At the end of 2023, we received a donation of architecture books from Roger Shrimplin, a Cambridge MA and practising architect. The books we had selected from the list Mr Shrimplin had sent to us were mainly in English, Spanish, and various East European languages, but among them was also this lovely 1985 book in Finnish and Swedish.
Back in the pandemic summer of 2020 I wrote about the Grand Tour experiences of various women who travelled to mainland Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this post I will look at the writings of some women who came to Britain from abroad around the same time, sharing some of their thoughts and impressions.
First is Sophie von La Roche (1730-1807), an important figure of the German Enlightenment, credited with being the first female novelist in Germany with her 1771 work Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim which was published by Christoph Martin Wieland, a cousin to whom she had previously been briefly engaged. She was also the grandmother of Bettina von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, siblings who were famous Romantic writers. By the 1780s, already in her 50s, La Roche’s youngest child had left home and she was able to travel more easily, first in 1784 to Switzerland, then to France in 1785 before a trip to the Netherlands and England (London and its environs) in 1786 which she wrote about in Tagebuch einer Reise durch Holland und England. Quotes below are taken from an English version of this: Sophie in London 1786 translated from the German by Clare Williams (484.d.93.3). Continue reading “The reverse Grand Tour: women travelling to Britain”
When I received a greetings card with a detail from a painting by Hans Gude (1825-1903), I was interested to read on the back that he was born in Oslo but lived much of his adult life in Germany, working as a professor of landscape painting in Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe and Berlin. Further research led to the discovery that he was one of a number of Norwegian painters to study in Germany and indeed one of several who settled there but who made regular trips back to Norway for inspiration. This blog post will highlight a few of these across the generations.
Continue reading “Norwegian painters heading south to Germany”
The Latvian city of Riga is hosting the 41st International Hanseatic Day this week and this gives us reason to take a closer look at the Hanseatic League and to highlight some of the many Hanseatic towns, while focusing attention, as ever, on relevant resources in the UL. All the places featured in this blog post are also UNESCO World Heritage sites, so there is a neat link with last month’s blog post.
Among the worldwide reactions to the killing of George Floyd, protests have taken place across Scandinavia. Much of the local media coverage of these events assumed a display of solidarity with the United States and perpetuated the misconception that racism was something belonging to other countries. However, the participants were also highlighting current problems of systemic racism in their own countries along with the need to face up to their colonial past. Continue reading “Some ebooks on colonialism and racism in Scandinavia”
While publications from and about Scandinavia are not a major area for the UL they nevertheless form a significant part of our collections. Over the years the library has been able to acquire books in Scandinavian languages on the arts, humanities and social sciences relating to the Scandinavian countries and it continues to do so. To illustrate the range of topics covered we are featuring in this post some of our most recent Scandinavian acquisitions. Continue reading “Scandinavian acquisitions at the University Library”
In the 1970s and 1980s books in the Scandinavian languages were strongly represented in the collections of the University Library, but since the University discontinued the teaching of these languages there has been less justification for acquiring material on the previous scale, with the notable exception of works to support teaching and research in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic. The volume of material acquired by the Library in the 21st century has been relatively small. Nevertheless our users do show a marked interest in Scandinavian titles, and in recent years there has been a noticeable increase in the number of recommendations covering archaeology, the fine arts, history and politics.
A recent blog post on Brazilian authors at the Paris book fair contrasted the numerous works of contemporary Brazilian literature in French with the far smaller number of titles which have appeared in English. It should be recognised, however, that the Society of Authors, with support from the Arts Council and a number of other funding bodies, administers prizes for published translations into English from Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. Not all prizes are awarded annually, however, which accounts for the different years in the list of awards which follows. It is standard procedure in our catalogue entries to give an access point for all literary translators as well as authors, as well as to provide the title of the original work wherever possible.
Vondel prize for Dutch translation
Winner in 2013: David Colmer for his translation of The misfortunates by Dimitri Verhulst (Portobello). 2012.8.1300
Original: De helaasheid der dingen. [On order]
Continue reading “European literature in English translation : recent prizewinners”
Whilst Finnish language items have never been energetically collected in the University Library, it has substantial collections of material in the other Scandinavian languages – Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. Two librarians with special responsibility for Scandinavian studies built up our collections over half a century. F.T.K. Caröe had been the principal planner of the massive operation by which the University Library was moved from its old to its present premises in 1934. He retired in 1963, and in his obituary in the Staff Bulletin in January 1971, Deputy Librarian John Oates paid tribute to Caröe’s interest in the Scandinavian literatures, “his deep knowledge of which he used indefatigably in the interests of the University Library”. His successor Dr J.B. Dodsworth, who was appointed in October 1965, carried on that tradition, but since Dr Dodsworth’s retirement in 1998, collection development in this area has significantly diminished.
Languages across Borders 