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Category: Quotations

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Animals in the Library

By Dr Jane Carroll

Once upon a time, someone nearly bought a stuffed tiger for the Early Printed Books Reading Room [when we were preparing a Long Room exhibition about India – Ed.]. Sadly, the tiger was never bought but, nevertheless, EPB is full of animals if you know where to look for them.

Last week, I brought a group of sophister students from the School of English to EPB to look at animal books, mainly from the Pollard Collection.

P1030857

Animals have been a part of children’s books since the very beginning. Among the first books printed for children – or at least one of the first books that we could expect child readers to enjoy – was William Caxton’s version of Aesop’s Fables printed in 1484.

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I remember that summer in Dublin

frontisAnne Plumptre was a writer of fiction and non-fiction, both with considerable political content, and a translator of drama, correspondence, travel writing and more. She was born in Norwich in 1760 and died there in 1818 but spent much time in London and three years in Napoleonic France. Her A Narrative of a three years’ residence in France … 1802–5 (1810) is a political enquiry into the views of Napoleon held by the French people, particularly those outside Paris. Plumptre came to the conclusion that he was not a monster but generally popular within France and was being misrepresented in Britain. She refuted with detailed descriptions many of the claims made by contemporary writers and advocated making peace with Napoleon, a view which was not popular at home. Continue reading “I remember that summer in Dublin”

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Quote of the day

“I am lately enterd into my Citadell in a disconsolate Mood, after having passd the better part of a sharp & bitter day in the Damps & mustly [sic] solitudes of the Library without either fire or any thing else to protect Me from the Injuries of the Snow that was constantly driving at the Windows & forceing it’s Entrance into that wretched Mansion, to the keeping of which I was this day sennight elect’d under an inauspiciary Planet.”

– George Berkeley, shortly after having been appointed to the office of Librarian in Trinity, as quoted by Peter Fox in his essay “They glory much in their library”, in Peter Fox (ed.), Treasures of the Library, Trinity College Dublin, (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1986).