Blog

1. 

   A Bluestocking Influencer – Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

   A BLUESTOCKING INFLUENCER – LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU One of the most influential English women of the 18th century, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), lives on at Chetham’s library in...

   3rd November 2023 • Read more

2. 

   A Tale of Manchester Life: The City’s Most Famous Literary Woman and Her First Novel

   Recently, this blog has featured several posts about the literary women featured in Chetham’s Library’s current exhibition, A Woman’s Write. However, one figure not included in this exhibition is an individual...

   18th October 2023 • Read more

3. 

   Oldham Coat of Arms

   Recently we were cleaning the gallery space in the Library and came across a painting of a heraldic achievement, generally knowns as a coat of arms. It bears the date...

   8th September 2023 • Read more

4. 

   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

5. 

   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

6. 

   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

7. 

   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

8. 

   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

9. 

   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

10. 

    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