Blog

1. 

   Matilda Betham: An (un)Celebrated Woman

   Above: Matilda Betham, unknown artist, image taken from Wikimedia Comms. Mary Matilda Betham (known as Matilda to her friends and family) was a diarist, poet and author in the last...

   2nd August 2023 • Read more

2. 

   The Accedence of Armorie: Sixteenth-Century Paint by Numbers

   The top shelf of the last press in Chetham’s Library, press Z, is home to a copy of Gerard Legh’s Accedence of Armorie (shelfmark Z.1.64). Having accessed the book in this remote...

   13th July 2023 • Read more

3. 

   An English Renaissance Feminist: Cancelled

   Above: Portrait by Lady Mary Wroth, by John de Critz 1620. Just before International Women’s Day 2023, there emerged from the shelves of Chetham’s Radcliffe collection a rare copy of...

   22nd June 2023 • Read more

4. 

   A Woman’s Write: Searching For Chetham’s Published Women

   Visitors to the library have been asking the same question for some time “Are there any books written by women”. Whilst the answer has been yes, it has often been...

   11th May 2023 • Read more

5. 

   Lucy Hutchinson and the Civil War

   Given our recent theme focusing on women in the library, the time seems right to tell, if only in brief, some of the remarkable stories of their lives and achievements....

   10th May 2023 • Read more

6. 

   Note, Gentle Reader

   Thomas Gudlawe’s annotations in the Nuremberg Chronicle The Chetham’s Library copy of the Liber Chronicarum (“The Book of Chronicles”, more commonly known as the Nuremberg Chronicle and previously featured in...

   17th March 2023 • Read more

7. 

   William Hogarth talk

   Public talk on the art of William Hogarth, 8 March 2023 William Hogarth’s paintings and prints are for many the very image of eighteenth-century England. His ‘Gin Lane’ and the...

   2nd February 2023 • Read more

8. 

   A Weaving of Words

   Inspiration from the early textile industry Chetham’s Library owes its very existence to the popularity of fustian, a coarse cloth of which the warp was linen and the weft was...

   19th December 2022 • Read more

9. 

   The Bonnie Prince at Manchester’s ‘Palace’

   In November 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie (Charles Edward Stuart) arrived in Manchester with 6,000 troops during manoeuvring of his army as part of the Jacobite rising of 1745. The uprising,...

   29th November 2022 • Read more

10. 

    Poetry in the Margins

    Poetry in the Margins: A Marian Missal Annotated by Lawrence Langley We’re delighted to be able to publish a first post here by Ellen Werner, who has joined us to...

    8th November 2022 • Read more