This is our 200th post! Our blog – Treasures from the Collection – began in March 2014. To celebrate this landmark we look back over past highlights as a reminder of some of the subjects we have covered over the previous 6 years.
In October 2018 we were delighted to lend five of our manuscripts to the British Library’s blockbuster exhibition Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War. The Library has 31 Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in total, the oldest of which is the Pauline Epistles (B.10.5). See Trinity Lends to Major Anglo-Saxon Exhibition and posts in the category Anglo Saxon Manuscripts.
A popular series of posts focussed on the history, architecture and furnishing of the Wren Library. The posts described Wren’s original plans for the building, the carvings by Grinling Gibbons, the Cipriani window, the portraits and the Roubiliac busts. See posts in the category History of the Wren Library.
Some of our most widely read posts have been about the Trinity mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan who was the subject of 2016 film ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity’ starring Dev Patel some of which was filmed in College. The Library holds Ramanujan’s mathematical papers including the so-called ‘Lost Notebook’. See Remembering Ramanujan.
The Crewe Collection of over 7500 books was bequeathed to the College by Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe who died in 2014. The task of cataloguing the books is ongoing, but regular blog posts have drawn attention to some of the highlights of this fabulous collection including many important first editions, a series of etchings by Goya and a page from a hotel register in which Percy Bysshe Shelley publicly declared himself to be an atheist. See other posts in the category The Crewe Collection.
In reaching scholars around the world, the Wren Digital Library has made possible a number of blogs which make new discoveries. Most recently François Avril of Bibliothèque nationale de France was able to reappraise a 15th-century Missal and in 2019 Susanne Krause, a paper decorator and researcher based in Hamburg, drew attention to the importance of the interleaved papers in the Dryden Album.
There are now over 2000 manuscripts – medieval and modern – available free of charge for users to browse in the Wren Digital Library. Our blog will continue to bring news of fresh discoveries, collaborations and scholarship. We look forward to the next 200 posts!
Trinity College Library, Cambridge 