Topic description and stories

When is a book not a book?

10 Oct 2016

The e-book has made continued inroads into the publishing world but the printed book has defied predictions of its death. Research by Professor John...

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From Shakespeare to Austen: King’s College celebrates the Thackeray Collection of rare books

18 Jun 2016

A generous award will allow King’s College to catalogue and conserve an important part of an outstanding collection of rare books given to the...

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The 8th Cambridge Festival of Ideas launches

19 Oct 2015

Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015 launches today with over 250 events exploring arts, society and culture.

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The frontispiece of Ned Ward's Vulgus Brittanicus (1710)

On the eve of the Booker Prize: a sideways look at the literary puff

12 Oct 2015

A literary puff is the promotional blurb that appears on book jackets and publishers’ press releases. Dr Ross Wilson, Faculty of English, discusses...

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A plan of Mexico City, taken from the 16th-century Civitates orbis terrarum, the world’s first atlas to include city plans

A kingly gift: Royal Library goes on display in Cambridge

02 Oct 2015

An exhibition celebrating King George I’s gift of 30,000 books and manuscripts to Cambridge University Library - including the celebrated 8th-century...

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Illustration of Peter Rabbit from The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter

Bunnies in children’s books: from Alice in Wonderland to Peter Rabbit

30 Sep 2015

The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, R is for...

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Image from the Boy's book of British battles

Waterloo: the first draft of history

30 Apr 2015

A letter written from the body-strewn battlefield at Waterloo, an invasion map of the UK, and a book from Napoleon’s personal library in exile will...

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Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) and the books that made the father of anatomy

17 Jul 2014

Born 500 years ago, Andreas Vesalius has iconic status in the history of science. Cambridge University Library holds several copies of the remarkable...

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‘Writing is but another form of conversation’: Laurence Sterne at 300

23 Nov 2013

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman turned a Yorkshire clergyman into a literary celebrity. Three hundred years after his birth on 24...

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A miniature showing a bishop joining the hands of a couple, from the section of the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX concerning marriage, in a copy produced in Venice around 1475.

University Library’s greatest treasures on show

18 Jan 2012

An unpublished Rupert Brooke poem will sit alongside some of Cambridge University Library’s greatest treasures when a free exhibition of highlights...

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St Peter Port harbour

Cambridge Ideas - Forgotten Heroes

31 Mar 2011

A Cambridge University archaeologist, along with two other researchers in Guernsey, has uncovered a previously unseen archive featuring the...

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Wordsworth notebook

Cambridge Ideas - Strange Seas of Thought

15 Nov 2010

A journey into Wordsworth's mind and the process of creation

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