Today we’re celebrating Midwifery Day with a look at its earliest bestseller. Just about 200 years ago, this book was published: Aristotle and midwifery – what’s that all about? And who was Culpeper? Let me take you right back to the 17th century where this story begins. At that time and well beyond, midwifery was […]
Category: 17th-century items
Rare Book Electronic Resources
When you register with the National Library of Scotland you have free access to an extensive range of electronic resources. If your main address is in Scotland you can also use many of these resources from any computer outwith the National Library simply by logging into your Library account. Among these resources are two that […]
Scottish Book Trade Index Revamped!
The Scottish Book Trade Index is now fully searchable! The new version has all the information from the old one, but you can now combine searches rather than looking for one word such as a name or trade. You can, for instance, find out how many booksellers there were in Brechin in the 18th century […]
‘Engraved in the Flesh’: Tattoos in History
On the ground floor of the Surgeons Hall Museum in Edinburgh there is a glass jar with a piece of skin. On this skin is the tattoo of a lady. This tattoo is discolored and disfigured by chemicals and age. Any other information is purely speculative. We don’t know who created the tattoo, who bore […]
A generous bequest to the Library
We have a new printed special and named collection available to consult in our Special Collections Reading Room: the Peter Sharratt Collection. This is a selection of 153 volumes from the library of the late Dr. Peter Sharratt (d. 2014), a former lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, who specialised in the French Renaissance and […]
Researching the ‘Chimney Map’
From March 2016 to March 2017, the Library’s Conservation Unit undertook an ambitious project to conserve an extremely fragmentary map, resulting in unprecedented amounts of publicity. The map, known as the ‘Chimney Map’ because it was originally thought to have been found inside a chimney, was discovered during renovations at a house in Aberdeenshire, and […]
Playing Shakespeare – curtain coming down very soon
Our Treasures exhibition – Playing Shakespeare: 400 years of great acting– part of this year’s world-wide commemoration of Shakespeare’s death in 1616, is coming to the end of its run, with only a few days left. Monday 13 June is your last chance to see four centuries of Shakespeare on stage.
Shakespeare’s First Folio
To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Library is displaying its copy of the First Folio on Friday 22 April, from 12:00 to 14:00. It is often said to be one of the most significant books ever printed – but why? William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April, 1564, and died there on April […]
Rembrandt’s etchings in the National Library’s collections
My name is Ivana Cernanova. I am currently completing an internship within Rare Books Collections as part of my MSc in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of Edinburgh. I have spent most of my time here at the National Library working on the Provenance Project, researching and identifying the previous ownership history of […]
Playing Shakespeare: 400 years of great acting – our new Treasures display
Ellen Terry and Henry Irving It is great to see the curtain go up on our new Treasures display – Playing Shakespeare: 400 years of great acting – our contribution to this year’s world-wide commemoration of Shakespeare’s death in 1616. I’ve been working on the display for the last few months, and as always it is […]