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From Ottoman Might to the Arab Revolt: The Hejaz Railway as Engineering Feat, Pilgrimage Highway, and Battleground
The Hejaz Railway, the lifeline of the Ottoman Empire in Arabia and a strategic target of the Arab Revolt, began to be constructed by imperial decree in 1900, at the behest of Sultan Abdülhamid II...
The Beautiful World of Botanicals
The desire to replicate nature in print has created some of the most desirable and collectable publications in the book world, as well as incredible developments in printing techniques. These have...
From Page to Stage
Live theatre is, by its very nature, transient. It is experienced by an audience on a specific evening and, after the curtain falls, it is only the memory of the performance that remains. Or is it? ...
“A singularly forbidding woman” – the life of May Morris
William Morris looms large in British literary history, for his own writing, his politics, and his radical impact on others. His birth on 24 March 1834 was followed exactly 28 years and 1 day later...
Collecting Editioned Prints: Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt, one of the most recognizable artists of the 20th century, scandalized the Viennese establishment and awed his contemporaries with his opulent and erotic nudes. He rose to fame as a...
More Than a Cookbook: Exploring the Culinary World of 18th-Century Chefs
How did people learn how to cook in the 18th-century? Many might think that the answer is “at home with their parents”, but the methods of culinary education in the 18th-century were more diverse...
Drawn Together – The Synergy Between Writer and Artist
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland opens with an arresting illustration of the White Rabbit and the first thought from Alice is “what is the use of a book… without pictures or conversations?” It’s a...
Printing and the Mind of (Wo)man
The historic catalogue Printing and the Mind of Man, or PMM as it is usually abbreviated, was first published in 1967. Its origins lie in two exhibitions: the first, held at the Fitzwilliam Museum...
Shackleton’s South: is my copy a first edition?
The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917) Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was the last great undertaking of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. He embarked in...
Derek Walcott
One of the satisfactions of putting together a catalogue is the opportunity to tell a story – arranging books and paper, these chance scatterings of time, into a narrative that captures some of the...
Charles Darwin: The Scientist and the Man
It goes without saying that On the Origin of Species is one of the most significant books in history and a desirable addition to many collectors’ libraries. Yet the emphasis on Charles Darwin’s...
Friends with Benefits
Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928) is one of the most memorable cases of the benefits of a muse in modern literature – dedicated to Vita Sackville-West, whose androgynous personality inspired the title...
Bookplates
One of the pleasures of cataloguing books is coming across bookplates. These are often interesting, delightful, sometimes infuriating, and occasionally alarming. They are a source of fascination and...
Nigel Bents
From his own design work crafting "epic ephemera" to twenty years' worth of memories at Peter Harrington, the head of our design team, Nigel Bents, has lots of stories to tell.Nigel, you are one of...
The Communist Manifesto
The year 1848 was famously a year of revolutions. In February that year, a new political party issued its manifesto. Its famous opening line claimed their nascent movement was a spectre haunting all...
“There’s always Pooh”: A. A. Milne, E. H. Shepard and Winnie-the-Pooh
Whether you like your Winnie-the-Pooh in the original A. A. Milne books or in a Walt Disney cartoon, or both, there’s no escaping the most famous teddy bear in the world. With the...
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