Christopher Columbus and the Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books

A new book by Edward Wilson-Lee, Fellow of our neighbouring Sidney Sussex College and a regular reader in the Wren Library, tells the scarcely believable – and wholly true – story of Christopher Columbus’s bastard son Hernando, who sought to equal and surpass his father’s achievements by creating a universal library. Here we take a …

Tennyson Manuscripts Online

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92) was a student at Trinity between 1827 and 1831. Some of his most important manuscripts, which are kept in the Wren Library, have been made available online via the Cambridge Digital Library. The collection includes the earliest extant full-scale draft of his best known poem, In Memoriam. This manuscript was a …

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 …