July 16 was the anniversary of the birth of the art historian and Booker Prize winning novelist Anita Brookner, who died in March this year at the age of 87. Anita Brookner joined the Library in August 1968 giving her occupation on her joining form as “Art Historian.” She was 40 and a highly respected…
On 13 March it will be 107 years since the birth of the designer, engraver and master letter cutter Reynolds Stone (1909-1979) who is responsible for one of the Library’s most distinctive pieces of branding: the London Library book label. Stone’s distinctive label (image 1) has graced all the books acquired by the Library since…
74 years ago, on the 22 February 1942 Stefan Zweig, a celebrated Austrian writer and inspiration behind Wes Anderson’s 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel, committed suicide. He had been a member of The London Library joining in 1936 after fleeing his home in Salzburg. He gave his occupation on his joining form as “Author” and…
Little Red Books have been in the news recently with Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell raising eyebrows in the House of Commons by reading passages from Chairman Mao during the Autumn Statement. Radio 4’s Broadcasting House decided to find out more about the appeal of miniature books and presenter Paddy O’Connell came into The London Library…
By Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros, Head of Bibliographic Services at The London Library. Adapted from an article originally written for History Today. Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia was one of the less fortunate and most cantankerous polymaths of the Italian Renaissance. He was born in 1500 in Brescia, the son of a humble courier who was murdered when Niccolò…
Is love a gentle emotion that inspires sonnets, an all-consuming passion that drives people to desperate actions, an enigma that defies explanation, an absurdity that deserves to be ridiculed or a dangerous affliction that should come with a health warning? By Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros, Head of Bibliographic Services at The London Library, adapted from an article…
2. The Library is the host venue for this year’s Rossica Translation Prize 2014, an annual award which promotes the best of Russian literary culture in the English-speaking world, rewarding and encouraging the translation of a broad range of authors, genres and periods. The judges have chosen from a shortlist of Russian literary writing,…
The latest blog installment in our foreign languages series focuses on the riches of our French Literature collection. By Anna Vlasova with assistance from Anna Gonzalez-Fort. The French collections of the London Library have developed steadily from the Library’s foundation in 1841. At present the French literature collection is one of the largest foreign…
Claudia Ricci offers an update from the Bibliographic Services team, demonstrating how geopolitics have a direct bearing on where books in our collections are shelved… “Kingdoms rise and fall, nations come and go”, according to the Confucian precept, but in the stacks of The London Library, and particularly in the History section, shelfmarks have traditionally…
In the latest update from her adventures in the Library’s archives, our Head of Reader Services finds some wonderful Pre-Raphaelite connections. The painter Edward Burne-Jones and the writer, artist and designer William Morris were in the vanguard of the second generation Pre-Raphaelites who clustered round Rossetti. I am currently researching the Pre-Raphaelite network of friends…