Desperate Dan made his first appearance in issue 1 of the “The Dandy Comic” in December 1937 as reproduced above. “The Dandy Comic” was arguably Scotland’s greatest contribution to 20th century popular culture at least until a single mother completed her book about a boy wizard in an Edinburgh café in 1995. “The Dandy Comic” […]
What links Scotland with Mulberries, Whales, Gooseberries, Hippos, Beetles, and Swiss Rolls?
Swiss Rolls, Gooseberries and Hippos were all parts of the pre-fabricated Mulberry Harbours that were towed across the channel as part of the D-Day fleet, and constructed in situ on Gold and Omaha Beaches. Scotland played a large part in the production and testing of the Mulberry Harbours. Two Mulberry Harbours were built – Mulberry […]
Unique Miniature Bible
The National Library of Scotland recently acquired a unique miniature Bible to add to our collection of volumes published by David Bryce & Son of Glasgow. David Bryce (1845-1923) was one of the world’s most prolific and successful makers of miniature books. It is a 1912 unrecorded variant of Bryce’s second edition of the Bible […]
Willa and Edwin Muir bring Franz Kafka to the English speaking world
Pictured above are the first editions of the translations of the works of Franz Kafka by Willa and Edwin Muir in order of publication, left to right. Between 1930 and 1949 Willa and Edwin Muir would bring the fiction of Franz Kafka to English readers for the first time and their translations would become the […]
NLS celebrates 20 years in the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature
This October we celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Edinburgh becoming the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature, the founding city in what is now an international network of 53 Cities of Literature in 39 countries around the world. Looking back, we can hardly believe it’s been two decades. The National Library of Scotland was at […]
A. L. Lloyd, folklorist and early translator of Kafka
3rd June 2024 is the centenary of Franz Kafka’s death so I have been looking at early English language translations of his work in our collections including a 1937 edition of the classic novella “The Metamorphosis”. It is a very attractive little book and almost certainly the first time this story was published as a […]
D-Day 80th Anniversary Commemoration
I remember the day, soon after I started as a Map Assistant in the Map Library, while searching for maps of France I opened a drawer and saw five aerial photos taken by the RAF after D-Day sitting beside large scale maps of the five D-Day landing beaches. I was, and still am, fascinated by […]
The Guild of Woman-Binders
Hello, my name is Lydia Ferguson and I am a postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh studying History of Art, Theory, and Display. For the past three months I have been working as an intern at the National Library of Scotland in the Rare Books Division under the supervision of Rare Books Curator James Mitchell. During this time, I […]
Explore our world class ice skating collections on the 40th anniversary of Torvill and Dean winning Olympic gold
On Valentine’s Day 1984 a British television audience of more than 24 million watched Torvill and Dean skate to Maurice Ravel’s Boléro at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. The performance brought them a gold medal and a seemingly permanent place in the hearts of the British nation. Thanks to the success of John Curry, […]
Rare book by J.R.R. Tolkien held by National Library of Scotland
A recently retired member of staff got in touch with the Library to ask if we were aware that we had a very rare book by J.R.R, Tolkien in the collections. The rare item is a booklet called “Songs for the Philologists” by J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon which was privately printed by the Department […]