residence of twenty years in Italy, got leave to return to Portugal, where he narrowly escaped the fate of his father – and was obliged to quit the country, & after many extraordinary adventures, settled in London where he was patronized by the Chevalier Pinto. He got the appointment in Dublin College, many years ago. From the time he quit the convent at Rome, he renounced the Roman Catholic religion. He had several children, who all died before him. – The family of the late Provost, and Lady Moira, were always particularly kind to him. He wrote several volumes on the derivations of words and names; had he spent half the time taken up in such uninteresting works in writing memoirs of his life, he would have gained more, and have given the public some very curious and extraordinary anecdotes.
Chevalier Pinto was Luís Pinto de Sousa Coutinho, Viscount Balsemão (1735-1804), Portuguese Minister Plenipotentiary in London, 1774-88. With his wife, Catarina de Lencastre, he made his home into a literary and scientific salon. He supplied George III with books on Portugal, used by Southey for his History of Brazil. (All this according to Rodrigues.)
On 9 November 1774 Pinto wrote to the Bishop of Beja in support of two scholars: Manuel Azulay, a Jew, son of Portuguese parents, who aspired to a job teaching Hebrew in Portugal (he promises not to draw attention to his religion); and a monk who has written a Portuguese grammar and dictionary and has knowledge of Arabic and Persian, who seeks travel money and access to becoming a secular priest (Malato Borralho, 58). (Pinto also aided António de Morais e Silva, father of Brazilian lexicography, when he fled the Inquisition: Rodrigues 98.)
Who could this be but our man? But wasn’t he a Protestant by then?
It may not be too fanciful to draw the following chronology: Antonio Vieyra Transtagano was born in 1717; left Portugal in his third lustrum; went to Rome, became a Protestant, went to Mayenfeld; arrived in London in need of a patron and where he slaved as a dogsbody translator; by 1762 he was teaching and publishing in London; in 1774 he had the patronage of Chevalier Pinto; in 1779 he was in Dublin.
Translators have always sought patronage, and translators were often hacks – one thinks of George Borrow translating for newspapers, or the women readers in the British Museum in the nineteenth century (described by Bernstein).
Professor Antonio Vieyra’s biography has many lacunae, but perhaps this book allows us to fill them in.
Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections
Barry Taylor, ‘St Anthony of Padua, alias Fernando of Lisbon’, European Studies Blog
Foreign-language printing in London, 1500-1900, edited by Barry Taylor. (Boston Spa, 2002) 2708.h.1059
Maire Kennedy, ‘Antoine d’Esca: First Professor of French and German at Trinity College Dublin (1775-1784)’
Carmem Rodrigues, ‘Chevalier Pinto: “Um dos homens mais ilustrados que já viveram no Brasil”’, Fênix: Revista de História e Estudos Culturais, 19 (2022), 93-112
Maria Luísa Malato Borralho, "Por acazo hum viajante --" : a vida e a obra de Catarina de Lencastre, 1a Viscondessa de Balsemão (1749-1824) (Lisbon, 2008) YF.2010.a.8017
Ann Frost, The emergence and growth of Hispanic studies in British and Irish universities ([Great Britain]: Association of Hispanists, [2018]) YD.2019.b.1143
Dublin Evening Post, Thursday 16 March 1797 (Irish Newspaper Archives)
Susan David Bernstein, Roomscape: women writers in the British Museum from George Eliot to Virginia Woolf (Edinburgh, [2014?]) ELD.DS.47217
14 April 2023
The Art of Collecting and the Futurist Avant-garde
Next week, on Friday 21 April, the Italian Cultural Institute will host a round table about Futurist books, with Dr Günter Berghaus (University of Bristol) and Giacomo Coronelli (Libreria Antiquaria Pontremoli, Milan). Introduction and chair by Valentina Mirabella (Curator of Romance Collections, British Library). The event is free but places are limited and registration is required.
Front cover of Ardengo Soffici’s Bïf§zf + 18. Simultaneità e chimismi lirici. (Firenze, 1919), 20009.f.12.
The event is dedicated to the work and collecting of Chris Michaelides (1949-2017), former Curator of Romance Collections, British Library. Chris was co-curator of the exhibition Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937 (2007) and we owe to him the acquisition of Marinetti’s tin Futurist book, Parole in libertà, and of an original edition of La prose du Transsibérien, Blaise Cendrars’s and Sonia Delaunay’s poem–painting.
Chris Michaelides in St Pancras Station in 2016, courtesy of Günter Berghaus
The Futurist book was instrumental in the circulation of Futurist ideas and represents a very experimental phase in book production, paving the way for the book object, the artist’s book, advertising and design. This round table will look at its importance and at the history of collecting Futurist books, in Italy and in the UK.
On this occasion, Valentina Mirabella will present an article she recently published on the British Library Electronic Journal, which contains a survey of the Italian Futurist collections held at the British Library. The survey, arranged by date of acquisition, is a tool for studying the circulation of Italian Futurist books in the UK, based on acquisition data contained in the British Library Corporate Archives and on the books themselves.
The event is organized with the support of Libreria Antiquaria Pontremoli.
For more information, visit the website of the Italian Cultural Institute.
30 December 2022
An A to Z of the European Studies Blog 2022
A is for Alexander the Great, subject of the Library’s current exhibition.
B is for Birds and Bull fighting.
C is for Czechoslovak Independence Day, which marks the foundation of the independent Czechoslovak State in 1918.
D is for Digitisation, including the 3D digitisation of Marinetti’s Tin Book.
E is for Annie Ernaux, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in October.
Examples of Fraktur letter-forms from Wolfgang Fugger, Ein nützlich und wolgegründt Formular manncherley schöner Schriefften ... (Nuremberg, 1533) C.142.cc.12.
F is for Festive Traditions, from songs to fortune telling.
G is for Guest bloggers, whose contributions we love to receive!
H is for Hryhorii Skovoroda, the Ukrainian philosopher and poet whose anniversary we marked in December.
I is for our series on Iceland and the Library’s Icelandic collections.
J is for Jubilees.
Abetka (Kyïv, 2005). YF.2010.a.18369.
K is for Knowledge systems and the work of Snowchange Cooperative, a Finnish environmental organisation devoted to protecting and restoring the boreal forests and ecosystems through ‘the advancement of indigenous traditions and culture’.
L is for Limburgish, spoken in the South of the Netherlands.
M is for Mystery – some bibliographical sleuthing.
N is for Nordic acquisitions, from Finnish avant-garde poetry to Swedish art books.
O is for Online resources from East View, which are now available remotely.
Giovanni Bodoni and Giovanni Mardersteig, Manuale tipografico, 1788. Facsimile a cura di Giovanni Mardersteig. (Verona, 1968) L.R.413.h.17.
P is for our wonderful PhD researchers, current and future.
Q is for Quebec with a guest appearance by the Americas blog featuring the work of retired French collections curator Des McTernan.
R is for Rare editions of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko’s Kobzar.
S is for Samizdat and the Library’s Polish Solidarity collection.
T is for Translation and our regular posts to mark Women in Translation Month.
Alphabet Anglois, contenant la prononciation des lettres avec les declinaisons et conjugaisons (Rouen, 1639). Digital Store 1568/3641.(1.)
U is for Ukrainian collections and our work with Ukrainian partners.
V is for Victory – a contemporary Italian newspaper report of the Battle of Trafalgar.
W is for Richard Wagner who wrote about a fictional meeting with Beethoven.
X is for... (no, we couldn’t think of anything either!)
Y is for You, our readers. Thank you for following us!
Z is for our former colleague Zuzanna, whom we remembered in February.
Azbuka ōt knigi osmochastnye̡, sirěchʹ grammatikii (Lviv, 1574). Digital Store 1568/3641.(1.)
European studies blog recent posts
- 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
- How Bitter the Savour is of Other’s Bread? International Conference on European Political Refugees in the UK from 1800
- Premio Strega 2024: behind the scenes
- Forgotten stories still to be uncovered
- New light on the earliest ‘professor’ of Spanish in the UK?
- The Art of Collecting and the Futurist Avant-garde
- An A to Z of the European Studies Blog 2022
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