This hand-tinted engraved self-portrait by Thomas Barritt (1743-1820) is to be found pasted into the front of one of his small scrapbooks, of which the Library holds several. Barritt, a...
We are pleased to be hosting an exclusive performance by legendary musician Laetitia Sadier at the Library on Sunday evening. Laetitia, a founder member of the post-rock outfit Stereolab, recently...
More madness from the shelves at Chetham’s Library, this week in the form of these delightful engravings from Francis Quarle’s Emblems. The idea is to represent Christian truths using verse...
We are still adding to our collection of material about Belle Vue Zoo and Pleasure Gardens. Until this remarkable and well-loved establishment closed in the 1970s, it was Manchester’s principal...
This wonderfully mad illustration is taken from The Economy of Beauty, ‘a series of fables addressed to the ladies’, which is one of the books we are currently minding for...
Chetham’s Library features on the BBC Radio 4 programme What’s the Point of… the Public Library, broadcast yesterday but available on BBC iPlayer until Tuesday 7th September and well worth...
Chetham’s Library has been included in the Guardian‘s latest TwiTrip! In this series, Guardian journalist Benji Lanyado journeys around England, guided by tweeted suggestions from Twitter followers, and live-blogging about...
The wooden hand printing press which has stood for many years at the top of the Library stairs was this week dismantled and removed to Alan May’s workshop in Stone,...
Among the library’s early printed German books can be found the Nova architectura curiosa or Bau und Wasser-Kunst by Georg Andreas Boeckler, printed in Nuremberg in 1704. This lengthy work...
The BBC’s excellent Norman Season continues to explore ways in which the Normans influenced our civilisation, beginning of course with the invasion of William of Normandy and his subsequent coronation...
