Witchcrafte by a Picture

In a brief post for Halloween, we highlight a poem by John Donne from manuscript R.3.12 which was given to the College by Sir Henry Puckering. Witches were believed to bring about the mutilation or death of their victims by making a likeness of them and then destroying it. This is alluded to in line …

Gale’s Herbarium

Manuscript O.2.48 is a medical miscellany combining the works of various authors. Part of a well-known group of manuscripts, the Herbarius corpus, the Trinity copy - donated by Roger Gale in 1738 - is one of the most extensively illustrated manuscripts of these medieval herbals. Written and illustrated in Germany in the second part of …

Autograph collector: George Gery Milner-Gibson-Cullum

George Gery Milner-Gibson Cullum (1857-1921) of Hardwick House, Bury St Edmunds was High Sheriff of Suffolk 1888 and Mayor of Bury St Edmunds 1913-14. He amassed a large library and shared the passion of many of wealth for autographs, being a vice-president of the Society of Archivists and Autograph Collectors.  His autograph collection is now …

John Dee’s Library Catalogue

John Dee (1527-1609), mathematician, astrologer, and antiquary, and model for Shakespeare’s Prospero, owned one of the most significant private libraries in Elizabethan England. A fine facsimile of the Trinity College, Cambridge manuscript O.4.20 - John Dee's Library Catalogue - was originally published by the Bibliographical Society in 1990 and edited by Julian Roberts and Andrew …