Item focus – Page 5 – Collections

Happy birthday Beardsley!

Today marks the anniversary of the birth of Aubrey Beardsley, a favourite artist among staff here. Aubrey Beardsley was born in 1872 and died from tuberculosis in 1898 at the age […]

New Featured Item: Estienne’s La dissection des parties du corps humain

Charles Estienne, La dissection des parties du corps humain divisee en trois livres. Paris: chez Simon de Colines, 1546. Item from the Cole Library COLE–X092F/02, University of Reading Special Collections […]

Beckett’s Murphy on display

In 2013 the University of Reading acquired the hand-written manuscript for Murphy, Samuel Beckett’s first published novel and the first major expression of the central themes that would occupy much of […]

Pandora comes back to Special Collections

We have a newcomer to our staircase entrance hallway – the stunning Pandora, by JD Batten. Pandora is a part of the University art collection, and has joined us from […]

Favourite finds: First Mills & Boon

Although Mills & Boon didn’t start life as a romance publisher, the company’s first publication in 1908 was in fact a romance – Arrows from the Dark, by Sophie Cole. […]

Favourite Finds: Benjamin Britten, Herbert Read & the anarchists

Brian Ryder is one of our volunteers here at Special Collections. Brian’s history with Reading collections is a long one; he used to be one of our project cataloguers and […]

Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin!

Guest post from Dr John Holmes, Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of Reading, to celebrate Darwin Day: a global celebration of science and reason held on the birthday anniversary of […]

Polar vortex? An explorer, a biscuit and the South Pole

As the world freezes over (well, part of it – Reading is recovering from floods, not frost!), we thought it particularly appropriate to share the story of an intrepid (if […]

New featured item: Selectus Diplomatum et Numismatum Scotiae Thesaurus

James Anderson, Selectus Diplomatum et Numismatum Scotiae Thesaurus, 1739 James Anderson (1662–1728) was a Scottish historiographer and antiquary. Born in Edinburgh in 1662, the son of a Presbyterian minister, he studied law at the University of Edinburgh […]

Top Ten Treasures from the Archives: Owen Jones

Our collections richer than most people would imagine and cover a wide variety of subjects and historical periods. To give you an idea of what’s there, University Archivist Guy Baxter […]