The Residue of Alchemy in Botany

Plants really don’t move. The majority grow in the same places, look the same, smell the same, and act the same for thousands of years, and this slow evolution is a useful lodestone to help us navigate the shoals of botanical thought, which have changed so dramatically in the past 600 years as to be...

My experience as an intern at The Parker library; or a brief look into the retained importance of the physicality of manuscripts in an increasingly digital age.

I am a year 12 student at Hills Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge, who is in the process of writing my Extended Project Qualification on the digitisation, and viewing of medieval manuscripts today. I am also taking A-levels in History, English Literature and History of Art. At the start of this academic year, I was...

Uncovering the Dover Bible’s True Colours – How modern science can be used to aid discovery within England’s oldest manuscripts.

As with any historical field, despite the sheer quantity of evidence you may collect, there will always be parts of the past that remain shrouded in mystery. This is of course true for manuscripts; even if we combined all our current knowledge, we will never quite manage to uncover each and every hidden facet of...

‘The Naked Text’?: the Wycliffite Bible Controversy

Language can be exclusive. When a text is unavailable in one’s own language, one feels barred from understanding its meaning. This concern allows us insight into the thinking behind the production of this highly controversial manuscript from the Parker Library collection: the Wycliffite Bible (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 147). The Wycliffites, followers of the...

Holey Books: Ancrene Wisse and the Art of Medieval Manuscript Repair

Encountering a manuscript is a vastly different experience to reading a modern printed edition of the same text. I discovered this when I had the privilege of examining the Ancrene Wisse manuscript (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 402) during my internship at the Parker Library. Ancrene Wisse—meaning ‘advice for anchoresses’—is an early thirteenth-century text intended to guide...

A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World

As part of my work experience here at the Parker Library I was given the opportunity to do my own research and write it up on a blog post. This was an amazing chance to see what research means practically, and at first I was overwhelmed by the number of books available to look at...

My Experience as an Intern at the Parker Library

I am a year 10 student at Parkside Community College, and my year group must complete a week of work experience as we move into our final year of secondary school, to give us a taste of the world of work. A wide range of companies and organisations provide work experience, but the Parker Library...

The Billingford Hutch and the moonwort fern – a medieval mystery solved

A heavy oak chest in the Parker Library (Corpus Christi College) was used to store objects left as collateral for loans of money. Its ironwork features the outline of a plant – but no-one knew why. Now a visitor to the Library may have unravelled the meaning of this decorative motif. A visitor to the Parker Library at...

Roland Penrose Mural

A guest post by Dr Lucy Hughes, the College's Modern Archivist: At a time when Tate Britain is running an exhibition on Picasso and Modern British Art (until July 15), it is interesting to be reminded that a piece of work by one of Britain’s foremost surrealists, Sir Roland Penrose, survives as a mural in...

Conference Report: Incunabula on the Move

This is a guest post by Lucy Hughes, Modern Archivist at Corpus. This one-day conference held at Clare College, Cambridge, on 6 March 2012 was timed to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the birth of J. C. T. Oates, author of the landmark catalogue of incunabula in Cambridge University Library. It was organised by Satoko...