̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Anne Jarvis

Diaries of Captain Scott's widow secured by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

sjr81 — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 16:30:26 +0000

Kathleen Scott, the sculptor and widow of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, married journalist and politician Hilton Young, 1st Baron Kennet, in 1922. Her papers include diaries covering a period of over 35 years, records of her sculpture and exhibitions as well as other writings. These include a major series of significant letters from some of the most distinguished and powerful politicans, writers, artists and explorers of her generation.

Of particular importance are the papers and letters relating to her first husband Captain Robert Falcon Scott. Together with her diaries covering the period of Scott's last Antarctic expedition, the material is of the utmost interest for our understanding of the legendary explorer.

̽��ֱ��papers also reflect the fascinating careers, interests and connections of Lord and Lady Kennet and are of importance for the study of British military and political history, as well as of literary and cultural attitudes and concerns during the first half of the 20th century.

Edward Hilton Young was a British politician and writer. He embarked on a career in financial journalism, working for various papers including ̽��ֱ��Economist and the Morning Post prior to serving for the Royal Navy in World War One, where he was awarded a Distinguished Service Order and Distinguished Service Cross.

He entered Parliament in 1915 as a Liberal MP, becoming Financial Secretary to the Treasury in 1921. After the 1922 election, he became Chief Whip for Lloyd George's Liberal Party and in 1926 joined the Conservatives, serving as Minister for Export Credits and then as Minister of Health. In 1935, Hilton Young accepted a peerage as Lord Kennet of the Dene. ̽��ֱ��archive at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library includes his wartime diaries and logbooks and his political papers and correspondence.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Librarian Anne Jarvis said: “It’s a particular pleasure, as we celebrate our 600th Anniversary, to welcome this exceptional archive to the ̽��ֱ�� Library. Lord and Lady Kennet led fascinating lives and these papers will be of great interest to researchers.”

Also accepted were the papers of Wayland Hilton Young, 2nd Baron Kennet (1923-2009) which have been allocated to ̽��ֱ��Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College.

Wayland Young’s papers detail his political career in both the Labour and Social Democratic parties. ̽��ֱ��files include working drafts, fragments of memoirs, notes for speeches and articles, and substantial correspondence and papers for Europe Plus Thirty, the EEC project he chaired in 1974-1975 forecasting how Europe would look in 30 years.

Allen Packwood, Director of ̽��ֱ��Churchill Archives Centre, said: “ ̽��ֱ��Churchill Archives Centre holds the personal papers of figures from across the political spectrum, and is pleased to offer a home to Wayland Young, who was an independent thinker and a lifelong campaigner.”

̽��ֱ��acceptance of the collected material settled £402,500 of tax. ̽��ֱ��Acceptance in Lieu scheme is administered by the Arts Council. ̽��ֱ��Acceptance in Lieu Panel, chaired by Edward Harley, advises Ministers on whether property offered in lieu is of suitable importance, offered at a value which is fair to both nation and taxpayer and whether an allocation wish or condition is appropriate. AIL enables taxpayers to pay inheritance tax by transferring important works of art and other important heritage objects into public ownership. ̽��ֱ��taxpayer is given the full open market value of the item, which then becomes the property of a public museum, archive or library. In the last decade the scheme has bought over £250m of cultural property into public collections.

̽��ֱ��diaries of Captain Scott’s widow – and the papers of her second husband, Lord Kennet – will be made accessible to researchers at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library following their acceptance in lieu of inheritance tax.

Lord and Lady Kennet led fascinating lives and these papers will be of great interest to researchers.

Anne Jarvis

̽��ֱ��National Library of New Zealand

Kathleen Scott pictured with her husband Captain Robert Falcon Scott, 1910

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Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World

sjr81 — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 08:36:45 +0000

Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World, opens free to the public this Friday (March 11) and celebrates 4,000 years of recorded thought through the Library’s unique and irreplaceable collections. More than 70 per cent of the exhibits are displayed to the public for the first time in this exhibition.

Tracing the connections between Darwin and DNA, Newton and Hawking, and 3,000-year-old Chinese oracle bones and Twitter, the exhibition investigates, through six distinct themes, how Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library’s millions of books and manuscripts have transformed our understanding of life here on earth and our place among the stars.

̽��ֱ��iconic Giles Gilbert Scott building, opened in the 1930s, now holds more than eight million books, journals, maps and magazines – as well as some of the world's most iconic scientific, literary and cultural treasures.

̽��ֱ��new exhibition puts on display Newton’s own annotated copy of Principia Mathematica, Darwin’s papers on evolution, 3,000-year-old Chinese oracle bones, a cuneiform tablet from 2,000BC, and the earliest reliable text for 20 of Shakespeare’s plays.

Other items going on display include:

Edmund Halley’s handwritten notebook/sketches of Halley’s Comet (1682)
Stephen Hawking’s draft typescript of A Brief History of Time
Darwin’s first pencil sketch of Species Theory and his Primate Tree
A 2nd century AD fragment of Homer’s Odyssey.
̽��ֱ��Nash Papyrus – a 2,000-year-old copy of the Ten Commandments
Codex Bezae – 5th century New Testament, crucial to our understanding of ̽��ֱ��Bible.
A hand-coloured copy of Vesalius’ 1543 Epitome – one of the most influential works in western medicine
̽��ֱ��earliest known record of a human dissection in England (1564)
A Babylonian tablet dated 2039 BCE (the oldest object in the library)
̽��ֱ��Gutenberg Bible – the earliest substantive printed book in Western Europe (1455)
̽��ֱ��Book of Deer, 10th century gospel book: thought to be the oldest Scottish book and the first example of written Gaelic
̽��ֱ��first catalogue listing the contents of the Library in 1424, barely a decade after it was first identified in the wills of William Loring and William Hunden

̽��ֱ��six Lines of Thought featured in the exhibition are: From clay tablets to Twitter feed (Revolutions in human communication); ̽��ֱ��evolution of genetics (From Darwin to DNA); Beginning with the word (Communicating faith); On the shoulders of giants (Understanding gravity); Eternal lines (Telling the story of history) and Illustrating anatomy (Understanding the body).

̽��ֱ�� Librarian Anne Jarvis said: “It’s extraordinary to think that the ̽��ֱ�� Library, which started in 1416 as a small collection of manuscripts locked in wooden chests, has now grown into a global institution housing eight million books and manuscripts, billions of words, and millions of images, all communicating thousands of years of human thought.

“Our spectacular exhibition showcases six key concepts in human history that have been critical in shaping the world and culture we know today, illustrating the myriad lines of thought that take us back into the past, and forward to tomorrow’s research, innovation and literature.”

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� Library, which is older than both the British Library and the Vatican Library, has more than 125 miles of shelving and more than two million books immediately available to readers – making it the largest open-access library in Europe.

̽��ֱ��first Line of Thought featured in the exhibition: From clay tablet to Twitter begins with a tiny 4,000-year-old tablet used as a receipt for wool, evidence of an advanced civilisation using a cuneiform script and Sumerian language, probably written in Girsu (Southern Iraq) and precisely dated to 2039BCE. ̽��ֱ��tablet is on public display for the first time in this exhibition.

From there, it charts the many and varied revolutions in communications throughout history, taking in Chinese oracle bones, the Gutenberg Bible, a palm leaf manuscript written in 1015AD, newspapers, chapbooks and 20th century Penguin paperbacks, before ending with a book containing Shakespeare’s Hamlet written in tweets.

Objects going on display for the first time during Lines of Thought include: the Book of Deer, Vesalius’s 3D manikin of the human body, William Morris’s extensively annotated proofs of his edition of Beowulf, a wonderful caricature of Darwin, and works by Copernicus, Galileo and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the discoverer of pulsars.

“For six centuries, the collections of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library have challenged and changed the world around us,” added Jarvis. “Across science, literature and the arts, the millions of books, manuscripts and digital archives we hold have altered the very fabric of our understanding.

To celebrate the Library’s 600th anniversary, the Library has selected one iconic item from each theme within the exhibition to be digitised and made available within a free iPad app, Words that Changed the World. Readers can turn the pages of these masterworks of culture and science, from cover to cover, accompanied by ̽��ֱ�� experts explaining their importance and giving contextual information.

Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World opens to the public on Friday, March 11, 2016 and runs until Friday, September 30, 2016. Entry is free.

̽��ֱ��exhibition is also available to view online, and items from the exhibition have also been digitised and made available on the Cambridge Digital Library.

Some of the world’s most valuable books and manuscripts – texts which have altered the very fabric of our understanding – will go on display in Cambridge this week as Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library celebrates its 600th birthday with a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of its greatest treasures.

What started in 1416 as a small collection of manuscripts locked in wooden chests, has now grown into a global institution housing eight million books and manuscripts, billions of words, and millions of images, all communicating thousands of years of human thought.

Anne Jarvis

Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World

Graham CopeKoga

Priceless treasures: in a shot commissioned to celebrate Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library’s 600th anniversary, Professor Stephen Hawking is pictured with Newton’s annotated first edition of Principia Mathematica.

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Newton, Darwin, Shakespeare – and an envelope of ectoplasm: Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library at 600

sjr81 — Wed, 23 Dec 2015 09:45:45 +0000

Older than the British Library and the Vatican Library, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library was first mentioned by name in two wills dated March 1416 and its most valuable contents stored in the wooden chest pictured above. ̽��ֱ��library now holds nine million books, journals, maps and magazines – as well as some of the world's most iconic scientific, literary and cultural treasures.

Its priceless collections include Newton’s own annotated copy of Principia Mathematica, Darwin’s papers on evolution, 3000-year-old Chinese oracle bones, a cuneiform tablet from 2000BC, and the earliest reliable text for 20 of Shakespeare’s plays.

But is also home to a bizarre assembly of non-book curiosities, collected over centuries, including a jar of ectoplasm, a trumpet for hearing spirits and a statue of the Virgin Mary, miraculously saved from an earthquake on Martinique.

Since 1710, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library has also been entitled to one copy of each and every publication in the UK and Ireland under Legal Deposit – meaning the greatest works of more than four millennia of recorded thought sit alongside copies of Woman’s Own and the Beano on more than 100 miles of shelves. With two million of its volumes on open display, readers have the largest open-access collection in Europe immediately available to them.

To celebrate the Library’s 600th birthday, a spectacular free exhibition, Lines of Thought, will open on March 11, 2016. Featuring some of Cambridge’s most iconic and best-known treasures, it investigates through six distinct themes how both Cambridge and its collections have changed the world and will continue to do so in the digital era.

As well as the iconic Newton, Darwin and Shakespeare artefacts mentioned above, items going on display include:

Edmund Halley’s handwritten notebook/sketches of Halley’s Comet (1682)
Stephen Hawking’s draft typescript of A Brief History of Time
Darwin’s first pencil sketch of Species Theory and his Primate Tree
A second century AD fragment of Homer’s Odyssey.
̽��ֱ��Nash Papyrus – a 2,000-year-old copy of the Ten Commandments
Codex Bezae – 5th New Testament, crucial to our understanding of ̽��ֱ��Bible.
A hand-coloured copy of Vesalius’ 1543 Epitome – one of the most influential work in western medicine
A written record of the earliest known human dissection in England (1564)
A Babylonian tablet dated 2039 BCE (the oldest object in the library)
̽��ֱ��Gutenberg Bible – the earliest substantive printed book in Western Europe (1454)
̽��ֱ��first catalogue listing the contents of the Library in 1424, barely a decade after it was first identified in the wills of William Loryng and William Hunden

As well as Lines of Thought, 2016 will also see dozens of celebratory events including the library’s 17-storey tower being lit up as part of the e-Luminate Festival in February. Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library is also producing a free iPad app giving readers the chance to interact with digitised copies of six of the most revolutionary texts held in its collections. ̽��ֱ��app analyses the context of the six era-defining works, including Darwin's family copy of On the origin of species, Newton's annotated copy of Principia Mathematica, and William Tyndale's translation of the New Testament into English, an undertaking which led to his execution for heresy.

From October 2016, an exhibition featuring some of the ̽��ֱ�� Library’s most unusual curiosities and oddities will replace Lines of Thought as the second major exhibition of the sexcentenary.

Over the past 600 years, Cambridge has accumulated an extraordinary collection of objects, often arriving at the library as part of bequests and donations. Some of the library’s more unusual artefacts include children’s games, ration books, passports, prisoner art and Soviet cigarettes and cigars.

̽��ֱ�� Librarian Anne Jarvis said: “For six centuries, the collections of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library have challenged and changed the world around us. Across science, literature and the arts, the millions of books, manuscripts and digital archives we hold have altered the very fabric of our understanding. Thousands of lines of thoughts run through them, back into the past, and forward into tomorrow. Our 600th anniversary is a chance to celebrate one of the world’s oldest and greatest research libraries, and to look forward to its future.

“Only in Cambridge, can you find Newton’s greatest works sitting alongside Darwin’s most important papers on evolution, or Sassoon’s wartime poetry books taking their place next to the Gutenberg Bible and the archive of Margaret Drabble. Our aim now, through our Digital Library, is to share as many of these great collections as widely as possible so that anyone, anywhere in the world, can stand on the shoulders of these giants.”

In 2016, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library will celebrate 600 years as one of the world's greatest libraries with a spectacular exhibition of priceless treasures – and a second show throwing light on its more weird and wonderful collections.

For six centuries, the collections of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library have challenged and changed the world around us. Across science, literature and the arts, the millions of books, manuscripts and digital archives we hold have altered the very fabric of our understanding.

Anne Jarvis

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Detail from Vesalius' Epitome, one of the most influential works in western medicine

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Saved from the Nazis in 1938: Schnitzler archive to remain in Cambridge

sjr81 — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 09:00:27 +0000

Now, more than 75 years after it was spirited out of Austria under the noses of Nazis intent on burning and destroying Jewish cultural works, the papers of the man who inspired Freud, Kubrick and many others have been officially signed over into the care of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library.

Following several months of discussions with the writer’s grandsons and surviving heirs to his estate, Michael and Peter Schnitzler, the agreement concludes a handover process that began in the 1930s before being interrupted by the onset of the Second World War.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Librarian Anne Jarvis said: “Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library has always been proud of the role it played in saving the Schnitzler archive from certain destruction – and we are delighted to have reached agreement with the family to ensure that this unique collection remains in Cambridge and continues to benefit from the expert care and conservation it has received over the last eight decades.

“Arthur Schnitzler’s unique legacy continues to resonate and inspire, just as it has over the last 75 years. As one of the world’s great research libraries we are committed to making this fascinating archive available to as many people as possible.”

̽��ֱ��archive is currently being opened up to scholars and other interested readers by major edition projects in Austria, Germany and the UK. ̽��ֱ��German and UK projects will result in cutting-edge digital editions of works from 1905–1931, to be hosted, with open access, by the ̽��ֱ�� Library.

Andrew Webber, Professor of Modern German and Comparative Culture at the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of German and Dutch, leads the UK editorial team, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He said: “We are delighted that this agreement has been reached. In the Schnitzler papers, Cambridge has custody of a treasure of Modernist literary culture. ̽��ֱ��edition projects are already making remarkable discoveries as the teams of scholars decipher and analyse drafts and notes recorded in Schnitzler’s idiosyncratic handwriting. They promise an exciting new view of the works and the creative processes of this key figure.”

̽��ֱ��story of how Schnitzler’s archive came to Cambridge is a remarkable and complex one. Upon Arthur Schnitzler’s death in 1931, his estate remained in his Vienna house with his ex-wife Olga, who was considered his widow even though the couple had divorced in 1921.

By 1933, the works of Schnitzler and other Jewish artists were regularly being consigned to the flames of the Nazis’ book burning rallies across Germany. In March 1938, Germany invaded Austria and many prominent Jews were arrested and dispossessed.

Worried that they would come for Schnitzler’s papers, Olga Schnitzler asked an acquaintance in Vienna, a student from Cambridge called Eric Blackall, if he might be able to help save them.

On March 19, 1938, at her request, Blackall sent an urgent message to Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library to ask whether they would accept the more than 40,000 pages of Schnitzler’s literary archive. They agreed immediately, and a diplomatic seal was placed on the material before Blackall organised its shipment from Nazi-occupied Austria. More than a dozen cases and cupboards of manuscripts, sketches, notes, correspondence and even Schnitzler’s death mask made their way across Europe to Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��communications between Blackall and Cambridge, preserved in Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library, have the character of a spy novel, with Blackall referring to the urgent need to see that ‘mother’ (Olga) and ‘child’ (the archive) are safely dispatched to England.

Once both were safe in Cambridge, a legal document was drawn up and agreed between Olga and the Library in 1939, giving the archive to the ̽��ֱ��. However, Olga had neglected to notify the Library that she was not Arthur’s legal heir according to his last will. When her son, Heinrich, who was the sole heir and had emigrated to the United States, asked for the archive to be returned to him, the ̽��ֱ�� Librarian let him know that the papers had been given to the library by Olga and must remain there.

Olga herself left for the United States, taking some of the most personal artefacts (such as diaries and family letters) with her, with the blessing of the ̽��ֱ�� Librarian at the time.

Due to the outbreak of World War II, no further negotiations took place and Heinrich Schnitzler agreed to leave the archive in the custody of the Library, provided that he be given access to the archive and that microfilm copies of the papers were made.

Over the course of the following decades, the Library maintained a correspondence with Heinrich, who worked on his father’s papers, but the Schnitzler family remained owner of the archive. ̽��ֱ��agreement between CUL and Arthur Schnitzler’s grandsons puts to an end a legally awkward situation.

Schnitzler’s works provided the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, David Hare’s ̽��ֱ��Blue Room as well as plays penned by Tom Stoppard. Taking love, death and human sexuality as frequent themes for exploration, Schnitzler’s works were controversial and were even denounced by Hitler as examples of ‘Jewish filth’.

̽��ֱ��archive in Cambridge also contains Schnitzler’s only surviving letter to friend and admirer Sigmund Freud as well as his correspondence with Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism and other leading artists and writers of the era – such as Henrik Ibsen, Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler.

Saved from destruction by the Nazis and smuggled in secret to Cambridge, the rescue of author Arthur Schnitzler’s archive is as dramatic as any fiction he committed to paper.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library has always been proud of the role it played in saving the Schnitzler archive from certain destruction.

Anne Jarvis

Ferdinand Schmutzer

Arthur Schnitzler, 1912

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A kingly gift: Royal Library goes on display in Cambridge

sjr81 — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 09:01:17 +0000

His Royal Favour: the Books that Built the Library will be opened by HRH ̽��ֱ��Duke of Gloucester on October 1 and looks at how the remarkable royal gift transformed the Library’s collections like no other donation before or since.

Painstakingly collected at huge expense by the Bishop of Ely John Moore, the 30,000 books and manuscripts he accumulated include many unique surviving copies. When Moore died in 1714, a day before Queen Anne, the fate of his collection was a hot topic, and the high price asked placed it out of reach of many private book collectors. In the end, the only person who could afford them was George I, who was persuaded to present the collection to Cambridge in recognition of the ̽��ֱ��’s loyalty to the new Hanoverian king.

̽��ֱ��kingly gift trebled the size of the ̽��ֱ�� Library overnight and transformed it into an internationally significant research centre for the first time.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Librarian Anne Jarvis said: “Every book George gave is of great historical significance as an artefact as well as by virtue of its contents. ̽��ֱ��300th anniversary of their arrival in Cambridge is the perfect opportunity to celebrate a treasure that remains at the heart of our mission to this day.

“ ̽��ֱ��importance of the collection can be measured by the number of unique early printed books, the number of times books and manuscripts have been consulted by researchers, and the number of items that have featured as star exhibits in many of the previous displays we’ve held at the Library.”

Exhibition curator Emily Dourish added “With a collection of this importance, the greatest difficulty is in selecting just a handful of items to give an impression of the treasures it contains. We could have filled every case ten times over.”

Highlights of the exhibition include the eighth-century manuscript of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (the ‘Moore Bede’), written at his own monastery within a decade or two of his death and which at one time belonged to Charlemagne; one of the earliest manuscripts of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; and the ‘Moore Psalter’, a 13th-century French manuscript with stunning illuminated decoration, in which every spare space is filled with animals and figures both real and imagined.

Discoveries are still being made. In the last year, a previously unknown poem – an epitaph on King Henry VII – attributed to 15th-century philosopher Erasmus was noticed in a volume of his epigrams printed in 1518. ̽��ֱ��new discovery goes on display to the public for the first time in this exhibition and exemplifies the ongoing work on Moore’s books – and the discoveries still being made 300 years after they were passed into the Library’s care.

Elsewhere the collection contains unusual editions – such as the 1508 Book of Carving, a manual for young men learning the rules of serving at table in a polite household, and Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitates Orbis Terrarum, the world’s first atlas to include city plans from all the major cities of the Old World, several in Asia and Africa and two in the New World, Mexico and Cuzco, which are on display.

̽��ֱ��great majority of Moore’s books remained on open access for users to browse until the 1950s. Since then, the books have been moved into top-quality conservation-standard book stacks, to preserve them for centuries of future Library users.

Added Jarvis: “As a wealthy collector with excellent connections, Moore was able to form a library of unparalleled importance. His library brought to Cambridge works that the ̽��ֱ�� had thus far failed to provide its scholars such as Newton’s Principia, Hooke’s Micrographia and a collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays.

“Volumes from the Royal Library have been included in half of the major exhibitions held in the Library. We thought it was about time the collection had an exhibition of its own.”

An exhibition celebrating King George I’s gift of 30,000 books and manuscripts to Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library - including the celebrated 8th-century ‘Moore Bede’, the world’s first atlas to include city plans, and a previously unknown Erasmus poem - has opened to the public today (October 2).

With a collection of this importance, the greatest difficulty is in selecting just a handful of items to give an impression of the treasures it contains.

Emily Dourish

Royal Library: ̽��ֱ��books that build the library.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

A plan of Mexico City, taken from the 16th-century Civitates orbis terrarum, the world’s first atlas to include city plans

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‘Crown jewels’ of English lute music go online

amb206 — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 08:00:00 +0000

Cambridge Digital Library is launching a new Music Collection with the online release of the 'crown jewels' of English lute music. Dating from the late 16th and early 17th century, the manuscripts contain handwritten copies of scores by John Dowland, Francis Cutting and dozens of other early modern composers.

Digital versions of the manuscripts will go online today (Thursday, 11 December 2014) as the first items in a new digital Music Collection, which will grow to reflect Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library's important holdings in this area. ̽��ֱ��Library’s holdings range from music scores and texts on music to ephemera and concert programmes to archival materials documenting the life and work of composers. Such items play a crucial role in the preservation of musical heritage on a national and international level.

̽��ֱ��new online collection of lute music comprises high-resolution zooming images of around 650 pieces contained in eight manuscripts, allowing full access to these unique items to anyone with an internet connection. Pieces from the collection range from celebratory jigs and dances, to popular ballads and sorrowful music for funerals, giving an extraordinary insight into the role and uses of music in early modern England.

̽��ֱ��digitisation has been created in collaboration with the Lute Society. ̽��ֱ��images are accompanied by scholarly descriptions of the manuscripts’ physical properties and inventories of their contents. Four of the eight manuscripts were handwritten by Mathew Holmes, choirmaster at Westminster Abbey until 1621.

̽��ֱ��hundreds of pieces, crammed into more than 600 pages, preserve a cross-section of the lute repertoire in common use in England during the period 1580-1615, the ‘Golden Age’ of English lute music. Together they form the leading source for the music of the best-known lute composers from the English Renaissance. ̽��ֱ��manuscripts shed light on the Tudor celebrities to whom some of the pieces are dedicated - from the courtier Sir Walter Raleigh to the Shakespearean actor Will Kemp.

John Robinson of the Lute Society commented: “A huge number of manuscripts have been lost over the centuries, which makes the survival of this collection all the more remarkable. Today it is an invaluable legacy for professional musicians and musicologists as well as amateur enthusiasts. Digitisation means that the original sources of lute music can be viewed, studied and played by people worldwide.”

Also digitised are personal items. Shown online for the first time is the lute book of an English government official which remained in his family for over 350 years, and a manuscript painstakingly reassembled from fragments cut up and used in the bindings of later printed books.

̽��ֱ��European lute was probably derived from the Arabic Ud and was one of the most important musical instruments during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. ̽��ֱ��first lute music to have been written down dates from the late 15th century. English Tudor court musicians included paid lutenists. Learning the lute was an important part of the education of royalty and nobility.

̽��ֱ��1580s onwards saw the emergence of composers who developed the characteristically English lute music that flourished into the second decade of the 17th century. Among them are John Johnson, Francis Cutting, Anthony Holborne, Daniel Bacheler, John Dowland and Robert Johnson. This crucial period in English lute music coincides with the copying of the Cambridge lute manuscripts.

Robinson said: “ ̽��ֱ��manuscripts are written in French tablature with the notation providing a guide to where to put the fingers on the lute neck, rather like chord shapes in modern guitar tutors. Nearly all the music is for Renaissance lute which is tuned as a guitar except the third string is a semitone lower on the lute. ̽��ֱ��unfamiliarity with tablature notation led to lute sources being largely excluded from mainstream musicology. Now both amateurs and professionals are taught to read it and generally prefer to sight read tablature, especially from copies of original sources.”

In putting this magnificent collection online, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library is not only making the manuscripts available to the existing international community of lute enthusiasts, but also reaching new audiences. Anne Jarvis, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Librarian, said: “We are delighted to have had the opportunity to work with the Lute Society to put these unique manuscripts online as the first documents in our new Music Collection.”

Cambridge Digital Library’s new Music Collection is being launched with a private recital at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge by one of the world’s leading lutenists, Jakob Lindberg, who will be performing pieces found in these recently digitised manuscripts.

Handwritten copies of scores by composers of English lute music have been digitised in a programme to make a precious legacy available to professional and amateur musicians around the world.

̽��ֱ��collection is an invaluable legacy for professional musicians and musicologists as well as amateur enthusiasts. Digitisation means that the original sources of lute music can be viewed, studied and played.

John Robinson, Lute Society

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Mr Knight’s galliard by John Dowland

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‘A sunlit picture of hell’: Sassoon’s war diaries go online for first time

jfp40 — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 08:35:56 +0000

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library is home to the world’s foremost collection of Sassoon material, and has digitised 23 of Sassoon’s journals and two of his wartime poetry notebooks. They are now available to all at the Cambridge Digital Library (https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/), where they sit alongside the papers of Isaac Newton and other priceless treasures of the Library’s collections.

Until now, much of the archive has remained beyond the reach of both researchers and the public because of the documents’ poor physical condition. ̽��ֱ��only person to have had unrestricted access to Sassoon’s journals and notebooks to date was official biographer Max Egremont.

̽��ֱ��digitisation of the Sassoon material, which includes draft copies of his ‘Soldier’s Declaration’ as well as poetry, prose and sketches, fulfils an objective formulated during the Library’s £1.25m fundraising campaign to purchase the Sassoon Archive in 2009. ̽��ֱ��campaign, spearheaded by Egremont, was also supported by Sir Andrew Motion, Michael Morpurgo and Sebastian Faulks.

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Librarian Anne Jarvis said: “ ̽��ֱ��war diaries Sassoon kept on the Western Front and in Palestine are of the greatest significance, both nationally and internationally, and we are honoured to be able to make them available to everyone, anywhere in the world, on the 100^th anniversary of the First World War.

“From his ‘Soldier’s Declaration’ to his eyewitness accounts of the first day of the battle on the Somme, the Sassoon archive is a collection of towering importance, not just to historians, but to anyone seeking to understand the horror, bravery and futility of the First World War as experienced by those on the front lines and in the trenches.”

̽��ֱ��digitisations make available online for the first time 23 of Sassoon’s journals from the years 1915-27 and 1931-32, as well as two poetry notebooks from 1916-18 containing rough drafts and fair copies of some of his best-known war poems. Sassoon wrote in a small and legible hand, frequently using his notebooks from both ends. ̽��ֱ��images of them are both powerful and evocative, showing mud from the trenches and spilled wax, presumably as he sat writing in his dug-out by candlelight.

̽��ֱ��journals give a fascinating insight into daily life in the trenches. Sassoon described the first day of the Somme as a ‘sunlit picture of hell’ and the diaries also record the moment he was shot by a sniper at the Battle of Arras, as well as a psychological profile of ‘the soul of an officer’. ̽��ֱ��poems include previously unpublished material along with early drafts of some of his best-known works including an early version of ‘ ̽��ֱ��Dug-Out’ with an additional, excised verse.

Sassoon’s journals represent much more than a simple diary record. ̽��ֱ��notebooks were small enough to be carried in the pocket of his army tunic, and he used them to draft poetry, make pencil or ink sketches, list members of his battalion and their fates, make notes on military briefings, and draw diagrams of the trenches.

“ ̽��ֱ��great array of activities, difficulties and dangers that faced him as a serving officer, and the recurring inspiration of his creative responses to his conditions, are represented in the range of uses to which he put these notebooks,” said Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library’s John Wells. “Unlike edited, printed transcriptions, the digitisations allow the viewer to form a sense of the physical documents, and to appreciate their unique nature as historical artefacts.”

̽��ֱ��Sassoon collection joins other collections being delivered through the Cambridge Digital Library, which aims to make the Library’s great collections openly available to the world. ̽��ֱ��Digital Library was launched in 2011 and made possible through a generous donation from the Polonsky Foundation.

Siegfried Sassoon’s First World War diaries – some bearing traces of mud from the Somme – are among 4,100 pages from his personal archive being made freely available online from today, almost 100 years since Britain declared war on Germany.

From his ‘Soldier’s Declaration’ to his eyewitness accounts of the first day of the battle on the Somme, the Sassoon archive is a collection of towering importance.

Anne Jarvis

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Digital Library

̽��ֱ��Soul of an Officer, a sketch from one of Siegfried Sassoon’s journals. 1916

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̽��ֱ��longitude problem: 300-year-old archive opened to the world

sjr81 — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 09:12:37 +0000

Now, for the first time, the full story of attempts to solve the longitude problem - unravelling the lone genius myth popularised in film and literature - will be made freely available to everyone via Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library’s Digital Library.

Launched today, the complete archive of the Board of Longitude, held by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library, and associated National Maritime Museum collections, will take their place alongside the works of Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton at cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk.

Treasures of the Longitude archive, available to view in high-resolution for the first time, include accounts of bitter rivalries, wild proposals and first encounters between Europeans and Pacific peoples. This includes logbooks of Captain Cook’s voyages of discovery, the naming of Australia and even a letter from Captain Bligh of HMS Bounty, who writes to apologise for the loss of a timekeeper after his ship was ‘pirated from my command’.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� Library’s Digital Library project was launched in June 2010 following a £1.5m gift from the Polonsky Foundation. ̽��ֱ�� Librarian Anne Jarvis said: “With the digitisation of this incredible collection, we have taken another important step towards realising our shared ambition of creating a digital library for the world.”

̽��ֱ��Board of Longitude collection is the largest project undertaken to date by the Cambridge Digital Library team, comprising more than 65,000 images. Funded by Jisc (http://www.jisc.ac.uk), a charity which provides digital services for UK education and research, the collection has been developed in partnership with a wider five-year research project by Cambridge’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Greenwich’s National Maritime Museum.

In July 1714 an act of parliament established a £20,000 prize, worth about £1.5 million today, for the discovery of longitude at sea: determining a ship’s position east and west from a fixed meridian line.

Cambridge historian Professor Simon Schaffer said: “ ̽��ֱ��problem of longitude could be a lethal one. ̽��ֱ��act of parliament established the Board of Longitude – think the X Factor, only much more money and much more important – that would reward anyone who could solve the problem of longitude.

“ ̽��ֱ��longitude story is a spectacular example of expert disagreement and public participation. As well as attracting the greatest scientific minds of the day, the board enticed people who belong to one of the most important traditions in British society; the extreme eccentric.”

̽��ֱ��hugely significant archive preserves detailed minutes from the first recorded meeting in 1737 right through to the Board of Longitude’s dissolution in 1828.

Royal Museums Greenwich’s Dr Richard Dunn, who is currently curating a major exhibition inspired by longitude, said the archive proves that John Harrison, while a towering figure in the story, is not the start and end point for all things longitude.

" ̽��ֱ��archive places the familiar story of Harrison in its richer context. He was a crucial figure but the story is much broader. It takes in the development of astronomy, exploration and technological innovation and creativity during the period of the Industrial Revolution, the work of the first government body devoted to scientific matters, and public reactions to a challenge many considered hopeless.”

As the schemes for longitude needed to be tested on long voyages, the archive includes much detail on Britain’s maritime interests, explorations and encounters with other cultures. It also played a major role in plans for voyages by James Cook and successors into the Pacific in the 1770s - and into the Arctic in the opening decades of the 19th century. ̽��ֱ��archive includes four eyewitness accounts of Cook’s Second Voyage and contains the first Western maps and descriptions of many Pacific places and peoples.

̽��ֱ��Board’s work continued long after longitude was effectively solved and its many interests and long duration makes the archive a hugely important primary source on the development of science and technology in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It also provides valuable insight into the social history of the era with thousands of names featuring in its files; from Isaac Newton, to eccentric inventors who berated the Board for not following up on their ideas.

Indeed, the archive contains two volumes of ‘impractical’ schemes submitted in the hope of finding a reward. They were later bound and prefaced with title pages such as ‘wild proposals resulting from dreams’. They came via a diverse cross-section of society, from prisoners seeking release in return for their ‘solutions’ to citizens like Mr William Lester, who proposed solar experiments to find longitude that involved igniting points on a globe with a lens. ̽��ֱ��board underlined his statement that if the globe is correct and properly adjusted ‘you will set fire to London’.

Flickr Gallery of images from the Cambridge and Greenwich archives can be seen here

Inset image: Sextant, made by Jesse Ramsden. Copyright National Maritime Museum

It was the conundrum that baffled some of the greatest and most eccentric experts of the 18th century - and captivated the British public during an era of unprecedented scientific and technical transformation.

̽��ֱ��problem of longitude could be a lethal one.

Simon Schaffer

Introduction to the Board of Longitude

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