Hamsa i Jami

Hamsa i Jami ('Five Poems by Jami'). Persian, transcribed by Abdullah ul Hardy, 1531. R.13.8 Abdul-Rahman Jami (1414-1492), known simply as Jami, was one of Iran's most prolific and best known poets of the 15th century. His works feature scholarship, theology and religious allegory in the Sufi tradition, a form of Islamic mysticism that valued an …

Wolf Hall

Excitement about royal Tudor England is everywhere in anticipation of the televised adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Booker prize-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies beginning this week on the BBC . Here in the Wren Library we have a number of manuscripts which belonged to King Henry VIII. His libraries, housed in several …

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 …

John Lydgate, Medieval Graffiti and Mythological Beasts

We are excited to learn that graffiti in a Suffolk church has recently been identified as the work of the poet and priest, John Lydgate (1370?–1451?). Trinity College Library holds a number of manuscripts containing texts by Lydgate including his Troy Book or Siege of Troy (O.5.2) and one of the oldest copies of The …

Dürer and perspective

Albrecht Dürer (b. Nuremberg, 21 May 1471; d. Nuremberg, 6 April 1528) Painter, draughtsman, printmaker and writer. Now considered by many scholars the greatest of all German artists, he not only executed paintings and drawings of the highest quality but also made a major contribution to the development of printmaking, especially engraving, and to the …