Blog

1. 

   John Dee and Alchemy

   When John Dee initially sought appointment as the warden of a collegiate church following his travels on the continent, Manchester was far from his mind. Instead, he had fixed his...

   29th January 2026 • Read more

2. 

   Shakespeare’s Third Folio: The Page vs. the Stage

   One of the most fascinating books in Chetham’s Library’s less well-known literature collection is a copy of Mr William Shakespeare’s comedies, histories and tragedies, published according to the true original copies,...

   7th January 2026 • Read more

3. 

   John Dee and the Tudor College

   At around midday on 15 February 1596, following an arduous journey by road and water, John Dee arrived in Tudor Manchester. Five days later, he was installed in a (presumably...

   13th December 2025 • Read more

4. 

   Dr Dee: From Mortlake to Manchester

   On 8 September 1597, the famed Renaissance polymath John Dee wrote to his friend, Sir Edward Dyer, to complain about the ‘tymes of very great dearth here … I can...

   13th November 2025 • Read more

5. 

   The Bards of Cottonopolis: Poetry and the Labouring Class

   Grey and bustling, Manchester emerged during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the first industrial city, churning out cotton through its steam mills and the toil of the labouring class...

   22nd September 2025 • Read more

6. 

   The Manchester Woman: Mrs Isabella Linnæus Banks

   One member of the Sun Inn Group of poets who met at Poets’ Corner, who is now among the most famous but was little-known at the time, was Mrs Isabella...

   20th August 2025 • Read more

7. 

   ‘The Peaceful, the Pure, the Victorious Pen!’: The Sun Inn Group

   During the nineteenth century, Manchester was one of the most written-about cities globally; it was famously the subject of Percy Shelley’s ‘The Mask of Anarchy’, written following the Peterloo Massacre...

   11th July 2025 • Read more

8. 

   Poets’ Corner: Industry and Identity

   ‘Near to the gates of Chetham College, in Long Millgate, stands one of those ancient and picturesque houses, which occasionally start to view like spectres of a bygone age, but...

   6th June 2025 • Read more

9. 

   Cataloguing the Cass Collection

   Maisie, our placement student, recently completed a project to finish cataloguing the Cass Collection, which originally arrived at Chetham’s Library in 2016: Between January and April, I spent 20 days...

   12th May 2025 • Read more

10. 

    For the Private Amusement of Chetham’s Library

    Early last year, our exhibition ‘Chetham’s Librarians: Lives and Legacies’ celebrated our past librarians, and was timed to coincide with the appointment of Julianne Simpson as the new Chetham’s Librarian....

    16th April 2025 • Read more