Keats: A thing of beauty is a joy forever

Posted on 30 October, 2015 by special-collections

Written by Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian

This weekend sees the 220th birthday of English Romantic poet John Keats.

The title of this post, perhaps made famous more recently by Mary Poppins, is taken from Keats’ work ‘Endymion’. The poem is based on the Greek myth in which the eponymous young shepherd attracts the attentions of moon goddess Selene. Although ‘Endymion’ was one of Keats’ more infamously criticized poems, it can also be considered a landmark in his career. Keats himself described Endymion as, “a test, a trail of my Powers of Imagination and chiefly of my invention which is a rare thing indeed…” (Gittings, 1971, p209)

The UMASCS library holds a rather lovely (and large!) edition of the poem from 1873 containing detailed engravings on steel by F. Joubert from paintings by E.J. Poynter:

Engraving from Keats’ Endymion

Another beautifully illustrated edition of Keats’ work is this 1903 text, part of the Red Letter Library series, published by The Gresham Publishing Company. It features delicate Art Nouveau illustrations by Talwin Morris:

Art Nouveau illustrations

The book is stored in our Printing Collection as an example of the ‘Glasgow Style’ which flourished at the end of the nineteenth century. For more information about Talwin Morris visit our exhibition page here.

To find out more about Keats, Gittings’ biography is available in the UMASCS open access book reference collections at call number: Mark Longmann Library 821.78 KEA/GIT

Sources: Gittings, R. (1971) John Keats. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books

Behind the scenes: getting to know readers old and new

Posted on 23 October, 2015 by special-collections

Hello, my name is Erika Delbecque and like Louise, I am new to UMASCS. I am, however, not new to the University of Reading; I worked here as a Trainee Liaison Librarian a few years ago. I have now returned to Reading as one of the two part-time UMASCS Librarians. In this role, I will be looking after the Special Collections and the MERL library.

These collections are incredibly varied and broad in scope, and I am really excited to be working with them. I have already come across a few fascinating items. For example, I encountered the following volume when I assisted at a class for third-year English students on Editing the Renaissance:

The title page of the 1640 edition of the works of Ben Jonson, with a portrait of the author on the opposite page

This is an edition of the works of the playwright Ben Jonson, printed by Richard Bishop in 1640. One early reader of this book has crossed out several words throughout the text. For example, this picture shows a fragment from Cynthia’s Revells, a satire first performed in 1600:

The words that are crossed out are faith, ‘fore heaven, and a pox on’t. In this way, this reader, who appears to have objected to swearing and mentioning religion in secular plays, has consistently removed all oaths and references to faith from the text in this play and several others in this volume. Although this reader did not actually write anything in this book, we can deduce a lot about him or her and the period he or she lived in by the blotches of ink that are scattered throughout the book.

Traces of previous readers like this one remind us of a book’s journey before it reached its place on the shelves at UMASCS. Starting at the printer’s office in 1640, this book travelled through the ages on a journey from owner to owner, before it was presented to the University of Reading by Professor D. J. Gordon in 1960. In this way, the traces that previous readers left behind can provide fascinating glimpses into the history of a book. They are one of the things that make being a Special Collections Librarian so exciting.

Behind the Scenes: A Tour of Treasures!

Posted on 21 October, 2015 by special-collections

Hello! My name is Louise Cowan and I’m a new member of staff here at UMASCS. Although my official role is ‘Trainee Liaison Librarian’ and I will mostly be based at the University Library at Whiteknights Campus, I am excited to be spending one day a week working with the Special Collections team to support and contribute to their fantastic social media channels!

Today was my first official day and as part of my induction I was treated to a behind the scenes tour by UMASCS Librarian, Fiona Melhuish.

The special collections store at UMASCS

The large store rooms are amazing treasure troves of rare books full of beautiful illustrations, archives of documents with fascinating stories, and unique ephemeral collections.

As an MA graduate in Children’s Literature one of my favourites from today’s tour was the popular Children’s Collection; in particular, this beautiful copy of ‘Peter and Wendy’, illustrated by Mabel Lucie Attwell:

Peter and Wendy by J.M.Barrie

I also love the John Lewis Printing Collection which consists of roughly 20,000 items illustrating the history of printing from the fifteenth century to the present. This little Christmas card is a treat:

Group XI : 3 Juvenile : c1850-

And as it is officially #MusGif Day I couldn’t resist making a Gif from this charming trio of cats:

Group XI : 3 Juvenile : c1850-

I’m really looking forward to delving in, learning more and sharing the collections with you. Make sure you follow us on Twitter: @UniRdg_SpecColl and Instagram: @unirdg_collections to keep up-to-date!

From Devon to Derbyshire, the Shell Guides to Great Britain

Posted on 21 August, 2015 by special-collections

This blog post first appeared earlier this week on Our Country Lives: the new MERL blog. The Shell Guides we already hold mentioned below are part of our Printing Collection. Written by Claire Wooldridge, Project Senior Library Assistant: Landscape Institute.

Shell Guides on the shelf

The Shell Guides, published between 1934 and 1984, were designed to be light hearted but engaging guide books to the countryside and historical sites of Great Britain for the growing number of mid twentieth century car owners. Published by the Architectural Press and funded by Shell-Mex (more driving = more fuel…) the Shell Guides were intended to tag along with day-trippers, being less than 50 pages long they were ideal for a glove compartment. Bold and visual, each guide contains an introduction to the area covered and descriptions of each place or landmark to be found there.

From Dorset to Derbyshire, Cambridgeshire to Cornwall, the guides covered most regions of Great Britain. Different regions were studied by different writers, including a host of well know names including John Piper (artist, 1903-1992, writer of Oxfordshire published in 1938) and Paul Nash (artist and painter, 1889-1947, writer of Dorset published in 1935). Paul Nash went to live in Swanage for a year to work on the book, suffering from shellshock from WW1, this was an opportunity for Nash to find peace in the countryside. Sir John Betjeman (poet, writer and broadcaster, 1906-1984) edited the series and also contributed several titles, most notably Cornwall (1934).

Selection of Shell Guide covers

We received several editions of the Shell Guides from the Landscape Institute library, some which were new to us and some which are different editions of titles we already hold. Several of these were presented by Shell-Mex and B. P. Ltd to the Landscape Institute. These new additions to the collection will sit alongside our existing ones in our Printing Collection (part of our Special Collections) with Landscape Institute provenance recorded in the catalogue records.

Shell-Mex presentation book plate in Shell guides received from the LI library

The guides have an enduring popularity (such as being the focus of books and two TV series, one featuring Richard Wilson and another with David Heathcote, a cultural historian who has written about the Shell Guides) and are very collectable today. Thirteen Shell Guides were published before the outbreak of WW2 and were reissued after the war. Different editions within the Shell Guides series, with contemporary typography and images, were published in later decades – making collecting all the different copies something of a challenge! The Shell Guides from the Landscape Institute Collections make a wonderful addition to our existing holdings.

For more information see David Heathcote’s (2010) A Shell eye on Britain: The Shell County Guides 1934-1984 (Libri).

‘What does a poet need to be successful?’: Alun Lewis (1915-1944) in the spotlight

Posted on 15 July, 2015 by special-collections

This post comes from Brian Ryder, one of our volunteers here at Special Collections. Brian’s history with Reading collections is a long one; he used to be one of our project cataloguers and is now working his way through the Routledge & Kegan Paul archive. Here, upon the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alun Lewis, using examples from our special collections archives, Brian tells the fascinating tale of Welsh war poet Alun Lewis (1915-1944) and asks ‘what does a poet need to be successful?’.

Alun Lewis material

Alun Lewis, one of the foremost poets of World War II, was born one hundred years ago this month and his centenary was marked by the BBC with a dramatization of his short life on Radio 4. He was born into a family from a Welsh mining community in which his father was the only one of four brothers who did not spend his working life down the mines – becoming instead a schoolteacher and later Director of Education for Aberdare. Alun won a scholarship to a boarding school where he was extremely unhappy but where he began to write poetry and remained determined to work hard and escape the pits as his father had done. After university he followed his father into teaching but in the spring of 1940, wanting “to experience life in as many phases as I’m capable of”, he enlisted in the army, writing to a friend that:

“I’m not going to kill. Be killed perhaps, instead”.

In May 1941 publisher George Allen & Unwin, whose archive is held by the university, having seen his poetry and short stories appear in newspapers and periodicals, wrote to Lewis saying that they would be interested in seeing his future work with a view to publication. He wrote back to them with enthusiasm, providing a full list of his published work and throwing in for good measure a copy of Caseg Press Broadsheet No. 1 (shown below), first of a series initiated by Lewis and his friend John Petts with poems by one and woodcuts by the other (AUC 117/7). The more they saw of his writing the more keen Allen & Unwin were to become his publisher and they began in 1942 with both Raiders’ dawn (poetry) and The last inspection (short stories).

Alun Lewis (AUC 117/7).

In July 1941 Lewis married Gweno Ellis, also a school teacher. After her husband’s war service moved him, late in 1942, from the home front to India with the prospect of active service in Burma against the Japanese, Gweno played a significant role in seeing her husband’s literary output pass smoothly through the publishing process.

When he became entitled to a few days’ leave in July 1943 Lewis presented himself at the home in the Nilgiri hills of Dr Wallace Aykroyd, Director of the Nutrition Research Laboratories in nearby Coonor, and his wife Freda who offered open house to British military and nursing personnel stationed in the area. Alun found that Dr Aykroyd was away at a Conference on Food and Agriculture in Hot Springs, Virginia but was none the less made welcome by his wife with whom he fell instantly in love. The two continued to meet when circumstances permitted and when they were apart exchanged frequent letters for the rest of that year and into 1944.

Early in 1944 Lewis was posted to the north Burma coast and prepared for action against the Japanese. He wrote his last letter to his publisher on 23 January 1944 with the post script: (AUC 197/6)

“If I should become a casualty, all proceeds from my books will go to my wife … Please send her the proofs: I doubt whether I’ll be here then.”

Alun Lewis (AUC 197/6).

On March 5 he was shot in the head with a round from his own revolver; he died six hours later and was buried that day. An immediate court of enquiry concluded that the death had been accidental but it now seems to be widely accepted that it was suicide. Among the reasons for believing that this revised view was correct were that: Alun had recently had a bout with malaria which had left him prone to depression; he and Freda are reported to have worried that their affair would cause distress to both spouses; his writings from that time suggest a rather desperate state of mind; and the prospect of his first experience of action at the front line conflicted badly with his pacifist inclinations.

Alun Lewis (AUC 117/7).

Gweno grieved in the company of Alun’s parents but did not neglect the demands of her late husband’spublishing commitments, starting with Ha! Ha! Among the trumpets: poems in transit (Allen & Unwin, 1945) which carried a foreword by World War I poet Robert Graves whose advice and encouragement Lewis had enjoyed although the two never actually met. After that she set to on the publication of Alun’s letters to her which became Letters from India (Penmark Press, 1946) followed by In the green tree (Allen & Unwin, 1948) containing short stories, a selection of his letters – mainly to Gweno but including some to his parents – and illustrations by John Petts.

The Aykroyds left India after the war ended and Wallace spent the rest of his working life in various academic posts in England. He wrote a number of books, the last of which was The conquest of famine (Chatto & Windus, 1974). This is another imprint whose archive is held by the university and the file for this title shows that Dr Aykroyd died in 1979 when he and his wife were living together in Woodstock, Oxfordshire. Freda lived on to the age of ninety-five and a volume of Alun’s letters to her, which she had prepared for publication during her seventies, was issued the year after her death (A cypress walk: Enitharmon, 2006). Gweno Lewis is still listed as the copyright holder for Alun’s works.

What does a poet need to be successful? It must help to be good at seeking, and being prepared to accept, the advice of the leading poets of the day as Lewis showed he was, not just with Robert Graves but with Herbert Read, Stephen Spender, and others. He also met the challenges of versifying the great subjects of life, death, love and war. Perhaps most lucky of all he had both a widow and a lover keeping his flame alive over so many years.

See our Special Collections website for more information.

Not strictly ballroom: Kon-Tiki and dancing the hula with Princess Margaret

Posted on 22 January, 2015 by special-collections

In 1948, Philip Unwin of publishers George Allen & Unwin went on holiday with his family to Norway and broke the ‘tedium’ of endless days of leisure by pleasing his hyperactive uncle and boss Stanley Unwin, the firm’s founder, by visiting Oslo’s leading publisher. A result of this initiative was the offer of first refusal for English language rights in The Kon-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl – the story of six men, led by the author, who constructed a raft from balsa trunks and sailed for 100 days and 6,000 kilometres from Peru to the Polynesian islands. The object of this exercise was to test Heyerdahl’s theory that in pre-Columbian times it was South American Indians who had first populated these islands.

A colourised photo of Kon-Tiki

The English translation, by F.H. Lyon, was completed in the summer of 1949 and the book was published on 31 March 1950. Heyerdahl wrote, and spoke, excellent English and threw himself into a punishing series of events to launch the book in London. He was helped in this task by having a film to show about the expedition – a compilation of footage taken on the journey – which the following year won an Oscar for best documentary. No publisher had been found for the book in the United States but the availability of their English translation enabled Allen & Unwin to secure one. Translations into other languages also appeared around the world, several of them made from Lyon’s English edition rather than from the original Norwegian.

The book became a bestseller; the first Allen & Unwin had ever had during their thirty-five year existence. In this it had a pace-maker in the equally successful The Wooden Horse by Eric Williams, a World War II escape story, published a few months earlier by Collins; both claimed worldwide sales of a million copies at about the same time. Stanley Unwin was generous with the immense profits made by the book, giving a Christmas bonus to everyone inside the firm and to all those outside it, like F.H. Lyon, who had played a part in the book’s success. He also set up a company pension scheme although, just as there had been only one bestseller in the firm’s first thirty-five years, there had only been one employee to have retired – this being the company secretary Spencer Stallybrass, and he waited until he was eighty to do so.

Two other members of Kon-Tiki’s crew also became authors and were published by Allen & Unwin. Erik Hesselberg, the team’s navigator and artist, illustrated his own amusing account of the expedition and Bengt Danielsson, like Heyerdahl an anthropologist, wrote several successful books including The Happy Island about Raroia, upon which Kon-Tiki had beached at the end of its voyage. Other Norwegian authors, noting what Allen & Unwin had done for their literary compatriots, offered them their works. All in all Philip Unwin’s holiday in Norway had resulted in his uncle’s firm joining the big league of British publishers.

Authors’ correspondence with their publishers rarely concerns more than routine matters of production and publicity, but Heyerdahl and Philip Unwin became firm friends and some of Thor’s letters contain interesting and amusing reports of his life. On one occasion in 1953 Heyerdahl was among two hundred guests at the British Embassy in Oslo for a ‘gala with ball’ at which Princess Margaret was the guest of honour. The ambassador and his wife, along with Heyerdahl and the Princess, dined separately; ‘with much champagne and nobody to disturb us, we got very friendly and had a lot of fun. THEN it happened!’ It turned out that Heyerdahl was to open the dancing by partnering the Princess. While he protested that he had never danced anything, apart from the hula-hula and Indian war dances during his travels around the world, the band struck up with a samba and the Princess said, ‘If you do not want to dance samba with me, then I shall have to dance hula with you!’ ‘By then I was left with no choice, everybody there waiting for us to get going, I closed my eyes and pushed the Princess onto the big open floor and jumped around in what according to the music was supposed to be a samba!’

At the end of what Thor described as her very well-received visit to Norway the Princess returned to London for her sister’s coronation. On the day after that she wrote to Heyerdahl and told him she still did not believe that he did not dance while Philip Unwin reported to him that the British popular papers were full ‘of your prowess on the dance floor’ in their accounts of the ball at the embassy.

During his lifetime Heyerdahl did not give up on his theory about the origins of the first settlers on the Polynesian Islands but nor was it generally accepted. However, in 2011 DNA testing did reveal that genetic links could be made between today’s islanders and South Americans while a Norwegian feature film simply entitled Kon-Tiki was nominated for both Academy and Golden Globe awards in 2012. Heyerdahl and his expedition are not forgotten.

–Brian Ryder, in memory of David and Periwinkle Unwin, good friends of the archive. David Unwin (1918-2010) was the elder son of publisher Sir Stanley Unwin and became a successful children’s author under the pseudonym David Severn. From childhood he had always appeared to be in poor health but after his marriage to Periwinkle, a niece of the author A.P. Herbert, his health greatly improved and he outlived his apparently more robust and younger siblings. He did not spend much of his working life directly employed by the firm but they did make use of his photographic and typographic skills and also his many enthusiasms including those for art, film, horticulture and the countryside in which fields he was often asked to supply reader’s reports. After his brother Rayner, then in charge of Allen & Unwin, deposited its archive with the University David and Periwinkle paid visits to see how it was housed and what gems I, the cataloguer, had found. Later, they occasionally invited me to visit them for lunch after which I usually found myself returning with donations of books and other items relevant to the Unwin publishing and family collections. After David died Periwinkle deposited his publishing correspondence with us along with volumes from his library which were of value to our children’s literature collection. Sadly she died just before Christmas 2014.

Garlands of Gold and Circles of Pearls: The Rosalind Laker Collection

Posted on 6 November, 2014 by special-collections

Written by Claire Wooldridge, UMASCS Graduate Trainee

I have recently finished cataloguing a wonderful collection of books by the historical novelist Rosalind Laker (1921-2012). Her book collection can be searched on our online catalogue and a handlist of her archival collection has been created.

Rosalind Laker Collection, spines

Laker’s inspiration for her historical romance novels was drawn from a multitude of time periods and historical figures, often with a personal connection. Born in Bognor Regis, Laker’s love of her home county of West Sussex resonated through her novels. Bognor was the setting for her first novel Sovereign’s Key (Hale, 1970) and the Royal Pavilion in Brighton took centre stage in The Sugar Pavilion (Doubleday, 1993).

In 1944 Laker met Inge Øvstedal when he was stationed at Pagham with the Royal Norwegian Air Force. They married in 1945 and moved to Norway in 1946. It is for this reason that Norway also features in several of Laker’s novels. This Shining Land (Doubleday, 1984) draws on the activities of the Norwegian resistance following the brutal invasion of Norway by the Nazis in WWII, a dramatic time period which also featured as the setting of The Fragile Hour (Severn House, 1996) and The House by the Fjord (Severn House, 2011).

Rosalind Laker Collection, book covers

As you may have already noted the name ‘Rosalind Laker’ was in fact a pseudonym, with Laker’s real name being Barbara Øvstedal. Rosalind Laker was in fact the name of Øvstedal’s grandmother. Laker was the name Øvstedal most commonly wrote under, also publishing works under the names Barbara Paul and Barbara Douglas.

This is lovely collection of titles, which sits well alongside our Mills & Boon collection. What makes the collection extra special is that these were Laker’s own copies of her works, sometimes beautifully bound and boxed editions such as an edition of To Dance with Kings (Doubleday, 1988) which was presented to Laker by the publisher as the title had topped their bestsellers list.

In many cases Laker also covered the front and back covers of her books with illustrations, postcards and newspaper clippings which were relevant to the story. These additions give a real insight into Laker’s process of conceiving and writing the novels and how her personal interest in the subject matter continued beyond publication.

In the image below from the front end pages of her edition The Golden Tulip (Doubleday, 1991) you can see a postcard of Vermeer’s The Love Letter (1666), to whom the heroine of the novel is apprenticed. Also in her edition of The Fortuny Gown (Doubleday, 1995, also published under the title Orchids and Diamonds) Laker paste down her own photographs taken during trips to Venice, where the novel featuring the Spanish designer Fortuny is set.

Rosalind Laker Collection, illustrations

Rosalind Laker Collection, photos

Further information about the collection and Rosalind Laker can be found here.

Favourite finds: Eric Partridge and his war of words

Posted on 26 August, 2014 by special-collections

From September 1943 until January 1945 A/C [Aircraftman] Eric Partridge was a clerk in the RAF living and working in Wantage Hall, a hall of residence requisitioned from Reading University.

Eric Partridge, lexicographer, in 1971, on a visit to Devon (photo by G88keeper, Wikimedia)

Born in 1894 in New Zealand, Eric moved with his family to Australia in 1907. In 1915 he joined the Australian army and saw active service with the Anzacs in Gallipoli and on the western front. In the 1920s he came to England and taught at a school in Lancashire and the universities of Manchester and London before abandoning teaching to become a ‘man of letters’ and owner of a publishing house with the imprint Scholartis Press. One of its early publications – with the liberal use of asterisks – was Songs and slang of the British soldier which he co-edited with John Brophy using material they had accumulated during their own war service. The publishing house foundered in the depression but by the outbreak of World War II Partridge had established a reputation as a lexicographer and etymologist only for his main publisher – George Routledge – to be taken aback when in September 1940 he enlisted in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps.

On 7 February 1941 he wrote to Cecil Franklin, managing director of Routledge, ‘I now have a commission in the Army Education Corps. … The enclosed pamphlet … concerns a subject dear to me; and it is needed. … If you’ll publish it before the end of March [it will] enable me to realize something on it in the [royalties] cheque you send me in May, for I badly need the money.’ To which Franklin replied, ‘I have read your pamphlet, ‘The teaching of English in His Majesty’s forces’, but I am very sorry that we cannot undertake its publication. We … cannot afford, at the present moment, to put money into … a pamphlet which is bound to be a failure.’

On 23 April 1941 Franklin felt obliged to write to Partridge again about his pamphlet: ‘May I congratulate you on The teaching of English in H.M forces? I presume you saw the leading article in The Times yesterday; and I understand there is an article on it in The Telegraph today. It is quite possible that we may get requests for copies.’ Indeed they did, for a couple of months’ later Routledge’s sales director was writing to Partridge to admit that ‘hardly a day goes by without an enquiry for your [pamphlet]. Have you any spare copies at all?’

This incident made no difference to the intransigence shown by Routledge in responding to Partridge’s suggestions for new books or for the reprinting of his back-list; all were declined, mainly on the grounds that they only had paper – which was rationed – for books they considered more important to the war effort. Almost every one of Partridge’s letters for the rest of the war protested his financial difficulties.

A letter from Partridge to his publishers asking that a new edition of his Dictionary of Cliches be issued

Partridge became a civilian again in January 1942, his reasons for this given to his publisher being health (he had recently told them of an operation for piles) and domestic. But on 31 August of that year he wrote to Franklin to say, ‘Are you perhaps forgetting that I must work for a living? Your rejection of my ideas renders it probable that, in three, or even two weeks’ time I shall be obliged to re-enlist in the Army (as a private) or to enlist in the RAF (ditto).’ War Office bureaucracy ensured that it took until December 1942 for him to be found in the RAF as a clerk, general duties.

During his later service when at Wantage Hall, Reading he would have been well-placed in any free time he had during the working week to check on Routledge’s claims to be unable to obtain paper for his works because the Paper Control Office of the Ministry of Supply was located in the Great Western Hotel near Reading railway station; however, his letters to Routledge contain no mention of his having done so. On leaving Reading, Partridge was to be found working in a Public Relations Office at the Air Ministry in Whitehall where he remained until demob in July 1945.

What good came from Partridge’s time in the forces? What made him enlist? Just one brief sentence in a letter to Routledge may give a clue – ‘My ears are open for R.A.F. slang and colloquialisms.’ In 1948 Secker & Warburg published A dictionary of Forces’ slang 1939-1945, edited, and the air force slang contributed by, Eric Partridge.

The University of Reading’s collections hold a great deal of Partridge’s correspondence. For more information, please see our catalogue or our records of British printing and publishing firms.

New Featured Item: Estienne’s La dissection des parties du corps humain

Posted on 18 August, 2014 by special-collections

Charles Estienne, La dissection des parties du corps humain divisee en trois livres. Paris: chez Simon de Colines, 1546.

Item from the Cole Library COLE–X092F/02, University of Reading Special Collections Services.

Plate from Estienne’s ‘La Dissection’ depicting dissection of the uterus, showing twin foetuses.

Charles Estienne’s La dissection des parties du corps humain is one of the great illustrated anatomical works of the sixteenth century. It offers a fine example of the accomplishments and innovations of the Parisian printing houses of this period, and its full-page woodcuts have fascinated readers to this day.

To read about this fascinating publication, see our newest featured item by Erika Delbecque (former Liaison Librarian for Pharmacy and Mathematics) on our website.

Celebrating the hedgehog: National Hedgehog Awareness Week

Posted on 6 May, 2014 by special-collections

Black and white photograph of a hedgehog looking for food (John Tarlton, P TAR PH3/2/8/11/55)

It has been brought to our attention that this is National Hedgehog Awareness Week – and as we’re attached to the Museum of English Rural Life, it’s not really something we can ignore (and in any case, who would want to?)! Of course one of the earliest known bookplates is a representation of a hedgehog (ca. 1450, Johannes Knabensberg), so hedgehogs hold some weight here in rare books…

Although the MERL collections turn up a handful of lovely hedgehog photos (the hedgehog above is taken from the collections of countryside photographer John Tarlton), our natural history and children’s collections also contain their fair share of the spiny creatures, and we thought we’d share a couple with you. Enjoy!

Quipic the Hedgehog

Above: Quipic the Hedgehog (by Lida, illustrated by ‘Rojan’) is one of our favourites. Originally published in Paris in 1937 as Quipic le hérisson, the book is part of Père Castor’s wild animal series, which includes counterparts Mischief the Squirrel, Scaf the Seal and Frou the hare.

Mr and Mrs Hedgehog, by Patricia Ardley

Above: The Children’s Collection also turns up the tales of Mr Horace Hedgehog and Mr and Mrs Hedgehog, written by Patricia Ardley and illustrated by EC Ardley. Horace is a young bachelor hedgehog who marries and plans to lead a lifes of leisure – but encounters adventures along the way.

Beckett, Books and Biscuits: University of Reading Special Collections

Category Archives: Favourite Finds