Visitors to Manchester have the rare opportunity to see the original marriage bed made for Henry VII (the first Tudor King) and Elizabeth of York, as well as an infamous forgery, this summer. This new exhibition, A Royal Tudor Bed and a…
Birds and bindings More than twenty years ago, in the dark and dusty underground reference stacks of Manchester Central Library, I first came across the two volumes of James Bolton’s illustrated book, Harmonia Ruralis. I was completely…
For as long as there have been libraries, there have been people willing to steal from them; and as a result, book-owners have always taken measures to prevent theft. From the ancient world into the medieval period, book curses were added…
On 29th May, Chetham’s Library hosted the second day of the Transnational Early Modern Book Conference. Organised by postgraduate researchers Seren Morgan-Roberts and Ellen Werner, the conference brought together more than thirty…
As we continue our journey through the lives of Chetham’s Librarians, one name stands out above all others: that of Thomas Jones, a man with a reasonable claim to the title of ‘Chetham’s greatest librarian’. Born in Margam, Glamorgan in…
Thyer was Chetham’s 9th librarian, its first layman and up to that point its longest serving incumbent; he held the post for over 30 years from 1732 to 1763. He was a Manchester man, the son of a silk weaver, educated at Manchester Grammar…
Richard Johnson is said to have been Chetham’s very first librarian but his back story and relationship with Humphrey Chetham is better documented than his time in that post. His life spanned the first three quarters of the 17 th century;…
All good things must, as the saying goes, come to an end. This is sadly true of our recent exhibition, A Woman’s Write, which has been running since last summer; in that time, we’ve explored the stories of the remarkable women who made…
There have been no verses addressed to our eponymous founder this century, we believe, until now. Volunteer and friend of the Library Kath Rigby sets that right: Humphrey Chetham’s Dinner What was for dinner Humphrey? Surely not a mince…
We are delighted to announce that Julianne Simpson will be our new Librarian from May 2024, taking on responsibility for the strategic development and day-to-day management of the organisation. Chetham’s Library is an accredited museum in…
Over the last few months, we’ve shared several posts about the female authors featured in A Woman’s Write, whose works entered Chetham’s Library’s collections prior to 1852. Despite the challenges they faced, these women managed to break…
If you have been on a tour of Chetham’s Library before, you might have heard that the cabinet at the end of the library corridor used to contain a real human skeleton, rather than the books that now occupy it. To the modern mind, a…
Librarian Fergus Wilde has worked at Chetham’s Library for close to thirty years and in February he will begin his well-deserved retirement. Before he leaves to start this new adventure, we took the opportunity to ask Fergus about his role…
One of the most striking annotated books in the collection of Chetham’s Library is a copy of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, annotated by a yeoman farmer from the North of England (Radcliffe Collection 2.H…
A BLUESTOCKING INFLUENCER – LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU One of the most influential English women of the 18th century, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), lives on at Chetham’s library in the form of three collectors’ items: a volume of…
Recently, this blog has featured several posts about the literary women featured in Chetham’s Library’s current exhibition, A Woman’s Write. However, one figure not included in this exhibition is an individual who is arguably Manchester’s…
Recently we were cleaning the gallery space in the Library and came across a painting of a heraldic achievement, generally knowns as a coat of arms. It bears the date 1662, but doesn’t give the viewer the impression of being a genuinely…
Above: Matilda Betham, unknown artist, image taken from Wikimedia Comms. Mary Matilda Betham (known as Matilda to her friends and family) was a diarist, poet and author in the last years of the eighteenth century and the first half of the…
The top shelf of the last press in Chetham’s Library, press Z, is home to a copy of Gerard Legh’s Accedence of Armorie (shelfmark Z.1.64). Having accessed the book in this remote location, the enterprising librarian is rewarded with a…
Above: Portrait by Lady Mary Wroth, by John de Critz 1620. Just before International Women’s Day 2023, there emerged from the shelves of Chetham’s Radcliffe collection a rare copy of The Countesse of Montgomeries Urania, published in 1621.…
Visitors to the library have been asking the same question for some time “Are there any books written by women”. Whilst the answer has been yes, it has often been hard to provide a definite example as women’s contribution as authors or as…
Given our recent theme focusing on women in the library, the time seems right to tell, if only in brief, some of the remarkable stories of their lives and achievements. Our first choice lights on the talented and scholarly Lucy Hutchinson …
Thomas Gudlawe’s annotations in the Nuremberg Chronicle The Chetham’s Library copy of the Liber Chronicarum (“The Book of Chronicles”, more commonly known as the Nuremberg Chronicle and previously featured in our 101 Treasures series here)…
Public talk on the art of William Hogarth, 8 March 2023 William Hogarth’s paintings and prints are for many the very image of eighteenth-century England. His ‘Gin Lane’ and the parallel, ‘Beer Street’, are worthy of the over-used adjective…
Inspiration from the early textile industry Chetham’s Library owes its very existence to the popularity of fustian, a coarse cloth of which the warp was linen and the weft was cotton. It was from trade in this fabric that Humphrey Chetham …
In November 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie (Charles Edward Stuart) arrived in Manchester with 6,000 troops during manoeuvring of his army as part of the Jacobite rising of 1745. The uprising, still known as the Forty-five, was an attempt by…
Poetry in the Margins: A Marian Missal Annotated by Lawrence Langley We’re delighted to be able to publish a first post here by Ellen Werner, who has joined us to undertake her PhD under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Programme,…
We recently received a donation of books and archival material from the Blavatnik Honresfield Library through the kindness of the Friends of the National Libraries. The FNL successfully raised £15 million in only five months to purchase…
Inspired by the recent anniversary of the death of Louis XIV, we investigated our two editions of the Médailles sur les principaux événements du règne de Louis le Grand, avec des explications historiques, or ‘Medals for the main events of…
Out for photography this week was the Micrographia Nova of Johann Franz Griendel von Ach (1631-1687), a small quarto response to the ground-breaking Micrographia by Robert Hooke (1635-1703), one of our favourite illustrated scientific…