Category: Arts & Humanities, English
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HARRISON BROWN The Sian Incident and Beyond "Harrison Brown: The Sian Incident and Beyond" is a chronicle of author and journalist Harrison Brown's voyage to China between 1936 and 1937, and the events that unfolded during that time in what has become known as 'The Sian Incident'. The events are presented largely through the eyes of Harrison Brown himself - 'H.B.' as his friends called him - through the journals that he kept during his trip, the photographs he took, and the articles and manuscript that he wrote during and after his journey. You may browse through a collection of 137 of H.B's photos, his 22-chapter manuscript "On the Trail of a Freelance", his original hand-written journal pages, and much more.
The Simon Fraser University Library Editorial Cartoons Collection contains over 9300 original drawings published in Canadian newspapers between 1952 and the present.
You can use the quick search form at the top of the page, or click on the advanced search if you want to limit your searches by date and or by cartoonist. The quick search finds words in the following fields: publication information, cartoonist's name, cartoon text, subjects, and display notes.
Images in the database are made available under specific terms of use.
Most records in the database indicate the "SFU MsC Code" for the cartoon; this is the call number to request the drawing in the Library's Special Collections.
This was the background leading to the founding in 1965 of the Vancouver based Alcuin Society. The chief aims of the Society are “to further the interests of book collectors and to promote a wider appreciation of fine books…”. To that end the Society provides a wide range of book oriented activities, including since 1981 an annual Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada. The Society continues to flourish. The Society’s From Hand to Hand: A Gathering of the Book Arts in British Columbia… (1986) is a very useful introductory although dated directory of British Columbia fine printing and book arts. The 1970s were important to the British Columbia fine private press/typography scene.
The aim of the VICTORIAN WOMEN WRITERS' LETTERS PROJECT is to make available through electronic publication the correspondences of early to mid-Victorian British women writers in a form that attempts to capture the multiplexity of epistolary communication.
Phoebe Anna Traquair's exquisite illustrated manuscript of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ is one of the National Library of Scotland's treasures.
Made in Edinburgh between 1892 and 1897, it is among the finest examples of the work of Scotland's leading artist of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Edinburgh-born John Thomson (1837-1921) was one of the great names of early photography. His photographic legacy is one of astonishing quality and depth.
Thomson's images of China and South-East Asia brought the land, culture, and people of the Far East alive for the 'armchair travellers' of Victorian Britain.
He was one of the pioneers of photojournalism, using his camera to record life on London's streets in the 1870s. As a society photographer he also captured the rich and famous in the years before the First World War.
These pages present a brief introduction to Thomson's work, with examples drawn from the National Library of Scotland's collections.
The Kirk Papers is a collection of photographs and papers belonging to East Africa pioneer Sir John Kirk. It was acquired for the National Library of Scotland in 1998/1999 with the help of a grant of £55,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Though not as well-known as his friend and fellow-explorer David Livingstone, Kirk was a trail-blazer of empire in East Africa and a man of eminence in his day. Born in Barry, Angus, in 1832, Kirk qualified in medicine at Edinburgh University and then volunteered for medical service in the Crimea. An accomplished botanist, zoologist and diplomat, he was also a talented photographer. This is evident from the collection of over 250 photographs, many of them stunning.
The National Library of Scotland has the pre-eminent collection of decorative bookbindings produced in Scotland during the last five centuries. Some were transferred to the new National Library in 1925 as part of the collections of the Advocates Library, but many have been purchased since in an attempt to document the development of binding styles in Scotland. Below are displayed a representative sample of bindings from the 18th century, together with a number of decorative endpapers from these books.
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh’s New Town in 1850. He died 44 years later on a small Samoan island in the Pacific.
During his short life he travelled the world, defied convention, and made himself one of the most famous writers of the 19th century.
Here we tell Stevenson's story, illustrated with material held in the National Library of Scotland's collections.
You can also see the entire first English edition of Kidnapped – one of his most famous tales – published in 1886.
This site features a selection of leading Scottish writers, photographed in a 30-year period by Edinburgh publisher and photographer Gordon Wright. It is based on an exhibition held at the National Library of Scotland in 2001.
Gordon Wright's photographs featured in 'The Write Stuff' are in copyright. For permission to use them, and to order print or digital copies, please email Gordon Wright.
Texts by Jennie Renton, editor of 'The Scottish Book Collector'.
Muriel Spark was identified as a promising and creative writer when her name was still Muriel Camberg and she was still at school. Some of her poems had already been published by the time she won her first poetry prize, at the age of 12.
Dame Muriel – poet, writer of fiction and literary criticism, and biographer – went on to win most of the literary awards going, was never out of print, and was at the top of her profession, internationally, for more than half a century.
Best-known as the author of 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie', Muriel decided in the 1940s to keep a record of her professional and personal activities, beginning a personal archive that is now one of the largest and most comprehensive held by the National Library of Scotland.
Welcome to the website where you can find out what was happening in Edinburgh's Theatre Royal at the start of the 19th century.
The Theatre Royal was extremely important in the revival of Scottish culture during this period, and is often associated with popular stage adaptations of novels by Sir Walter Scott. We have digitised a selection of over 240 playbills, which were used to advertise performances and events, using originals in the collection of the National Library of Scotland.
Search or browse the playbills to see who performed in a particular play or which musical events were scheduled for the same night. We provide a list of further reading and links to living theatres in Scotland today.
Robert Burns was born into a farming family at Alloway in Ayrshire in 1759. He died in Dumfries at the early age of 37. Yet in that short time he had taken the Scottish literary world by storm, and had secured a place for himself in history and in legend.
This site is based on material by or relating to 'Scotland's Bard' which is held by the National Library of Scotland (except where otherwise stated).
Special features are pages giving highlights of the Library's significant resources – whether original letters or poems (see Manuscripts page) or important books (see Books page).
The only known copies of nine of the earliest books printed in Scotland are the most precious items held by the National Library of Scotland in its role as custodian of the nation’s printed heritage.
Known as ‘The Chepman & Myllar Prints’, they were produced in or about 1508 on Scotland’s first printing press, established in Edinburgh (in what is now the Cowgate) by Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar. Chepman, an Edinburgh merchant, provided the money. Myllar, an Edinburgh bookseller who had previously been involved with printing in France, brought with him experience in the book trade.
In 1693 the first ever pictorial survey of Scotland was published by military engineer John Slezer.
'Theatrum Scotiae' is his volume of detailed engravings that shows us what important Scottish towns and buildings looked like over 300 years ago.
Search and browse images
More than 70 of Slezer's original engravings from the National Library of Scotland's collections have been digitised. You can search for them here by place name, and browse by place and subject.
There is text from Slezer's book with most of our zoom-and-pan images, and we give links to relevant online maps.
We can trace Scottish printing back to 4 April 1508.
On that date the earliest surviving dated book in Scotland was printed in Edinburgh.
Here you can read full texts of items printed on 33 of the first 38 printing presses set up in Scotland between 1508 and 1900. These have been digitised from the National Library of Scotland's collections.
They include that first dated printed book – see The Complaint of the Black Knight, printed by Chepman and Myllar.
You can also trace the geographical spread of printing in Scotland, from the first printing towns to the 'printing revolution' in the 19th century.
12 key Scottish plays
Over the last 40 years we have seen many notable Scottish plays on stage.
Scottish theatre has reflected the times and the nation. Scottish playwrights have included activists, thinkers, show-offs, entertainers, and a genius or two.
Major plays and playwrights
This website introduces 12 of the major plays and major playwrights of Scotland – but there are many more worth exploring.
Here we take a tour through the political days of the 1970s and 1980s and the outward-looking years of the 1990s. We come up to date with the new millennium that has brought us – at last – a national company and a world hit.
These two albums of the Edinburgh Calotype Club, the first photographic club in the world, are among the earliest photograph albums in the world ever assembled. They contain over 300 images by a group of pioneering Scottish photographers working in Edinburgh and St. Andrews.
The Murthly Hours is one of Scotland's great medieval treasures. Written and illuminated in Paris in the 1280s, it also contains full-page miniatures by English artists of the same period, and was one of the most richly decorated manuscripts in medieval Scotland. Medieval additions include probably the second oldest example of Gaelic written in Scotland.
The entire manuscript has been reproduced here. In the Folios section, you can browse page by page or select a folio from the complete list of titles.
Auchinleck has held a prominent place in discussions of the history and development of Middle English. Its texts provide important information about English dialects at an early stage (the 1330s) and dialect profiles are included in the Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English for all five Auchinleck scribes who copy literary texts (it is not possible to analyse the dialect of Scribe 4 as he copied only the Battle Abbey Roll, a list of names). These profiles locate the written language of Scribe 1 in Middlesex, Scribe 3 in London, Scribe 5 in Essex and Scribes 2 and 6 in areas close together on the Gloucestershire / Worcestershire border. Scribes 1 and 3 have received particular attention as they form a basis for M. L.
General Introduction The purpose of these brief introductory remarks is to tell you, first, what kind of information you can find on this website and, second, how you can retrieve this information. The core of the whole site is a scholarly database. This database contains all kinds of information about the illuminated medieval manuscripts of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and the Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum. You can get access to this 'electronic catalogue' in various ways. When choosing your way, your own expertise and wishes should guide you. If you do not routinely consult databases and your interest in medieval illumination is not a professional one, you may start with our guided tour.
