Project to open rare and valuable collection to the world is finally up and running. People gather in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican during Pope Francis’ weekly general audience on May 1. (FILIPPO MONTEFORTE / AFP/GETTY IMAGES) By Lesley Ciarula ...
April No days such honored days as these! While yet Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide For some fair thing which should forever bide On earth, her beautous memory to set In fitting frame that no age could forget, Her name ...
Today we venture to western France in the novelette, Shell-Fish (subtitled Or the Influence of Diet on Procreation) by the French author Émile Zola. The story centers around Monsieur Chabre, a forty-five year old “retired grain merchant with a big fortune,” ...
On this National Flower Day, Special Collections would like to introduce you to The Language of Flowers. Delightfully illustrated by noted 19th-century illustrator and writer, Kate Greenaway, this petite tome includes a list of over 200 plants and their figurative equivalents. ...
The Courtship of Ferb: An Old Irish Romance transcribed in the Twelfth Century into the Book of Leister is an Irish romance, whose earliest written version is found in the twelfth-century manuscript known as the Book of Leinster. It is a ...
Special Collections celebrates Women’s History Month with its featured book for March: Frida: Bringing Frida Kahlo’s Life And Art To Film written by Julie Taymor, the first woman to win the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical. Artist Frida Kahlo was born ...
In our digital age of e-readers and same-day delivery, it’s worth remembering how much blood and sweat used to go into the distribution of the written word. Consider the journey of a book I’ve had the rare privilege to examine, ...
World Book Day is a celebration of authors, illustrators, books and (most importantly) it’s a celebration of reading. In fact, it’s the biggest celebration of its kind, designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading, and marked in over 100 ...
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine on this day in 1807. His works include The Golden Legend, The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Longfellow was one of the most popular ...
Did you know that February 17 is National Cabbage Day? To observe the day celebrating this humble vegetable, we pulled out Mrs Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, a 1901 novel by American author Alice Hegan Rice. It is the story of a ...