King's Treasures

Horses in fable, myth, story and legend

Posted on April 7, 2026 | Leave a comment

Welcome to the second instalment of our celebration of the arrival of the Lunar year of the Horse. This time the focus is on depictions of mythological, legendary and fictional horses, of which there are many.

We begin with one of our illuminated manuscripts, a fifteenth-century edition of the works of Horace which features the mythological winged horse Pegasus on its first page. According to Ancient Greek legend, the hero Bellerophon flew on Pegasus in his victorious battle against the monstrous Chimaera. This formidable horse, who eventually became a constellation, has been depicted extensively in art over the centuries and is also a symbol frequently used in heraldry. The Horace manuscript came originally from the library of Cardinal Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), a Venetian scholar and nobleman. His coat of arms features on the first page, with Pegasus as a crest, and two Pegasi appear in the illuminated initial M above.

Pegasus also features in some printer’s devices, which were an early form of logo used by printers to distinguish their work and protect against forgery. The device below, associated with the Italian typographer Valerio Dorico (died 1565), depicts Pegasus alongside the Fountain of Hippocrene. According to legend, this was a spring on Mount Helicon that Pegasus created by striking his hoof to the earth. Hippocrene means “horse spring”.

Pegasus rears back on its hind legs next to a spring

Pegasus printer’s device on fol. L6 of Vrbis Romae topographia by Bartolomeo Marliani, Rome, 1544. Shelfmark: Bury.I.MAR.Urb.1544

Another legendary creature often used in heraldry is the unicorn, a horse-like creature with a single large horn on its forehead. As can be seen in the early seventeenth-century illustrations below, unicorns are sometimes depicted with some of the attributes of goats, such as cloven hooves and beards. The accompanying text associates the unicorn with strength, courage and virtue and repeats the common belief that unicorn horns are an antidote to poison.

Shields showing a seated and a standing unicorn with accompanying text

Illustration and text from page 134 of A Display of Heraldrie by John Guillim, London, 1611. Shelfmark: H.17.39

At the end of A Display of Heraldrie there are examples of regal coats of arms, including that of Charles, the second son of King James I, who was later to rule as Charles I. The lion and the unicorn flanking the shield still form part of the coat of arms of the United Kingdom, with the lion representing England and the chained unicorn representing Scotland. In Scotland, their positions are swapped and the Unicorn also wears a crown.

Illustration and text from page 277 of A Display of Heraldrie

The frontispiece of Richard Berenger’s The History and Art of Horsemanship features a magnificent illustration of statue of a Centaur, a creature which is half horse and half human. In the text, Berenger eloquently expounds upon the symbolism behind the mythical beast:

The Centaur is the symbol of horsemanship, and explains its meaning as soon as it is beheld: for there is such an intelligence and harmony between the rider and the horse, that they may, almost in a literal sense, be said to be but one creature.

Engraving of a statue of a Centaur holding a bow and rearing back on his hind legs

Frontispiece of volume one of The History and Art of Horsemanship by Richard Berenger, London, 1771. Shelfmark: Bryant.M.10.17

Sagittarius, the constellation and astrological sign, is often depicted as a centaur drawing a bow. One example is this lovely woodcut illustration from an English translation of a sixteenth-century astrological work by Frenchman Richard Roussat, writing under the pseudonym “Arcandam.”

Black and white woodcut showing a centaur drawing back a bow

Illustration of Sagittarius the Archer from fol. H6 of The Most Excellent, Profitable, and Pleasant Booke of the Famous Doctour and Expert Astrologien Arcandam or Aleandrin … translated by William Warde, London, 1562. Shelfmark: Chawner.A.9.11

The Greek god of the sea Poseidon and his Roman equivalent Neptune were both said to have travelled in chariots drawn by Hippocampi, creatures which were half horse and half fish or sea monster. The illustration below comes from a work on classical mythology by Italian diplomat and mythographer Vincenzo Cartari (1531?-1590). It depicts Neptune in a sea-chariot with his consort the goddess Amphitrite and the young sea god Palaemon. They are being pulled through the waves by two Hippocampi.

Illustration from page 201 of Le imagini de i dei de gli antichi, nelle quali si contengono gl’idoli, riti, ceremonie, & altre cose appartenenti alla religione de gli antichi by Vincenzo Cartari, Venice, 1587. Shelfmark: Bury.CAR.Ima.1587

Horses make an appearance in numerous fables, including those of Aesop. The charming frontispiece below, depicting Aesop surrounded by animals and birds from the tales, comes from Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists by Roger L’Estrange (1616-1704). If you look closely, you can see that two quirky bird-like creatures have been added to this copy in ink by an unknown hand!

Aesop in the centre surrounded by a multitude of animals and birds

Frontispiece of Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists by Roger L’Estrange, London, 1694. Shelfmark: L.2.11

One of Aesop’s fables, The Horse and the Lion, tells of how a wily horse gets the better of a lion who is posing as a doctor in order to get close enough to eat him. Realising the deception the horse affects an injured leg then kicks the lion hard in the face, stunning him. The moral is that it is fine to repay trickery with trickery.

A horse kicking out with its back legs at a snarling lion

Plate facing page 31 from volume two of The Fables of Aesop translated by Samuel Croxall, London, 1793. Shelfmark: Thackeray.J.63.45

In 1727, the dramatist and poet John Gay (1685-1732) wrote his own collection of fables in verse. They were dedicated to Prince William, the youngest son of King George II, in the hopes of currying favour with the crown. Amongst the tales is one called The Council of Horses, in which a young colt addresses a gathering of horses and calls for them to throw off human control and claim their freedom:

Were we design’d for daily toil,

To drag the plough-share through the soil,

To sweat in harness through the road,

To groan beneath the carrier’s load?

How feeble are the two legg’d kind!

What force is in our nerves combin’d!

This call for mutiny receives wide support until an older horse defuses the situation by pointing out the mutual benefits to be gained from working for humans:

The toils of servitude I knew;

Now grateful man rewards my pains,

And gives me all these wide domains;

At will I crop the year’s increase,

My latter life is rest and peace.

The Council of Horses. Plate facing page 191 from volume one of Fables by John Gay, London, 1793. Shelfmark: Thackeray.J.61.28

The eponymous hero of the Middle English romance Sir Bevis of Hampton is accompanied on his adventures by Arondel, his trusty steed. Arondel is so loyal to Bevis that he will not allow anyone else to ride him, kicking out at or throwing off anyone who makes the attempt. In turn, Bevis values Arondel so highly that he chooses exile rather than allow the horse to be executed for killing a prince who tried to steal him.

Title page showing Bevis astride Arondel

Title-page of Syr Bevis of Hampton, London, 1585. Shelfmark: M.29.13

At one point in the story, Bevis subdues a giant called Ascopart who then becomes his page for a time. As can be seen below, Ascopart is so large he can easily tuck Arondel under his arm!

The giant is carrying Bevis, Arondel and his travelling companion aboard a boat

Fol. F1 recto from Syr Bevis of Hampton

Rocinante, the horse ridden by Don Quixote on his delusional misadventures is a much more run-down creature than Arondel, a re-purposed workhorse, elderly and infirm. Nonetheless, he is a vital part of the tale and endures in popular memory alongside Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza. Our Library holds many editions of Cervantes’ satirical masterpiece, both in the original Spanish and in English translation. What follows is a selection of glorious illustrations from some of these editions, most featuring Rocinante front and centre.

We start with a seventeenth-century English edition of the tale. In the plate below, Sancho Panza ties Rocinante’s hind-legs together to stop Don Quixote haring off into the dark on another imagined quest.

Plate facing page 100 from volume one of The Life and Exploits of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote De La Mancha, translated from the original Spanish of Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra by Charles Jarvis, London, 1742. Shelfmark: Glendinning.98/1

Below Don Quixote is tricked into being trapped standing on poor Rocinante’s back with his hand tied above his head.

Plate facing page 299 from volume one of The Life and Exploits of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote De La Mancha

In the next scene Don Quixote launches Sancho Panza into a tree so he can avoid fighting a squire whose large nose scares him. This squire, who can be seen on the left of the picture, is actually wearing a mask.

Plate facing page 69 from volume two of The Life and Exploits of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote De La Mancha. Shelfmark: Glendinning.98/2

The following two illustrations come from a Spanish edition of the work from later in the same century. First we have a classic image of Don Quixote on Rocinante accompanied by his squire riding a donkey.

Plate facing page 50 from volume one of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervántes Saavedra, Madrid, 1780. Shelfmark: L.2.13

In the next illustration, Don Quixote is astride a wooden horse named Clavileño. He and Sancho Panza have been tricked into thinking they are flying on this horse, directing it via a peg in its forehead. Bellows and other props are used to make the “flight” more convincing.

Plate facing page 52 from volume four of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervántes Saavedra, Madrid, 1780. Shelfmark: L.2.16

We finish our look at Rocinante with some lovely images from this very colourful early twentieth-century English edition, illustrated by artist Walter Crane (1845-1915).

The cover has a red background with a central panel showing Don Quixote astride Rocinante

Cover of Don Quixote of the Mancha, retold by Judge Parry, London, 1900. Shelfmark: Glendinning.107

Below Don Quixote charges at windmills he believes are fearsome monsters.

Plate facing page 38 from Don Quixote of the Mancha

Finally, here is Walter Crane’s illustration of Don Quixote with his hand tied above him. In this version his shadow looks a lot like a devil!

Plate facing page 212 from Don Quixote of the Mancha

A late nineteenth-century edition of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen from our Rylands Collection of children’s books contains some wonderful colour illustrations by Adolphe-Alphonse Géry-Bichard (1842-1926). Although the Baron does not have a particular named horse accompanying him throughout, horses do feature in many of his tall tales. Included below are illustrations of the Baron shooting through his horse’s bridle to bring him down from where he has become attached to the steeple of a church, and of the Baron extricating himself and his horse from a pond by gripping onto his own hair and pulling!

Bright cover with the head of the Baron in the centre, surrounded by ducks

Cover of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, illustrated by A. Bichard, London, c. 1880-1900? Shelfmark: Rylands.C.BAR

Plate before page 7 of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Plate facing page 89 of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

The Victorian illustrator Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886) loved horse riding and was a keen observer of countryside pursuits. It is no surprise therefore that horses crop up regularly in his work, not only in his picture books for children, but also in his comic illustrations and tales for the London weekly illustrated paper The Graphic. Below is the cover of one of a series of incredibly popular shilling toy books that Caldecott produced in collaboration with the engraver Edmund Evans (1826-1905).

A woman in a blue dress rides a white prancing horse in the foreground, and a farmer and his daughter ride a horse in the background

Front cover of Ride a Cock-Horse to Banbury Cross, London, 1884. Shelfmark: Rylands.C.CAL.Hey.1882/5

The Rylands Collection includes two collected volumes of some of Caldecott’s work for The Graphic, and they demonstrate his mastery of drawing horses in many different poses and situations. Below, the outing of two friends is temporarily disrupted when the horse pulling the cart is stung by a wasp.

Page 41 of Randolph Caldecott’s Last “Graphic” Pictures, London, 1888. Shelfmark: Rylands.C.CAL.Las.1888

Next, a Christmas excursion is interrupted in even more dramatic circumstances, when the hero’s carriage is attacked by highwaymen! Luckily the miscreants are overpowered when Mr Carlyon (somewhat implausibly) launches himself out of the carriage at one of them and the other is bitten by one of the carriage horses.

Page 60 of Randolph Caldecott’s “Graphic” Pictures, London, 1898. Shelfmark: Rylands.C.CAL.Gra.1898

Page 61 of Randolph Caldecott’s “Graphic” Pictures

Another tale concerns a steeplechase race across the countryside, featuring many lively horses.

Page 73 of Randolph Caldecott’s “Graphic” Pictures

Our Local Collection includes the comic story of a Cambridge freshman, Samuel Golightly, who gets into various scrapes and adventures during his first year at the University. Below, Samuel participates in a drag hunt, where hounds follow a scent trail rather than a fox. His horse is somewhat too enthusiastic in pursuit, and he ends up tumbling to the ground, narrowly avoiding being trampled by another horse!

Page 252 of The Cambridge Freshman; or, Memoirs of Mr Golightly, by Martin Legrand, London, 1872. Shelfmark: NW CU JG 7P Leg

Page 254 of The Cambridge Freshman; or, Memoirs of Mr Golightly

There are many more horse illustrations in our collections, but all good things must come to an end, so we will take flight on Pegasus and bid you all farewell!

References and further reading:

Pierre Grimal, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Oxford, 1986

Jennifer Fellows (ed.), Sir Bevis of Hampton, Oxford, 2017

Gary Lim, “‘A Stede Gode and Lel’: Valuing Arondel in Bevis of Hampton” Postmedieval Vol. 2, 1, 50-68, 2011

Rodney K. Engen, Randolph Caldecott: “Lord of the Nursery”, London, 1988.

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Posted in Library

Tagged AC, Aesop, Arondel, Baron Munchausen, Centaur, Cervantes, Chinese New Year, Don Quixote, Edmund Evans, Fables, Glendinning Collection, Heraldry, Hippocampus, Hippocrene, Horses, John Gay, Lunar New Year, Manuscripts, Mythology, Pegasus, Randolph Caldecott, Rare Books, Richard Berenger, Rocinante, Rylands Collection, Sir Bevis of Hampton, Thackeray bequest, Unicorns, Vincenzo Cartari, Walter Crane

Saddle up for the New Year!

Posted on February 13, 2026 | Leave a comment

Given the importance of horses in human history we were inevitably spoilt for choice when it came to selecting equine-related images to celebrate the Lunar New Year of the Horse. What follows, therefore, is a first instalment which focuses on working horses in spheres such as agriculture, transport and warfare. A future post will cast a spotlight upon horses as they have been depicted in myth, legend and fables.

To kick things off with a bang, we begin with a highly dramatic battle scene involving a close-quarters skirmish between two opposing cavalry forces. This vibrant illustration comes from an early nineteenth-century Persian manuscript edition of the complete works of the Persian poet Saʻdī (ca. 1200-ca. 1292). It was given to the Library by Kingsman Martin Bernal (1937-2013), who acquired it from his grandfather, the Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner (1879-1963). Gardiner likely purchased it in Cairo in the first decade of the twentieth century.

A highly colourful scene of clashing cavalry forces attacking each other with swords and spears. There are dead bodies in the foreground and a tree and houses in the background.

Battle scene from a manuscript edition of The Complete Works of Saʻdī, probably produced in Shiraz, Iran, in 1837. Classmark: MS.26.c.16

The manuscript also contains a lively illustration of a polo match, featuring more elegant and diversely coloured horses. The sport has Persian origins dating back to around the 6th century BCE.

Two teams engage in a lively polo match, with spectators looking on.

Polo match from The Complete Works of Saʻdī

Returning from that sporting diversion to the more serious topic of warfare, we turn next to a much more regimented military scene, which comes from the second volume of Utriusque cosmi … historia, a primarily cosmological work by physician and occult scholar Robert Fludd (1574-1637). Horses are depicted here not only as cavalry animals, but also as a means of transporting cannons and baggage.

A top-down scene of assembled troops in formation, including infantry and cavalry, and horses pulling cannons and wagons

Plate from volume 2 of Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia by Robert Fludd, Oppenheim, 1617. Classmark: F.27.04

Fludd travelled abroad in the years after finishing his education and may have acquired some military experience then. If not, he at least developed a deep interest in the subject. Amongst numerous designs for military fortifications and machinery in this work is a horse-driven mobile battery intended for breaking through enemy ranks. It is not clear whether such a machine was ever used on a battlefield, or how practical it would actually be.

a long pole on wheels flanked by horses, attached to a wedge shaped battery, with room for people firing cannons

Image from page 421 of Utriusque cosmi maioris … historia

Heavily armoured horses pulling war chariots feature in an early eighteenth-century French translation of a twelfth-century work of Chinese history, the Zizhi Tongjian Gangmu. The translator was Joseph-Anne-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla (1669-1748), a Jesuit missionary to China who developed a great interest in Chinese history and learnt the Manchu language in later life. Accompanying illustrations in his text show both a large horse-drawn chariot carrying three soldiers and the slightly smaller but more embellished chariot of a General. The horses, resplendent in their elaborate head-pieces, look alert and well disciplined.

Three Chinese soldiers in a war chariot pulled by four armoured horses

Plate facing page 105 in volume 2 of Histoire générale de la Chine translated by Joseph-Anne-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla, Paris, 1777. Classmark M.44.30

One soldier, a General, in a war chariot pulled by four armoured horses

Plate facing page 274 in volume 2 of Histoire générale de la Chine

The library holds a copy of The History and Art of Horsemanship by Richard Berenger (1719 or 20-1782), who was Gentleman of the Horse to King George III. It contains this amusing illustration of a Sarmatian rider and his horse, both completely covered in scale armour. The Sarmatian people were skilled equestrians who roamed the steppes of central Asia from the 5th century BCE to the 4th century CE. Whilst they did indeed use scale armour, it is hard to imagine that it can have been quite as form-fitting as this image suggests!

A helmeted warrior astride a horse. Both are covered in tightly-fitting scale armour

Sarmatian horse and rider from plate 2 of volume 1 of The History and Art of Horsemanship by Richard Berenger, London, 1771. Classmark: Bryant.M.10.17

Martial images of horses can also be found in the stained glass of the College Chapel. They include this roundel depicting Joshua, who, according to the Bible, was successor to Moses as leader of the Israelites and led the conquest of the land of Canaan. The horse is at full gallop and Joshua has his lance held ready for action. He might be hampered though by the fact that his helmet appears to be covering his eyes!

Round panel of stained glass showing Joshua in golden armour mounted on a white horse

At the very top of window 12.2 in the main part of the Chapel, two mounted warriors face off. The warrior on the left is rendered in the act of throwing his spear, whilst the horse of the one on the right is rearing back with what appears to be a spear or an arrow sticking out of its torso.

A white rearing horse with an arrow or lance sticking out of it

Some lovely illustrations of jousting knights and prancing horses can be found in a seventeenth-century French book all about medieval tournaments, pageants and spectacles by Claude-François Menestrier (1631-1705). Menestrier was a Jesuit, a courtier and an expert on heraldry. He also had extensive experience of his own in organising celebrations, parades and festivities in his home city of Lyon. This included organising the festivities surrounding the visit of Louis XIV to the city in 1658.

Two mounted knights carrying lances facing each other in the foreground, with mounted spectators watching in the background

Jousting knights from page 103 of Traité des tournois, ioustes, carrousels, et autres spectacles publics by Claude-François Menestrier, Lyon, 1669. Classmark: Thackeray.H.28.13

Knights on prancing horses from page 91 of Traité des tournois, ioustes, carrousels …

It would be remiss of us not to include a substantial helping of engravings from a wonderful volume by Johann Elias Ridinger (1698-1767), a noted German artist, who specialised in painting and sketching animals, especially horses. Ridinger spent three years observing and sketching at a riding school and this experience shines through in the quality and realism of his work. The engravings below illustrate many aspects of equestrian training, including learning the use of weapons and military drums on horseback.

Title page of Vorstellung und Beschreibung derer Schul und Campagne Pferden nach ihren Lectionen, in was vor Gelegenheiten solche können gebraucht werden by Johann Elias Ridinger, Augsburg, 1760. Classmark: Thackeray.F.5.34/1

a trotting horse held by a trainer with a long lead

Plate 3 from Thackeray.F.5.34/1

Plate 9 from Thackeray.F.5.34/1

Plate 15 from Thackeray.F.5.34/1

Plate 33 from Thackeray.F.5.34/1

Plate 38 from Thackeray.F.5.34/1

Plate 45 from Thackeray.F.5.34/1

a horse in mid-gallop, with all legs off the ground

Plate 43 from Thackeray.F.5.34/1

a horse rearing back and a rider holding a lance aloft

Plate 5 from Remarques du carousels by Ridinger (1661), bound at the end of Thackeray.F.5.34/1

Horse and rider in front of a bas-relief of a horse

Plate 3 from Remarques du carousels

a horse with a rider attempting to get his lance in a hanging hoop

Plate 7 from Remarques du carousels

We transition now to the more peaceable occupation of agriculture, in which horses have also played an important role for centuries. The Keynes Collection includes a copy of The Horse-Hoing Husbandry: or, An Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation by agriculturist Jethro Tull (1674-1741). Tull’s innovative designs for agricultural machinery, including a horse-drawn seed drill and a horse-drawn hoe for tilling the soil, helped foster a major revolution in agricultural practices and productivity in eighteenth-century Britain. His book provides detailed instructions for building and using these machines, accompanied by useful diagrams, such as the one of the “Ho-Plow” which is included below.

Title page of The Horse-Hoing Husbandry: or, An Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation, by Jethro Tull, London, 1733. Classmark: Keynes.F.23.4

Diagram of a hoe or plough, with detail showing how horses are attached.

Plate six from The Horse-Hoing Husbandry …

By the time Tull was writing it was common practice to use large, muscular draught or cart horses to pull farm machinery and other heavy loads. Prior to this period, agricultural yields of winter crops had not been high enough to provide the large amount of food such horses required to function. The poor horse pictured below is awaiting the task of pulling a wagon piled precariously high with wooden planks!

Plate facing page 165 of Recreations in Natural History; or, Popular Sketches of British Quadrupeds engraved by Luke Clennell, London, 1815. Classmark: Thackeray.IV.2.1

The use of horses for agricultural tasks is not entirely a thing of the past, and indeed, the glorious wildflower meadow on our College back lawn is harvested each August by a team of shire horses from the Waldburg Shires Stables in Huntingdon. The horses are later attached to a hay wain to remove the baled-up hay. This use of traditional methods helps to minimise the carbon footprint of the whole process. The photos below were taken during the very first harvest in the summer of 2021.

Photo of two brown shire horses attached to harvesting machinery, with the meadow in the background

Shire horses Cosmo and Boy harnessed up for the first harvest, Summer 2021

The horses engaged in cutting the meadow

The horses hard at work

Of course, in order for horses to be fit and strong enough to undertake all the many tasks that humans have found and still find for them, they ideally need a great deal of care and attention. Our final image is from a seventeenth-century veterinary text, Markhams Maister-Peece…, which is devoted to curing all the various ailments suffered by horses. The author, Gervase Markham (1568?-1637), was a poet and literary figure who also wrote on a wide variety of practical subjects, including equestrian matters. For this he drew upon his considerable experience as a horse breeder and farmer. The engraved frontispiece below illustrates various aspects of caring for horses, including diet, treating wounds and sores and tending to strained legs. The figure at the top-centre is intended to embody the ideal outcome of all this care: “The figure 1, a compleat horse-man showes, that rides, keepes and cures, and all perfections knows.”

Ten small woodcuts of horses being treated for various ailments

Engraved frontispiece from Markhams Maister-peece: Contayning All Knowledge Belonging to the Smith, Farrier, or Horse Leech, Touching the Curing of All Diseases in Horses by Gervase Markham, London, 1631. Classmark: Chawner.A.6.29

We hope you have enjoyed this canter around our collections!

References and further reading:

Juliet Clutton-Brock, Horse power: a History of the Horse and the Donkey in Human Societies, London, 1992

Hilary Wayment, The Windows of King’s College Chapel Cambridge, London, 1972

Hilary Wayment, King’s College Chapel Cambridge: the Side-Chapel Glass, Cambridge, 1988

Matthew Steggle, Markham, Gervase (1568?-1637) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 28 Sep. 2006 [Accessed February 2026]

BBC news story: Cambridge University’s King’s College meadow harvested with horses, 2 August 2021 [accessed February 2026]

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Tagged AC, Agriculture, Armour, Cavalry, Chinese New Year, Claude-François Menestrier, Equestrians, Gervase Markham, Horses, Iran, Jethro Tull, Johann Elias Ridinger, Joseph-Anne-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla, Joshua, Keynes Bequest, King's College Chapel, Lunar New Year, Manuscripts, Persia, Polo, Rare Books, Richard Berenger, Robert Fludd, Sarmatians, Shire horses, Stained Glass, Thackeray bequest, Warfare, Wildflower meadow

Jane Austen at 250: An Online Exhibition

Posted on December 16, 2025 | Leave a comment

Today, 16 December 2025, marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. Events have been held throughout the year to celebrate this occasion. As part of Open Cambridge on 17 September, King’s College Library mounted an exhibition featuring first editions of all of Austen’s novels, the autograph manuscript of her unfinished novel Sanditon, a manuscript letter to her publisher, a book from her library, early translations of her novels, and other rare items. The event was a great success and was attended by over 650 people who braved the wet weather to come and view the treasures on display, thus creating a “ceaseless clink of pattens” on the wooden library floor reminiscent of Lady Russell’s description of driving through Bath on a wet afternoon in Persuasion. We present below some highlights from the exhibition for those who could not visit in person.

One of the exhibition cases housing the treasures on display

Sense and Sensibility, Austen’s first novel to be published, was written in epistolary form around 1795 in Steventon under the title Elinor and Marianne. It was begun in its present form in autumn 1797 and revised and prepared for publication in 1809-1811 when Jane was living in Chawton.

Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (London: Egerton, 1811), First edition
Warren.A.Se.1811/1-3

Pride and Prejudice, originally titled First Impressions, was offered for publication to the London bookseller Thomas Cadell, but the offer was declined by return post. The novel was subsequently published by Thomas Egerton under the revised title Pride and Prejudice. Upon receiving her copy of the first edition from the publisher, Jane wrote: ‘I have got my darling child from London’ (27 Jan 1813).

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (London: Egerton, 1813), First edition
Warren.A.Pr.1813a/1-3

The Austen family lived in Bath between 1801 and 1806. Jane was familiar with the Pump Room, a venue for fashionable people, which is used as a setting in her novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. This image, from The New Bath Guide (1807), shows the Pump Room as it would have looked during Jane Austen’s time there.

Christopher Anstey, The New Bath Guide; or, Memoirs
of the B.N.R.D. Family in a Series of Poetical Epistles (Bath, 1807)
Warren.B.97.New.1807

Austen’s novels Persuasion (written 1815-16) and Northanger Abbey (written 1798-99) both appeared posthumously in a four-volume set in December 1817, although the title page states 1818. They are prefaced by a ‘biographical notice’ written by Jane’s brother Henry Austen in which Jane’s identity is revealed for the first time. She appears to have intended to publish Persuasion in 1818 but did not live long enough to do so.

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion (London: Murray, 1818), First edition
Thackeray.J.57.12-15

In 1809 Austen’s brother Edward offered his mother and sisters a more settled life – the use of a large cottage in Chawton, near Alton in Hampshire. Whilst living in Chawton Jane published her first four novels. She also wrote Mansfield Park there between 1811 and 1813. It was first published by Egerton in 1814 and a second edition was published in 1816 by John Murray, still within Austen’s lifetime. It did not receive any critical attention when it first appeared.

Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (London: Egerton, 1814), First edition
Warren.A.Ma.1814/1-3

When Henry Austen was taken ill in London in October 1815, he was attended by his sister Jane and by one of the Prince Regent’s doctors who identified her as the author of Pride and Prejudice. The doctor reported that the Prince (later George IV) was a great admirer of her novels and she was invited to dedicate one of her future works to the Prince. Emma was the lucky work. Jane disapproved of the Prince’s treatment of his wife, but felt she couldn’t refuse, so she settled for a title page reading simply ‘Emma, Dedicated by Permission to HRH The Prince Regent’, though her publisher (John Murray) thought it ought to be more elaborate.

This copy of the first edition of Emma belonged to King’s Provost George Thackeray (1777–1850).

Jane Austen, Emma (London: Murray, 1816), First edition
Thackeray.J.57.9-11

Several months after the dedication of Emma, Jane wrote to John Murray and reported that the Prince had thanked her for the copy of Emma. In the same letter she notes that in a recent review of the novel, printed in The Quarterly Review (vol. XIV, 1816), the anonymous reviewer (later established as Sir Walter Scott) completely fails to mention Mansfield Park, remarking with regret that ‘so clever a man as the reviewer of Emma, should consider it as unworthy of being noticed’.

Jane Austen’s letter to John Murray, 1 April 1816 (NM/Austen/1)

Among the miscellaneous items on display was one of the few known copies of Sense and Sensibility in yellowback. Chapman and Hall’s series ‘Select Library of Fiction’ was closely associated with W.H. Smith, who carefully sought out copyrights, or reprint rights, of popular novels in order to publish yellowback editions for sale on his railway bookstalls. The series, which ran from 1854 until it was taken over by Ward, Lock in 1881, included at least thirty novels by Anthony Trollope, who had strong views on the poor quality of much railway literature.

Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
(London: Chapman and Hall, 1870)
Warren.A.Se.1870

One of the highlights of the exhibition was Jane Austen’s copy of Orlando furioso, signed by her on the fly-leaf, sold by the Austen-Leigh family, bought by Virginia Woolf, and inscribed by Woolf to John Maynard Keynes at Christmas 1936.

Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso (trans. by John Hoole)
(London: Charles Bathurst, 1783)
Keynes.E.4.1

These Victorian editions of Mansfield Park, Emma, and Northanger Abbey were presented to E. M. Forster’s mother by his father, and were later inherited by Forster himself.

Copies of Mansfield Park, Emma and Northanger Abbey from the library of E. M. Forster (all London: Routledge, 18–)
Forster.AUS.Man; Forster.AUS.EMM; Forster.AUS.Nor

King’s College owns the manuscript of Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon, the last one on which she was working before she died on 18 July 1817. It is a rare surviving autograph manuscript of her fiction. It was given to King’s in 1930 by Jane’s great-great niece (Mary) Isabella Lefroy in memory of her sister Florence and Florence’s husband, the late Provost Augustus Austen Leigh who was a great-nephew of Jane. The booklets were made by Austen herself. The last writing is dated 18 March 1817. She died four months later.

The beginning of Sanditon

Below is the beginning of chapter 6, followed by the transcription in the printed version of Sanditon.

The beginning of chapter 6

This copy of the first edition of Sanditon comes from the library of E. M. Forster.
Jane Austen, Fragment of a Novel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925)
Gilson.A.Sa.1925a

During the summer, King’s College loaned one of the fascicles of Sanditon to Harewood House to be displayed there as part of their exhibition ‘Austen and Turner: A Country House Encounter’ where it occupied pride of place and was viewed and admired by thousands of visitors.

JC/IJ

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Tagged Augustus Austen Leigh, Chawton, E.M. Forster, Edward Austen, Emma, George Thackeray, Harewood House, Henry Austen, IJ, Isabella Lefroy, Jane Austen, JC, John Maynard Keynes, John Murray, King George IV, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Open Cambridge, Orlando furioso, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, Rare Books, Sanditon, Sense and Sensibility, Sir Walter Scott, Steventon, Thackeray bequest, The New Bath Guide, Thomas Cadell, Thomas Egerton, Virginia Woolf

A celebration of Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)

Posted on December 1, 2025 | 2 comments

This year at King’s we have been marking the 400th anniversary of the death of the composer Orlando Gibbons. Gibbons was born in Oxford in 1583 to a musical family who moved to Cambridge when he was an infant. He was admitted to King’s College in 1598 at the age of fourteen, though had apparently been a chorister at King’s for some years before that, and received a Bachelor of Music degree from the university in 1606. His later life took him to London, where his reputation as a composer and organist was established, and finally to Canterbury, where he died in June 1625 after a sudden illness. He is buried in Canterbury Cathedral.

Portrait of Orlando Gibbons by an unknown artist. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

An inspection of Gibbons items held by King’s College Library has revealed some treasures that may not have seen the light of day for many a year.

My own introduction to Gibbons came when I was about fourteen, singing his sublime five-voice madrigal ‘The silver swan’ with my school chamber choir. We can trace this work through the centuries using various editions held in the Rowe Music Library.

Few of Gibbons’ compositions were published during his lifetime, one notable exception being The First Set of Madrigals and Mottets, printed in 1612 by Thomas Snodham. This is a collection of 20 secular songs, the first of which is ‘The silver swanne’. At King’s we have a copy of the cantus partbook only (containing the part for the highest voice), purchased in 1996 with a gift from the widow of Sir Henry Lintott (KC 1928).

Title page and page 1 of Orlando Gibbons, The First Set of Madrigals and Mottets … (London: Printed by Thomas Snodham, the Assigne of W. Barley, 1612) Shelfmark: LU.50

‘The silver swan’ next appears in the Rowe’s collection as part of a 1673 edition of The Musical Companion, a collection by John Playford anthologising ‘dialogues, glees, ayres and songs’.

Title page of John Playford (ed.), The Musical Companion … [Book 2] (London: Printed by W. Godbid for John Playford, 1673) Shelfmark: LU.101

The madrigal here is arranged for three voices, sacrificing much of the richness of the inner parts. The three parts are presented as a double-page spread, the middle part printed upside down, presumably so that three singers could share a single book, the Cantus Primus and Bassus singers reading from one side, the Cantus Secundus from the other.

Pages 152-153 of The Musical Companion … [Book 2] (London: Printed by W. Godbid for John Playford, 1673) Shelfmark: LU.101

The rise of glee and catch clubs in late eighteenth-century Britain led to many publications like The Apollo, or Harmonist in Miniature, an 8-volume anthology probably dating from the early 1820s. The frontispiece features William Hawes, Master of Children at the Chapel Royal from 1817 and evidently the pin-up of catch club members at that time.

Frontispiece and title page of The Apollo, or Harmonist in Miniature … Vol. 3 (London: T. Williams, c. 1820) Shelfmark: Rw.112.48

This arrangement of ‘The silver swan’, essentially the same as Playford’s, is presented in a small format (18 cm high), which suggests that each member of the catch club would have had his own copy.

Pages 198-199 of The Apollo, or Harmonist in Miniature … Vol. 3 (London: T. Williams, c. 1820) Shelfmark: Rw.112.48

The Rowe Library’s MS 111 is a manuscript dating from 1834-5 in the hand of Thomas Oliphant (1799-1873), best remembered today for writing the lyrics of ‘Deck the hall with boughs of holly’. Oliphant had recently been elected Honorary Secretary of The Madrigal Society (still going today, and now admitting women), and the book may have been intended as his neat conductor’s copy of the 83 motets, madrigals and glees it contains, of which no. 32 is ‘The silver swan’.

Pages 102-103 of Rowe Music Library, MS 111

***

Naturally it is Gibbons’ sacred music that is heard most in King’s College Chapel, in the form of hymns and anthems. Gibbons’ reputation as a composer of hymn tunes rests on his contributions to George Wither’s 1623 publication The Hymnes and Songs of the Church, for which he wrote 17 original tunes still known today by the ‘Song’ numbers accorded them in this volume. A patent of King James I ordained that the book should be bound with all copies of the metrical Psalms sold, which may account for the early adoption of Gibbons’ tunes by church choirs.

Title page of G[eorge] W[ither], The Hymnes and Songs of the Church … (London: Printed by the Asignes of George Wither, 1623) Shelfmark: Keynes.C.5.17

‘Song 1’, which in this book accompanies Wither’s text ‘Now shall the praises of the Lord be sung’, is today more commonly sung to ‘O Thou who at the Eucharist did pray’ or ‘Eternal ruler of the ceaseless round’.

Opening of ‘Song 1’ from G[eorge] W[ither], The Hymnes and Songs of the Church … (London: Printed by the Asignes of George Wither, 1623) Shelfmark: Keynes.C.5.17

***

The Rowe Library’s MS 106 is an eighteenth-century manuscript containing anthems and services copied in several hands. A note on the flyleaf observes:

This Collection hath been carefully revis’d and corrected by an eminent Master of Musick, having had it under his care two years for that purpose. What he says of it is, ‘From the Beginning to the end of the Burial Service, page 40, is exceeding indifferent Musick, and not worth the trouble of copying. However, I have corrected several particulars, which were Copyists faults, but many more have been oblig’d to leave as incorrigible.’ J.W. 1758

A pencil addition notes:

The above snarling remark is by Dr John Worgan. J. Bartleman, 1817

Note on flyleaf of Rowe Music Library, MS 106

The one Gibbons work present in this volume is his six-voice anthem ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, at the head of which is written a quotation from Sir John Hawkins’ A General History of the Science and Practice of Music of 1776 describing it as ‘one of the most perfect Models for Composition in the Church-Style of any now existing’.

Page 162 of of Rowe Music Library, MS 106

‘Hosanna to the Son of David’ is one of several Gibbons anthems anthologised in the second volume of Cathedral Music, edited by William Boyce (1711-1779), Master of the King’s Musick, and published in 1768 after a long gestation.

Page 41 of William Boyce (ed.), Cathedral Music … Volume the Second (London: Printed for the Editor, 1768) Shelfmark: Rw.115.12

Doubtless partly due to the royal imprimatur, this volume was a swanky undertaking all round, bearing a title page boasting of ‘the most valuable and useful compositions … of the last two hundred years’, a dedication to King George III involving every typeface under the sun, and even an anthem ostensibly composed by George’s predecessor Henry VIII (‘O Lord, the maker of all things’, now usually attributed to William Mundy).

Title page and dedication from William Boyce (ed.), Cathedral Music … Volume the Second (London: Printed for the Editor, 1768) Shelfmark: Rw.115.12

The volume’s subscribers included not only the Provost and Fellows of King’s College, Cambridge (of course), but also such luminaries as:

The Rev. Mr. Heneage Dering, Chaplain to the Earl of Winchelsea.
The late Rev. Mr. Phocion Henley.
Bybie Lake, Esq.
Gervas Scrope, Esq. of Cockerington, in the County of Lincoln.
Messrs. Sharp, of Mincing-Lane, London. Two Sets.
The King.

Blank spaces at the end of anthems are filled with illustrations: usually flourishes and curlicues, but occasionally faces or, at the end of William Byrd’s ‘Bow thine ear, O Lord’, a complementary bird. Note also the snazzy manicules (pointy fingers) in the score to help the organist find his line. No such help for the choir, though the size of the book (42 cm high) suggests it may have been a publication meant primarily for the use of a choirmaster, from which choir parts could be copied in manuscript.

Various devices from William Boyce (ed.), Cathedral Music … Volume the Second (London: Printed for the Editor, 1768) Shelfmark: Rw.115.12

‘Hosanna to the Son of David’ also appears, albeit in short score, in the work known unpromisingly as ‘Crotch’s Specimens’, or more fully as Specimens of Various Styles of Music Referred to in a Course of Lectures Read at Oxford & London and Adapted to Keyed Instruments by Wm. Crotch, Mus.D., Professor of Music in the University of Oxford. The Specimens was a major work of scholarship, ‘encyclopaedic in scope and surprisingly forward-looking in its aim to combine academic example with practical purpose’, in the words of Grove. In a preface to this revised edition, Crotch writes:

The study of Orlando Gibbon’s [sic] works cannot be too strongly recommended. For choice of subjects, for skill in the management of them, and for the flow of melody in all the parts, this great master was inferior to none of his cotemporaries.

Opening of No. 21 from William Crotch, Specimens of Various Styles of Music … Vol. 2 (London: Printed for the Author … c. 1821) Shelfmark: Rw.54.14

It’s no surprise that Gibbons’ music has been an attractive proposition to Kingsmen looking to produce performing editions over the years. Twentieth-century editions of choral works by Gibbons held by the Rowe Library include those prepared by David Willcocks (KC 1939), John Whitworth (KC 1946), Philip Brett (KC 1955) and John Morehen (KC 1964).

***

Finally, a pair of mid-seventeenth-century music manuscripts given to the college by John Maynard Keynes. MSS 112 and 113 are two partbooks for viols of fantasias and dances primarily by John Coprario, but also containing works by John Jenkins, William White and others.

The works included by Gibbons are six fantasias for two treble viols, which are not preserved in manuscript elsewhere. These manuscripts were the property of John Browne (1608-91), Clerk of the Parliaments, and the Gibbons fantasias here are in Browne’s own hand.

No. 13 in Rowe Music Library, MSS 112 and 113

These fantasias have been published in many editions: they appear in the Musica Britannica volume of Gibbons’ Consort Music, and if you fancy playing them yourself you can browse several public-domain versions here.

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Tagged Anthems, Choral music, GB, George Wither, Hosanna to the Son of David, John Browne, John Maynard Keynes, John Playford, John Worgan, King's College Chapel, King's College Choir, Madrigals, Manuscripts, Motets, Music, Orlando Gibbons, The silver swan, Thomas Oliphant, William Boyce, William Byrd, William Crotch, William Hawes

Victorian railway excursions

Posted on November 20, 2025 | Leave a comment

In this second blog post marking 200 years of the modern railway, we focus mainly upon its arrival and early years in the Lake District, with a few other choice items from our collections making an appearance towards the end.

The arrival of the railway in the Lake District in the late 1840s markedly increased accessibility to a landscape that had been growing in popularity with tourists since the late eighteenth century. Here, just as in Cambridge, the guidebooks quickly adapted to reflect the new realities of travel.

Likely one of the earliest railway maps of the region is the Collins’ Railway Map of Westmoreland, a small folded map mounted on linen, which would have made it durable and easily portable for use by travellers.

Cover of map. Has a bright orange background

Cover of Collins’ Railway Map of Westmoreland, London, [circa 1847]. Classmark: Bicknell.233

The map is undated, but examination of the railway lines that are indicated on it in black suggests a publication date of around 1847, since it depicts the railway line extending to Lake Windermere which opened in 1847, but not the line to Coniston which arrived in the following year.

Map from Collins’ Railway Map of Westmoreland

Another nice map can be found in a tiny pamphlet guide from 1848, which this time has rail lines marked in red.

Title page of The Lakes, By Way of Fleetwood and Liverpool …, Manchester, Bradshaw and Blacklock, 1848. Classmark: Bicknell 243

Map from The Lakes, By Way of Fleetwood and Liverpool …

This guide includes timetables for steam ships and railways leading to the Lakes, alongside information about coaches to and from Keswick, which was not yet served by a rail line.

Railway timetables on page 03 of The Lakes …

Coach and steamer information, on page 04 of The Lakes …

Steamer information on page 05 of The Lakes …

A slightly later guide focuses on areas made more accessible by the Whitehaven and Furness Railway, which opened in 1850. Note the sweet little title page vignette depicting a steam engine:

Ttile page, featuring a small illustration of a steam engine

Title page of: A Handbook of the Whitehaven and Furness Railway by John Linton, London, 1852. Classmark: Bicknell.107

The guide states its purpose clearly (if a little long-windedly) in the introduction:

Our object is merely to supply what, in consequence of the changes recently effected by railway travelling in the approaches to this district, has become a desideratum; – to point out the routes by which the greatly increased number of tourists and others … may arrive at various interesting points of the district; – and to give brief descriptions of several places, all within an easy distance of the railway we have taken as our starting point, which have hitherto, owing to the difficulty of approaching them, been much less frequented …

One such place is the vale of St. Bees, which is described as if viewed from a moving train. The guidebook goes into raptures about its charms:

After emerging from the cutting, we are again at liberty to enjoy the beauties spread so abundantly on either hand, and it may with truth be said, that a more pleasant and enlivening scene is very rarely met with than that presented to the traveller through the vale of St. Bees. It is a scene of quiet and repose, and yet of the highest cultivation, combining the varied charms of dale and upland, grove and meadow, stately mansion and thriving farm.

If you look closely at the centre of the accompanying engraving (below), you can see a train travelling along the track, trailing steam behind it.

Black and white engraving of a valley with a church and small hamlet, and a train track running through the centre. A train is coming along the track

Plate facing page 24 of A Handbook of the Whitehaven and Furness Railway

Rail access played an important part in the viability of many business ventures in the Victorian age. When the historic Great Exhibition in London’s Hyde Park, the world’s first international trade fair, closed its doors in October 1851, the future of the exhibition hall, the magnificent Crystal Palace, was initially uncertain. However, the designer Sir Joseph Paxton soon orchestrated the raising of enough private funds to purchase the building and have it re-erected in an adapted and enlarged form on a hilltop in Sydenham, in the south east of the city. An elaborate park was constructed around it and the site was opened to the general public in 1854 as a place for relatively cheap entertainment and recreation for the masses. Attractions included concerts, exhibitions, pantomimes, circuses and the delights of the building itself and the surrounding landscaped gardens. Vital to the success of the scheme was the construction, by the London, Brighton and South-Coast Railway Company, of a dedicated railway station for the site, which opened shortly after the park itself. Close co-operation with the railway was expedited by the fact that the chair of the railway company, Samuel Laing, was also chair of the new Crystal Palace Company. It also made commercial sense for the railway, since any big attraction would boost the growth of rail travel.

The illustration below comes from a little guidebook to the palace and park, published in its inaugural year. Our copy is part of the Thackeray Collection.

Black and white illustration showing the Crystal Palace building in parkland. It looks like a huge greenhouse.

Frontispiece from Guide to the Crystal Palace and Park by Samuel Phillips, London, 1854. Classmark: Thackeray.VIII.11.24

Detailed information on accessing the park by rail is provided inside the guide, revealing that the service ran at least every quarter of an hour and more frequently at busy times of day. Return tickets, which included admission to the Palace, were one shilling and sixpence for third class travel, rising to two shillings and sixpence for first class.

Cover of the guide. The title is depicted within an illustration of a large ornate archway

Front cover of Guide to the Crystal Palace and Park

Travel information on the back of the half-title page of Guide to the Crystal Palace and Park

Incidentally, this guide includes an advertisement by the South Eastern Railway for what they refer to as: “tidal trains”, which offered a streamlined service between London and Paris. Passengers could board an express train to Folkestone, embark upon a waiting steamer ship and be met after the channel crossing by a direct train for Paris. Luggage would be managed from start to finish by the rail company. The same arrangements applied for a trip in the other direction. Not bad for the early decades of rail travel!

Page 47 of the Advertiser section of Guide to the Crystal Palace and Park

The final destination on our whistlestop tour of railway-themed material is our Rylands Collection of children’s books. An illustration from the first edition of Through the Looking Glass depicts Alice in a train carriage with some rather odd travelling companions.

Illustration within the text of Alice in a railway carriage with a goat and a man with a paper hat. There is a guard peering at her through binoculars

Illustration by John Tenniel from page 50 of Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll, London, 1872. Classmark: Rylands.C.CAR.Thr.1872

We also hold a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, which includes this wonderfully evocative poem about a train journey.

The text of the poem, illustrated with a railway carriage

Page 68 of A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, London, 1896. Classmark: Ryland’s.C.STE.Chi.1896

The second page of the poem, with a small illustration of a retreating train

Page 69 of A Child’s Garden of Verses

We hope you’ve enjoyed this look at the early days of rail travel as reflected in our collections and that you enjoy any and all excursions you make this autumn and winter, whether by train or by any other means!

References and further reading:

Railway 200 [accessed September 2025]

Lee Jackson, Palaces of pleasure: how the Victorians invented mass entertainment, New Haven, 2021

The Crystal Palace Foundation [accessed September 2025]

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Tagged AC, Crystal Palace, Guidebooks, John Tenniel, Lake District, Lewis Carroll, Poetry, Railways, Rare Books, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rylands Collection, Samuel Laing, Sir Joseph Paxton, Thackeray Collection, Timetables, Trains

The railway arrives in Cambridge!

Posted on November 13, 2025 | Leave a comment

This year marks both 200 years of the modern railway and the 180th anniversary of the opening of Cambridge Station on 29 July 1845. These anniversaries prompted us to search out and share some railway-related material from our various special collections. Enough material was found for two blog posts, so this first will begin close to home with Cambridge, whilst a second subsequent post will range further afield.

We happen to hold both a Cambridge guidebook published in 1845 and an edition of Bradshaw’s Railway Companion from the same year, both of which anticipate the imminent arrival of the station.

Titlepage of Bradshaw's railway companion from June 1845

Title page of Bradshaw’s Railway Companion, London, 1845. Classmark: N.26.33

Bradshaw’s guides were the first railway timetables ever to be published and were hugely popular in the Victorian era. They are frequently referenced in the literature of the day, including in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories of Sherlock Holmes. Our copy dates from June 1845, when the closest station to Cambridge was Bishop’s Stortford, but the timetable below is already labelled as: “Eastern Counties – Cambridge Line”.

A detailed timetable for the Eastern Counties Cambridge line, in dense, small type.

Timetable from Bradshaw’s Railway Companion

The Cambridge Guide published the same year has a map which already includes directions to the station, although the travel information provided at the rear of the guide still focuses on describing the numerous stagecoach routes between Cambridge and London. Many of these coaches travelled via the station at Bishop’s Stortford, presumably in order to provide onward travel to Cambridge for rail passengers alighting there.

Title page of The Cambridge Guide, Cambridge, 1845. Classmark: NW CAM 3ML Cam

Part of the folded, black and white city map from The Cambridge Guide

Section of the folded city map from The Cambridge Guide. The road in the bottom right-hand corner is labelled as leading to the station

Description of coach routes between London and Cambridge

Coach information from page 268 of The Cambridge Guide

In the course of describing the wider region, this guide explains that:

A rail-road is now in rapid progress from London by Cambridge, and extending by Brandon to Norwich; a branch is also contemplated from Ely to Peterborough, and so to the north of England.

Bradshaw’s Railway Companion also provides an interesting insight into the rules of the early railway. These include the very modern sounding prohibition: “Smoking not allowed at the Stations, nor in any of the carriages”. This rule was in force across much of the rail network until Parliament passed a law in 1868 mandating that every train must have a smoking compartment.

List of rules for travelling on the railway

General instructions for railway travellers from Bradshaw’s Railway Companion

Once Cambridge station was open it soon became the natural starting point for many descriptive tours of the city, on the justified assumption that the majority of tourists would now choose to arrive by rail. The first paragraph of The Pictorial Guide to Cambridge, which adopts a very informal, discursive tone, states this clearly, and the author even disparages other forms of transport:

The majority of visitors reach Cambridge by means of the Eastern Counties Railway. Some, however, arrive by the old-fashioned mode of coaching, or by omnibuses … Those who arrive by the latter mentioned methods we will suppose to have refreshed themselves both inwardly and outwardly, to have obliterated all disagreeable reminiscences of their semi-barbarous mode of transit …

Introduction to The Pictorial Guide to Cambridge, Cambridge, [1853]. Classmark: NW CAM 3ML Pic

The Pictorial Guide goes on to hymn the glories of the new station and the convenience of rail travel:

… here we are standing on the pavement of the Cambridge station. What a surprise! I had no idea of such a length of building, all covered over, and comfortable; it cannot be much less than four hundred feet. This really is one of the best stations I have seen for many a day. But, how is it that the stream of passengers are dividing? Oh, I see, one half are taking themselves off to that handsome refreshment room, and the other half are passing through the building to trudge on foot into the town, or to indulge themselves with a cheap ride to the same place.

You see the advantage of travelling by rail; whilst we breakfasted at home, and have come all this distance as fresh and clean as when we started, there are those less fortunate folks who left their homes by day-break this morning and arrived an hour ago, have hardly had time to make their first meal, and cannot possibly turn out in half such good trim as ourselves.

Another guidebook, from 1863, explicitly markets itself to rail passengers by using the title The Railway Traveller’s Walk through Cambridge. The station was completely remodelled in that year and the guide remarks approvingly that: “It now forms one of the finest on the line”. Naturally, King’s College Chapel is depicted on the guide’s cover.

Decorative blue and red cover with an illustration of King's College Chapel in the centre

Cover of The Railway Traveller’s Walk through Cambridge, Cambridge, 1864. Classmark: NW CAM 3ML Rai

A later edition of this guidebook from the 1890s, reissued under a different title, contains a useful fold-out map of the city, in which important buildings and the station are highlighted in red.

Map from The Cambridge Visitor’s Guide, Cambridge, [1892]. Classmark: NW CAM 3ML Rai

By this final decade of the nineteenth century, writers were already reminiscing about the privations of the early days of the railways, as can be seen in the amusingly titled guidebook A Gossiping Stroll through the Streets of Cambridge. The author, S.P. Widnall, recalls using an umbrella to keep off the rain when travelling in a second class carriage that had no glass in its windows!

Title page of A Gossiping Stroll Through the Streets of Cambridge, by S.P. Widnall, Cambridge, 1892. Classmark: NW CAM 3ML Wid

Page 113 of A Gossiping Stroll Through the Streets of Cambridge

Widnall also discusses the effect of the railway upon coaching routes between London and Cambridge, stating that:

When the railway was finished to Cambridge the coaches were of course driven off the road. Some people professed to dislike railways and to prefer riding behind four horses; this led to the attempt to keep one coach on the road, and for a short time the Beehive continued its journeys, when it arrived for the last time it was draped in black, as mourning for its own decease.

Additionally, he touches upon the location of the station, which is (and remains today) some way out of the city centre, remarking that:

We believe the Station would have been nearer the town had it not been opposed by the University authorities on account of the supposed disturbance to University pursuits.

Some modern histories of the Cambridge railway dismiss this as a myth, asserting that the area to the west of the eventual site was already too heavily built up for a more centrally located station to be either economically or practically feasible. Nevertheless, the belief that the University was to blame persists to this very day, especially among those who trudge wearily to the station every evening after work!

References and further reading:

Reginald B. Fellows, London to Cambridge by Train 1845 – 1938, Cambridge, 1939

Cambridge: its Railways and Station [accessed September 2025]

Railway 200 [accessed September 2025]

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Tagged AC, Cambridge, Cambridge Railway Station, Guidebooks, Railways, Rare Books, Timetables, Trains

Moon Exploration: An Online Exhibition

Posted on August 29, 2025 | Leave a comment

We recently mounted a small exhibition on the subject of moon exploration, using items from our collections. In case you didn’t get to see it, here’s an online version of some of the exhibits.

First part of exhibition in display case

Second part of exhibition in display case

***

Johannes de Sacrobosco (born c.1195) was one of the most influential pre-Copernican astronomers, his treatise De sphaera mundi surviving in hundreds of manuscript copies dating from before the invention of the printing press. The earth is the centre of Sacrobosco’s model of the universe, with seven ‘planets’ (the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in order) arrayed outwards from it. This 1581 print edition of the treatise features two volvelles (wheel charts with moving parts), this one depicting a lunar eclipse.

Johannes de Sacrobosco, Sphaera
Cologne: Maternus Cholinus, 1581
Shelfmark: Bury.SAC.Sph.1581

Volvelle in action from
Johannes de Sacrobosco, Sphaera
Cologne: Maternus Cholinus, 1581
Shelfmark: Bury.SAC.Sph.1581

***

The Dutch astronomer Nicolaus Mulerius’ Tabulae frisicae lunae-solares quadruplices of 1611 is a collection of solar and lunar tables according to the calculations of Ptolemy (2nd century AD), King Alfonso X of Castile (1221-1284), Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) and Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) respectively. The four great astronomers are depicted on the illustrated title page, with their illustrious forefather Hipparchus (2nd century BC) at the head.

Nicolaus Mulerius, Tabulae frisicae lunae-solares quadruplices
Alkmaar: Jacob de Meester, 1611
Shelfmark: Keynes.Ec4.1.3/2

***

Galileo Galilei’s treatise of 1610 Sidereus nuncius (Sidereal Messenger) was the first published scientific work to draw on the newly invented telescope, called by the Latin word ‘perspicillum’ in Galileo’s text, and contains the astronomer’s observations on the moon and hundreds of formerly unknown stars he had been the first human to witness. Though initially controversial, Galileo found a supporter in Johannes Kepler, who verified Galileo’s findings independently and published his own confirmation of them a few months later. This first London edition of the work, published in 1653, includes Kepler’s Dioptrice, a treatise on the telescope, as an addendum. The illustrations of the lunar surface on these pages are Galileo’s own.

Galileo Galilei, Sidereus nuncius
London: James Flesher, 1653
Shelfmark: Keynes.Ec4.1.5/2

***

The natural philosopher John Wilkins (1614-1672) was a man of many parts: founder member of the Royal Society, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and finally Bishop of Chester. In The Discovery of a World in the Moone, first published in 1638, Wilkins put forward 13 propositions, drawing partly on the recent testimonies of Galileo and Kepler, in support of his theory ‘that the Moone may be a world’, including:

That the strangenesse of this opinion is no sufficient reason why it should be rejected, because other certaine truths have beene formerly esteemed ridiculous, and great absurdities entertained by common consent
That a plurality of worlds doth not contradict any principle of reason or faith
That the Moone hath not any light of her owne
That as their world is our Moone, so our world is their Moone

These two later editions contain an added fourteenth proposition, ‘That tis possible for some of our posteritie, to find out a conveyance to this other world; and if there be inhabitants there, to have commerce with them’, in which Wilkins suggests various possible methods of moon travel, including hitching a lift on a large winged animal (such as a ‘Ruck’, i.e. the roc, a mythological bird still believed in by many at the time) and inventing a flying chariot.

John Wilkins, The Mathematical and Philosophical Works of
the Right Reverend John Wilkins, Late Lord Bishop of Chester
London: John Nicholson; Andrew Bell; Benjamin Tooke; Ralph Smith, 1708
Shelfmark: Keynes.F.25.15

John Wilkins, A Discourse concerning a New World & Another Planet in 2 Bookes
London: John Maynard, 1640
Shelfmark: Keynes.D.5.69

***

The World in the Moon, a new opera staged in 1697 at the Dorset Garden Theatre in Whitefriars, by the Thames, featured songs by Daniel Purcell (brother of Henry) and Jeremiah Clarke. The opera’s book, by Elkanah Settle, was inspired by The Man in the Moone, a posthumously published narrative work by the Anglican bishop Francis Godwin (1562-1633) that purported to describe a ‘voyage of utopian discovery’ and is now considered one of the first works of science fiction. The stage directions in Settle’s text suggest the production must have been spectacular:

The Flat-Scene draws, and discovers Three grand Arches of Clouds extending to the Roof of the House, terminated with a Prospect of Cloud-work, all fill’d with the Figures of Fames and Cupids; a Circular part of the black Clouds rolls softly away, and gradually discovers a Silver Moon, near Fourteen Foot Diameter: After which, the Silver Moon wanes off by degrees, and discovers the World within, consisting of Four grand Circles of Clouds, illustrated with Cupids, &c. Twelve golden Chariots are seen riding in the Clouds, fill’d with Twelve Children, representing the Twelve Celestial Signs …

This song, ‘Smile then with a beam Devine’, is from the prologue of the opera, and contains a separate flute part at the foot of the page, common in music publications of the time, which could be used either to double the voice or to perform the song as an instrumental piece.

Songs in the New Opera, Call’d The World in the Moon
London: John Walsh; Joseph Hare, 1697
Shelfmark: Rw.85.1/9

***

Moon exploration has been a subject of science fiction for centuries, but properly took off (ha ha) in the 19th century with works such as Edgar Allan Poe’s short story ‘The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall’ (1835) and Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon (1865).

This radical political pamphlet of 1820, ‘The Man in the Moon’, by the satirist William Hone, employs the conceit of a man travelling to the nation of ‘Lunataria’:

I lately dream’d that, in a huge balloon,
All silk and gold, I journey’d to the Moon,
Where the same objects seem’d to meet my eyes
That I had lately left below the skies …

The resemblance of Lunataria to his home planet enables Hone to pass comment on the political events of the day, including on the left the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. The illustration on the right shows the Army, the Church, the Prince Regent and the devil linked in dance, in a parody of the Holy Alliance that arose in Europe following the fall of Napoleon. The illustrator is George Cruikshank, who was later a friend of Charles Dickens and provided illustrations to his early novels.

William Hone, Hone’s Select Popular Political Tracts
London: William Hone, [1820s]
Shelfmark: G.15.42

***

The most enduring creation of the illustrator Jan Pieńkowski (1936-2022, KC 1954) was the Meg and Mog series of books, which he wrote over a period of more than 40 years in collaboration first with the author Helen Nicoll and, after her death in 2012, with his partner David Walser. Meg on the Moon, an early entry in the series, tells the story of the witch Meg and her cat Mog going to the moon for Mog’s birthday treat.

Helen Nicoll & Jan Pieńkowski, Meg on the Moon
London: Heinemann, 1973
Shelfmark: Fiction K Pie/6

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Tagged Daniel Purcell, Discovery, Exploration, Galileo Galilei, GB, George Cruikshank, Helen Nicoll, Jan Pieńkowski, Jeremiah Clarke, Johannes de Sacrobosco, Johannes Kepler, King Alfonso X of Castile, Meg and Mog, Moon, Moon exploration, Moon travel, Nicolaus Copernicus, Nicolaus Mulerius, Opera, Ptolemy, The World in the Moon, Theatre, Tycho Brahe, William Hone

Dante: An Online Exhibition

Posted on March 13, 2025 | Leave a comment

In November 2024 King’s College had the opportunity to host the annual doctoral and postdoctoral research conference “Dante Futures 2024: New Voices in the UK and Ireland”. For this occasion, an exhibition of rare early printed and manuscript materials relating to Dante was mounted in the library. As this year marks the 760th anniversary of Dante’s birth in 1265, we thought it would be timely to share some of these treasures in an online exhibition.

While there is no extant autograph manuscript of the Divine Comedy, many other fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts survive. Below is a fifteenth-century breviary written in an Italian hand on vellum. This is a palimpsest, namely a manuscript on which a piece of writing has been superimposed, effacing the original text. In this case the erased text is from Dante’s Inferno, one of the three parts of the Divine Comedy, which was written on at least 31 leaves used in this breviary. The vellum was not thoroughly cleaned when it was prepared for reuse, meaning Dante’s text can be seen by the naked eye in a number of places, apparently written in a fourteenth-century hand. Each leaf of the original manuscript was folded in two, vertically, to create two leaves (one bifolium). At the top of the page we can see lines 39-40 of Inferno VIII (spelling modernised):

ch’i’ ti conosco, ancor sie lordo tutto.
Allora [di]stese al legno ambo le mani

[for thee I know, all filthy though thou be.
Then toward the boat he stretched out both his hands]

Breviary (imperfect), fifteenth century, partly written on a palimpsest vellum of Dante’s Inferno, fourteenth century (Salt MS 3)

The first printed edition of the Divine Comedy appeared in 1472. This incunabulum from 1481 (a book from the dawn of printing, printed before 1501) includes the commentary of Cristoforo Landino with additions by Marsilio Ficino, and is the third edition of the work to be published. The engravings are attributed to Baccio Baldini after designs by Sandro Botticelli, eighteen of which are included in this copy, mainly pasted in spaces left by the printer for that purpose. Here we see the descent of Virgil and Dante into Hell, as they move to the circle of the fraudulent in the Malebolge, thanks to the mythological monster Gerion, who flies them down on its back. With the face of a just man, the body of a snake, the tail of a scorpion, and hairy paws, Gerion is an allegory of falseness and fraud, precisely because its human face displays a benign humanity while the serpentine and monstrous body reveals its evil:

Comento di Christophoro Landino fiorentino sopra
La comedia di Danthe Alighieri poeta fiorentino
(Florence: Nicholo di Lorenzo della Magna, 1481; Bryant.XV.1.4)

Aldus Manutius (c. 1449/1452–1515), founder of the Aldine Press in Venice, was one of the most important printers of the period. He was an advocate of the smaller, more portable book format, which is arguably the precursor to the modern paperback. His work also helped to standardise the use of punctuation.

Along with Greek classics, the Aldine Press also printed Latin and Italian works. At the start of the sixteenth century the Bembo family—a noble Venetian family—hired the Aldine Press to produce accurate texts of both Dante and Petrarch using Bernardo Bembo’s personal manuscript collection. Pietro Bembo worked with Manutius from 1501 to 1502 to undertake this work, resulting in this, the fifth edition of the Divine Comedy to be published. Here we see the well-known dolphin-and-anchor printer’s device used by the Aldine Press, adopted in 1502 and used for the first time in this publication:

Dante Alighieri, Lo ‘nferno e ‘l Purgatorio e ‘l Paradiso di Dante Alaghieri
(Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1502; M.71.15)

The Aldine Press published a second edition of the Divine Comedy in 1515 in partnership with Aldus’s father-in-law, Andrea Torresani “nelle case d’Aldo et d’Andrea di Asola suo suocero” (at the house of Aldo and Andrea of Asola, his father-in-law), with whom he had a professional relationship from 1506 until his death in 1515. Although the volume appeared just after his death, Aldus is believed to have prepared this second edition himself. The publication was dedicated to Vittoria Colonna (1490–1547), one of the most famous women of the Italian Renaissance, friend to the most important cultural figures of the age including Bembo, Castiglione and Michelangelo, and a poet in her own right. Below is the opening of the second part of the Divine Comedy, the Purgatorio:

Dante col sito, et forma dell’inferno tratta dalla istessa descrittione del poeta
(Venice: nelle case d’Aldo et d’Andrea di Asola suo suocero, 1515; Keynes.Ec.7.3.22)

Alessandro Vellutello (born 1473) produced an influential commentary on the Divine Comedy, published in 1544, which is a real gem in the collection of rare books bequeathed to King’s College by novelist E.M. Forster (1879–1970). This copy belonged to Bishop John Jebb (1775–1833) who gifted it to Forster’s grandfather, Charles Forster (1789–1871). The printer left spaces for 87 woodcut illustrations which were first used in this edition and subsequently in a number of other editions throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were considered some of the most beautiful Renaissance illustrations of the poem after Botticelli’s.

This is a depiction of Giudecca (named after Judas Iscariot), the very last region of Hell. The sinners are punished by being completely frozen in the lake of Cocytus, some upright, some upside down, some with their bodies bent double. Enormous in size, we see the top half of Lucifer in the lake, gnawing on the bodies of sinners:

La comedia di Dante Aligieri con la nova espositione di Alessandro Vellutello
(Venice: per Francesco Marcolini, 1544; Forster.DAN.Com.1544)

Cosimo Bartoli (1503–72) was a humanist, philologist and writer. He promoted the Italian vernacular as a language which could be used in scientific discussion as much as Latin, and Dante was regarded as an example of the heights the vernacular could reach. A friend of the famed Renaissance painter and architect Giorgio Vasari (1511–74), he also worked for the Medicis for most of his life. His Ragionamenti accademici sopra alcuni luoghi difficili di Dante takes the form of fictitious discussions held between Bartoli and his Florentine friends, to provide explanations of some of the most difficult passages in the Divine Comedy. A collection of some of the lectures he had given in the Accademia fiorentina between 1541 and 1547, it was published in Venice in 1567:

Cosimo Bartoli, Ragionamenti accademici di Cosimo Bartoli gentil’huomo et
accademico fiorentino sopra alcuni luoghi difficili di Dante
(Venice: appresso Francesco de Franceschi Senese, 1567; Bury.BAR.Rag.1567)

JC/IJ

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Tagged Aldine Press, Aldus Manutius, Alessandro Vellutello, Andrea Torresani, Baccio Baldini, Charles Forster, Cosimo Bartoli, Cristoforo Landino, Dante Alighieri, E. M. Forster, IJ, Jacob Bryant Bequest, JC, John Jebb, Keynes Bequest, Manuscripts, Marsilio Ficino, Palimpsest, Pietro Bembo, Rare Books, Sandro Botticelli, The Divine Comedy, Vittoria Colonna

Sinuous, slithery snakes!

Posted on February 3, 2025 | Leave a comment

As the Lunar New Year of the Snake gets underway, we’ve discovered that our rare book stores are teeming with these sinuous reptiles! They slither through the pages of bibles, travel books, natural history books, works of heraldry and more! Where is St. Patrick when you need him! What follows is a only a selection of the many serpents that have recently emerged, hissing, into the light of day.

It seems appropriate to begin in China, with an illustration from a book on the country by Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680). Kircher was a German Jesuit and Renaissance polymath, who has been styled by some as the last man who knew everything. He had a long eventful life during which he published around forty books on a wide variety of topics, including ancient languages, music and geology. He was refused permission to become a missionary in China himself, but compiled the reports of many of his Jesuit colleagues to produce a magnificently illustrated volume on the country, encompassing zoology, geography, religion, botany, and much more besides. Below is one of the illustrations, featuring two large snakes, and a man in the corner apparently about to attack them with a stick!

Two large snakes slithering across the foreground, with trees and buildings in the background and a man with a hammer in the left hand corner

Illustration from page 81 of China Monumentis by Athanasius Kircher, Amsterdam, 1667 (Shelfmark: M.40.28)

From one of our early printed bibles comes this woodcut of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, with the wily serpent coiled around a tree in the background. If you look closely, it appears to have a Mohican haircut!

Black and white woodcut showing Adam, Eve and the serpent in Eden, and also being ejected from the garden by a winged figure

Woodcut from fol. 1 of Biblia cum concordantiis veteris et novi testamenti et sacrorum canonum, London, 1522 (Shelfmark: Keynes.E.12.15)

A later depiction of Eden is found in one of our copies of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, which has glorious illustrations by Francis Hayman (1708-1776), one of the founding members (and first librarian) of the Royal Academy. Here, in an engraving placed at the beginning of Book 10, the serpent lurks in the corner while Adam and Eve beg forgiveness from God for their disobedience in eating the apple.

Plate facing page 221 of volume 2 of The Poetical Works of John Milton, London, 1761 (Shelfmark; Thackeray.J.60.19)

An earlier engraving from Book 2 of the same poem shows Satan at the gates of Hell, which are guarded by a skeletal figure in a crown, a many-headed hell hound, and a woman representing sin, who has a serpent’s coils instead of legs. The text describes it thus:

The one seem’d Woman to the waste, and fair [line 650]
But ended foul in many a scaly fould
Voluminous and vast, a Serpent arm’d
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark’d

Plate facing page 83 of volume 1 of The Poetical Works of John Milton, London, 1761 (Shelfmark; Thackeray.J.60.18)

Next we turn to classical mythology and the story of Laocoön, a Trojan priest, who, along with his two sons, was attacked by venomous sea serpents. Reasons given for the attack vary, but Virgil’s version of the story goes that Laocoön was punished for attempting to alert Troy’s inhabitants to the grave threat posed by the Trojan Horse. From the Bury Collection, this seventeenth-century volume of sketches of classical statues includes a rendering of a Roman statue of Laocoön and his sons languishing in the coils of the serpents.

Laocoön and sons being attacked by serpents

Plate 1 from Segmenta nobilium signora et statuarum by François Perrier, Rome, 1638 (Shelfmark: Bury.PER.Seg.1638)

Another engraving in the same volume depicts a statue of a Vestal virgin, with a snake draped over her shoulder.

A statue of a vestal virgin with a snake on her shoulder

Plate 65 from Segmenta nobilium signora et statuarum, by François Perrier, Rome, 1638 (Shelfmark: Bury.PER.Seg.1638)

Snakes are among the many different creatures that appear in printers’ marks or devices, which were a kind of early logo or copyright mark commonly found on the title pages of early printed books. Below is the printer’s device of William Jaggard (1569-1623), which features the ancient Ouroboros symbol of a coiled snake devouring its own tail.

Printer’s device from the title page of The Two Most Unworthy and Notable Histories Which Remaine Unmained to Posterity, by Sallust, London, 1609 (Shelfmark: Keynes.D.2.14)

In heraldry, snakes have often been used on coats of arms as symbols of prudence and subtlety, as this seventeenth-century book, A Display of Heraldrie by John Guillim (1565-1621) explains. Guillim was an antiquarian and officer of arms at the College of Arms in London. His book references the Medusa myth, and notes a belief that if the hair of a woman is placed in manure it will transform into venomous snakes!

Explanation of the use of snakes in coats of arms

Illustration and text from page 153 of A Display of Heraldrie by John Guillim, London, 1611 (Shelfmark: H.17.39)

Later in the same book, an adder wrapped round a pillar is said to symbolize prudence combined with constancy.

Explanation of a snake wrapped round a pillar

Illustration and text from page 213 of A Display of Heraldrie by John Guillim, London, 1611 (Shelfmark: H.17.39)

Moving into early works of natural history, we find an abundance of snakes. The sixteenth-century drawings below come from a work published by the traveller and naturalist Pierre Belon (1517?-1564).

Text in French and black and white illustrations of two snakes

Illustrations of snakes from pages 209 and 210 of Les Obseruations de plusieurs singularitez & choses memorables by Pierre Belon, Paris, 1555 (shelfmark: T.16.20)

Next comes an entire work dedicated to snakes by French apothecary Moyse Charas (1619-1698). Charas, whose work was first published in French in 1669 under the title: Nouvelles expériences sur la vipère, was interested in the nature of snake venom and the ways in which extracts from snakes could allegedly be used to treat various ailments, such as smallpox and leprosy. Our library holds an English translation from 1670.

Title page of New Experiments upon Vipers by Moyse Charas, London, 1670 (Shelfmark: Thackeray.VIII.11.12)

In addition to the main title page, it contains a glorious added engraved title page, showing entwined serpents.

Two entwined snakes, with the title in the middle

Added engraved page of New Experiments upon Vipers by Moyse Charas, London, 1670 (Shelfmark: Thackeray.VIII.11.12)

The book includes detailed anatomical drawings on folded plates at the rear, one of which is shown below.

folded plate showing illustrations of a snake's skeleton and various heads and skulls

Folded anatomical plate from New Experiments Upon Vipers by Moyse Charas, London, 1670 (Shelfmark: Thackeray.VIII.11.12)

Another book focused entirely upon snakes is An Essay towards a Natural History of Serpents by Charles Owen (d.1746). Owen was a clergyman rather than a scientist, and his (often inaccurate) information is drawn from various biblical and mythological sources. The title page describes the contents in a fair amount of detail.

Title page of An Essay towards a Natural History of Serpents by Charles Owen, London, 1742 (Shelfmark: Bryant.M.12.5)

The illustrations in this volume are great fun, and very striking, as can be seen from the examples below. The snakes all have very expressive faces.

Plate 1 facing page 54 from An Essay towards a Natural History of Serpents by Charles Owen, London, 1742 (Shelfmark: Bryant.M.12.5)

Plate 3 facing page 78 from An Essay towards a Natural History of Serpents by Charles Owen, London, 1742 (Shelfmark: Bryant.M.12.5)

The plate above includes the depictions of a mythical creature: the Basilisk (here conflated with the Cockatrice), which the text describes as the Little King of Serpents, hence the crown upon its head.

Plate 6 facing page 142 from An Essay towards a Natural History of Serpents by Charles Owen, London, 1742 (Shelfmark: Bryant.M.12.5)

Other natural history books provide beautiful colour images. Below is an illustration of a double-headed snake from a work chiefly devoted to rare birds, by noted English ornithologist George Edwards (1694-1773). Edwards widened the scope of his work to include other unusual creatures, including reptiles, and described this snake thus:

I did not propose at first in this Natural History to exhibit monsters, but our present subject (considered even with a single head) may be looked on as a natural production of a species little or not at all known to us.

We now know that this phenomenon comes about in some snakes in a very similar way to the development of human conjoined twins, and is not a sign of a separate species.

Colour illustration of a double-headed snake

Double-headed snake. From the plate facing page 207 of volume 4 of A Natural History of Uncommon Birds by George Edwards, London, 1743-51 (Shelfmark Keynes.P.6.11/1)

Leafing through a multi-volume miscellany of the natural world by biologist George Shaw (1751-1813), we were spoilt for choice for great images to highlight. Shaw was a Fellow of the Royal Society and sometime keeper of the Natural History Department at the British Museum. He described many new species of amphibian and reptile. Below are just a few of the many vibrant illustrations of snakes contained within Shaw’s Miscellany.

Painted snake. Plate facing fol. C2 recto in volume 1 of The Naturalist’s Miscellany by George Shaw, London, 1790 (Shelfmark: Thackeray.IV.2.2)

Large bright green snake with white spotches

The canine boa. Plate 24, facing fol. L4 recto in part 1 of The Naturalist’s Miscellany by George Shaw, London, 1790 (Shelfmark: Thackeray.IV.2.2)

The spectacle snake. Plate 74, facing fol. 2K4 verso in part 2 of The Naturalist’s Miscellany by George Shaw, London, 1791 (Shelfmark: Thackeray.IV.2.2)

The Great Boa. Plate 51, facing fol. Z5 recto in part 2 of The Naturalist’s Miscellany by George Shaw, London, 1791 (Shelfmark: Thackeray.IV.2.2)

The Gilded Snake. Plate 209, facing fol. O8 recto in part 6 of The Naturalist’s Miscellany by George Shaw, London, 1795 (Shelfmark: Thackeray.IV.2.4)

Strange thin red and white snake with bristles.

The Serpentiform Nais. Plate 270, facing fol. E4 recto in part 8 of The Naturalist’s Miscellany by George Shaw, London, 1796 (Shelfmark: Thackeray.IV.2.5)

Finally, a little snake appears in a charming little German alphabet book from our Rylands Collection of children’s books. This tiny book, dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century, consists of three strips of paper stuck together and folded accordion-style. The German word for snake being “Natter”, the snake comes under the letter N in this sequence, alongside a Nashorn, or rhino, and a nightingale.

Illustrations representing different letters of the alphabet - a grid of four letters is shown. other animals shown include a lion, orangutan and an Ox

Section from Das ABC in Thieren, Neuruppin, circa late 19th century (Shelfmark: Rylands.C.ABC)

We hope you have enjoyed this survey of snakes within the pages of our rare book collections, and that you have a wonderful New Year!

References

Joscelyn Godwin, Athanasius Kircher: A Renaissance Man and the Quest for Lost Knowledge , London, 1979.

Paula Findlen (editor), Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything, New York, 2004.

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Tagged AC, Athanasius Kircher, Charles Owen, Chinese New Year, Eden, Francis Hayman, George Edwards, George Shaw, John Guillim, John Milton, Laocoön, Lunar New Year, Moyse Charas, natural history, Paradise Lost, Rare Books, Serpents, Snakes

Horticultural delights

Posted on October 15, 2024 | Leave a comment

The library holds a fascinating collection of books on horticulture given to us by Kingsman Richard Gorer (1913-1994), who was a scholar here in the 1930s. In later years Gorer himself wrote a considerable number of gardening books, and became a fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society.

The collection spans the 17th to the 20th centuries and includes some wonderful works, with equally glorious illustrations.

The oldest volume in the collection is The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. Prominent sixteenth-century English herbalist, John Gerard (c.1545-1612) published the first edition of this work in 1597. It was based almost entirely on the work of a Flemish botanist Rembert Doedens (1517-1585) with fanciful additions by Gerard. The work was then overhauled and expanded by Thomas Johnson (c.1595-1644), to produce a second edition in 1633, in which many of Gerard’s inaccuracies and fabrications were removed or corrected. The lavishly engraved title page of this second edition is pictured below, in a reprint dating from 1636. Gerard is shown in the bottom centre panel, holding a potato flower, the first image of this plant to appear in a work published in the Western world. Vases of exotic flowers and fruits appear either side of Gerard, and arrayed above him are figures from the ancient world associated with agriculture and plants, including, at the top left, Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture.

Engraved titlepage with mythical figures and plants

Title page of The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes by John Gerard and Thomas Johnson, London, 1636 (Classmark: Gorer.50)

The revised Herball still contains some fanciful notions, including a description of the “Goose tree” which was believed to generate barnacle crustaceans that then developed into live geese! This was a myth of long-standing, featuring in various forms in medieval bestiaries and numerous other works over the centuries. It is thought to have originated, before bird migration was known about, as a way to explain why barnacle geese were never seen nesting, and to have been prompted by some perceived similarities in colour and shape between the barnacle and the geese. Barnacle shells were often seen attached to driftwood, which was mistaken for fallen tree branches.

A goose beside a branch full of barnacles

Illustration of a branch from a Goose Barnacle tree, page 1587 in The Herball (Classmark: Gorer.50)

Another elaborate illustration is found on the added engraved title page of Theatrum botanicum by John Parkinson (1567-1650). The engraving is divided into the four quarters of the known world: Asia, Europe, the Americas and Africa. These are arranged clockwise from the top left. Each section depicts a woman riding an animal, or in the case of “civilised” Europe, sat in a horse-drawn carriage, and also shown are plants thought (often erroneously) to be native to each continent. Maize, for example, is depicted in the Asian quarter, since it was not yet known that it originated in the Americas. The European quarter has the most abundant selection of plants, highlighting the lack of in-depth knowledge of the other areas of the world. In the centre of the page are two figures: Adam, holding a spade, and Solomon, known for his wisdom.

Detailed engraving depicting the four corners of the known world

Title page of Theatrum botanicum by John Parkinson, London,1640 (Classmark: Gorer.51)

Moving on to the latter part of the seventeenth century, we have a copy of The History of the Propagation & Improvement of Vegetables by clergyman and natural historian Robert Sharrock (1630-1684). Sharrock was a fellow of New College, Oxford and an associate of noted chemist Robert Boyle (1627-1691). He was also involved with the University’s Physick Garden, where he carried out some of his experiments with grafting.

Title page of The History of the Propagation & Improvement of Vegetables by Robert Sharrock, Oxford, 1660 (Classmark: Gorer.30)

The work’s only illustration, shown below, depicts the many different ways to carry out propagation via grafting.

Illustration of a stem with various methods of grafting shown

Page 60 and accompanying illustration from The History of the Propagation & Improvement of Vegetables

Next we have the third edition of Synopsis Methodica stirpium britannicarum by the famous naturalist John Ray (1627-1705). Originally published in 1690, this work became a hugely popular guide for amateur and professional botanists alike throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. It is now of great historical value, as it records many plants which were much reduced or lost entirely as a result of land enclosures, the expansion of cities and the Industrial Revolution.

Title page of Synopsis Methodica stirpium britannicarum by John Ray, London, 1724 (Classmark: Gorer.29)

Illustration facing page 477 from Synopsis Methodica stirpium britannicarum

Transitioning into the eighteenth century, the collection contains a 1754 edition of The Gardener’s Dictionary by botanist Philip Miller (1691-1771). Originally published in 1731, this work was based on Miller’s experience with plants from around the globe gained through his role as head gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden. It is notable for its breadth of coverage and assured tone, which meant it sold well enough to be reissued in many subsequent editions across the century. The lavish engraved frontispiece depicts Britannia sitting in an orangery being gifted a cornucopia, or horn of plenty, by allegories of industry, science and nature.

Title page from volume 1 of The Gardeners Dictionary by Philip Miller, London, 1754 (Classmark: Gorer.27/1)

Frontispiece from volume 1 of The Gardeners Dictionary by Philip Miller, London, 1754 (Classmark: Gorer.27/1)

Arriving in the Victorian era, when gardening became a much more widespread pastime, we find books and periodicals containing an abundance of advice for amateur gardeners, often accompanied by vibrant colour illustrations.

One such periodical, The Annals of Horticulture (1846-1850), first appeared monthly, and was then reissued in five annual collected volumes, of which the Gorer collection contains two. The illustrated title pages and frontispieces are very attractive.

Attractive colour frontispiece showing many different flowers and an illustrated titlepage

Frontispiece and engraved title page from The Annals of Horticulture, London, 1849 (Classmark: Gorer.32/1)

The subject matter of this periodical even extends to designs for summer houses, as illustrated below. These examples wouldn’t be out of place in a modern garden.

Garden architecture from page 449 of the 1849 edition of The Annals of Horticulture

One of the most popular writers of the period was Shirley Hibberd (1825-1890), who tailored his advice particularly towards the requirements of those with urban and town gardens, rather than grand, sprawling country estates. His first gardening book, The Town Garden: A Manual (1855) was devoted to this topic. It also provided those new to gardening with tips on how to get going. In his writings, Hibberd drew upon his own experiences of hobby gardening, initially in a small garden in North London, and subsequently in various suburban settings. He was also a keen early environmentalist, and a strong opponent of cruelty towards animals and birds.

Title page of The Town Garden: A Manual by Shirley Hibberd, London, 1855 (Classmark: Gorer.10)

Hibberd went on to edit numerous gardening magazines and produce many more successful gardening books, often issued with attractive floral covers:

Cover of The Amateur’s Flower Garden by Shirley Hibberd, London, 1871 (Classmark: Gorer.11)

Cover of The Amateur’s Rose Book by Shirley Hibberd, London, 1885 (Classmark: Gorer.12)

Cover of Familiar Garden Flowers by Shirley Hibberd, London, 1879-1885 (Classmark: Gorer.14/1)

Familiar Garden Flowers, produced in five volumes between 1879 and 1887, contains particularly delightful colour illustrations, a selection of which provide a fitting way to conclude this post on gardening books through the ages. We hope you have gained some inspiration for your own gardens or flower boxes!