Rare Books @ NLS

The latest display in our Visitor Centre has just opened: throughout September and October, a small exhibition of rare books and manuscripts will mark the 450th anniversary of the Scottish Reformation. We plan to blog about some of the items here during the run of the exhibition, which will give us a chance to tell their stories in more detail than the limits of an exhibition label permit.

At the centre of the exhibition, of course, is John Knox, and copies of The first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women and some of his other books are on display.

But we also hope to show other aspects of the Scottish Reformation such as its strong links with what was happening in Europe. For instance, books by earlier reformers – Patrick Hamilton’s theology and the Wedderburn brothers’ poetry – show how quickly Luther’s ideas had an impact on Scots. We wanted to show the other side of the story too, so there are books produced and used by the still-Catholic pre-Reformation Scottish church, and items which illustrate the debates between Catholics and Protestants in the 1560s.

Of course, for us as a library, one of the most interesting points is the way that the history of printed books and the history of the Reformation are inextricably linked in Scotland. Had printed books not existed, the history of the Reformation would have been very different; had the Church not needed to distribute books like the Bassandyne Bible across the country, the Scottish book trade would never have developed as it did.

Look out for more about the items in this exhibition over the next two months – meanwhile, here are some links to media coverage of the display:

• BBC Scotland news story
• Deadline Press news story 
• The Herald news story

And finally, this BBC website has a good basic introduction to the history of the Scottish Reformation.

Festivities are underway marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Scottish author and dramatist James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937). From the 7th-23rd May celebrations take place in Barrie’s birthplace of Kirriemuir, Angus, with details of Barrie 2010: A Celebration of Imagination available on the Barrie 2010 website. Our own exhibition in the National Library of Scotland runs until May 31st and has received some favourable coverage in the media: an article in The Scotsman in April gave a sneak preview of a selection of material going into the exhibition as our conservation workshop weaved their magic over some JM Barrie treasures. A feature in the Times last Saturday took an interesting look at two booklets in the exhibition that were privately printed for Barrie’s own amateur cricket club, the ‘Allahakbarries’. Practical advice from team captain Barrie to inspire his illustrious band of cricketers abounds: “Should you hit the ball, run at once. Don’t stop to cheer.” The JM Barrie anniversary display at the National Library of Scotland runs until 31 May and opens daily.

I was away at the weekend so have only just discovered that our website The Word On The Street, devoted to news broadsides, has been in the news itself thanks to the Edinburgh Science Festival.

Martin Belam, The Guardian’s Information Architect, was speaking on a panel about Journalism in the Digital Age, in which he traced the journey of news media from the first printed broadsides to today’s 24-hour array of multimedia journalism. And our Word on the Street site was a handy source for his coverage of the three hundred years where the broadside was the dominant medium for news stories to reach a mass audience.

You can read Martin’s presentation on the Inside Guardian blog, and also read the additional piece he wrote for their local Edinburgh blog.

The Word on the Street site has been one of our most popular web features since it was launched, and it’s great to see it appreciated. As Martin says in his blog, we also have a large collection of print news going back to the earliest Scottish newspapers.

Martin Belam says his favourite broadside is the one which tells the story of the mermaid spotted by a shipwrecked Scottish merchant off the coast of Inverness around 1760. Read the full story on the Word on the Street site.

There’s a great article in today’s Scotsman about the work of our Preservation and Conservation division – the people who spend their days making sure that the books in our collections are kept in the best possible condition, and that where necessary they are repaired using the most appropriate techniques and materials.

We work closely with our Conservation team, and I’m always in awe of the technical skills they have. Books are always going to suffer wear and tear if people are using them, and that’s before we get to the books we buy which are in need of some attention, and the work needed to enable us to display our treasures in the best possible way. Having a whole team of people who are so expert on hand is one of NLS’s greatest assets, so it’s good to see their work being appreciated.

Today’s Scotsman has an article about Andrew Duncan, an Edinburgh doctor whose concern for public health brought lasting benefit to the city, but who also found the time for an active social life, founding several Edinburgh clubs including the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society, still flourishing today.

A true son of the Enlightenment, Duncan’s clubs included a number of different drinking and dining societies. But as the new biography of him, Andrew Duncan: Physician of the Enlightenment by John Chalmers, points out, his concern for the sick and mentally ill led to the founding of a dispensary for the sick poor, and a Lunatic Asylum which for the first time offered humane treatment according to the standards of the day, and whose work carries on today in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital.

Andrew Duncan first came to my attention last summer, when we had an enquiry from someone looking for publications connected with his golfing interests. This led me to a volume which collected some ephemera from Duncan’s various societies, along with his own poems.

Until his 82nd year, Duncan climbed Arthur’s Seat on May 1st, and seems often to have written a poem about it, which he then had privately published and distributed to his friends and relatives. As he says himself: ‘ever since I have been a professor, on the 1st May, in place of hopping round the May Pole, like the English Villagers, I have treated myself with a Walk to the Top of Arthur’s Seat before Breakfast’.

So here is the poem he wrote when ’still able, although now in the eightieth year of his life, to compose poetical effusions on the top of Arthurs Seat, The Parnassus of Modern Athens’:

May 1 1816
On the approaching Marriage of the Princess Charlotte

Let Britons be gay,
On the calends of May,
For to-morrow is fix’d as the Nuptial Day,
Of a Princess, who Britain’s vast Empire may sway;

Then long may she reign,
In the Heart of her Swain,
And after enriching the Hill, and the Plain,
In the midst of her Race, may she die without pain.

I have to admit that though Andrew Duncan may not be a poetic genius, I found this poem rather touching as Princess Charlotte died in childbirth, after an agonizing labour, a little over a year later.

You can find the volume which contains this poem and other Duncan memorabilia by searching our main catalogue for the shelfmark L.C.1021.

John Chalmers’ biography has just been published by the National Museums of Scotland.
ETA: My Modern Scottish Collections colleagues’ blog notes that it arrived in NLS this week, so it will soon be available in our General Reading Room.