Cambridge University Library is delighted to announce the launch of the Liberation Collection Visiting Scholar Programme. Generously supported by the Penchant Foundation, this new initiative will enable a Visiting Scholar to spend between two and four months undertaking research focused on the Chadwyck-Healey Liberation Collection held at Cambridge University Library.
This programme is a collaboration between the University Library Research Institute and Clare Hall, a graduate college located at the heart of the University of Cambridge, renowned for its informal approach to college life and its international diversity. The maximum value of the scholarship is £6000 for UK-based applicants and £7000 for international applicants.
Bulletin municipal. Numéro spécial consacré à la Libération. Ville de Toulouse, Octobre 1944. Liberation.a.235 Special issue of the city bulletin of Toulouse published after the liberation of the city in August 1944.
We are delighted to share the new webpage designed by the University Library Research Institute (ULRI), for the AHRC-funded doctoral award on France and the Second World War, a collaborative project of the Open University and Cambridge University Library.
Sophie is using material from the Chadwyck-Healey Liberation Collection and the abundant press of the Liberation period to examine humorous drawings in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War in France (1944-46). Her project aims to examine visual humour’s forms, functions, and limits at a time when the French had to negotiate the delicate post-war transition back to peace. Sophie’s research focuses on how humour served to redefine the French nation in the early post-war period and how different influences on the drawings encouraged or stifled particular voices.
In this post we will introduce the last addition to our series of posts on Latin American handmade books. We have been developing Cambridge’s cartonera collection since 2013. Ten years, various blog posts and events, a research project collaboration, a book chapter contribution and 271 books later the collection offers a broad panorama of the production of unique books made by hand often in a context of material scarcity and always channelling voices outside of the mainstream.
The bulk of the collection is represented by cartonera books, categorised as items made with hand painted cardboard covers and part of the big publishing movement that originated from Eloisa Cartonera in Argentina in 2003 and which chiefly came to the Library through the AHRC funded project “Cartonera Publishing: Relations, Meaning and Community in Movement project”. It is however important to point out that, of course, cartonera were not the first ever handmade books produced in Latin America and it was always our intention to give context to this collection by also purchasing contextual material that would provide examples of those publishers that came before and after, as a way to depict the wide and rich picture of Latin American independent publishing. It is with that intention in mind that the collection includes examples of Taller Leñateros from Mexico and of Ediciones Vigía from Cuba, which started their activities in the 1970’s and 1980’s, respectively.
The last additions to the collection, and the focus of this blogpost, are 11 books published by Ediciones Arroyo, based in Arroyo Leyes, a village in the province of Santa Fe, in the heart of Argentina’s vast and intensively farmed lands. Ediciones Arroyo was funded by Alejandra Bosch in 2016 and she openly recognizes the influence the cartonera movement had in its creation. It does share many characteristics with cartonera books: they are handmade, they re-utilise otherwise wasted material and they publish mainly authors not known outside of the dominant media. However, Ediciones Arroyo follow their very own creative path: their covers are made by using cleaned milk cartons and sachets (inside-out), using a characteristic collage of coloured vinyl letters to add titles or authors’ names in their covers; they publish poetry written exclusively by authors from the provinces and they are all handmade and illustrated by Alejandra and her son, Julian Bosch, in their home in Arroyo Leyes, for zero profit. But to think that the publisher works in distant isolation would be a mistake. As well as publishing, Alejandra and Julian organise a yearly poetry festival in Arroyo Leyes in close and enthusiastic collaboration with local supporters (organisations that offer venues, businesses that cater for food, neighbours that offer free accommodation). The festival gathers poets from around the country, who in turn feed into the publishing selections, by writing poems and often contributing financially to the project and also by sending milk sachets and cartons by post to contribute to the material production of the chapbooks. These are donated by village neighbours too, as a single household milk consumption couldn’t possibly supply such a prolific publisher!
In a country where most of the cultural and political powers reside in the capital city of Buenos Aires, having a very active and creative independent publisher building strong artistic, social and affective networks from an “anonymous” village in a monotonously landscaped region otherwise dominated by the push to produce “high value goods” (Santa Fe province is Argentina’s major OGM soy exporter), is of major significance. In a very interesting article, Alejandra questions the idea of “being at the margins”:
“[…] I am not in a margin; I am at the centre. This is the political decision I have taken when it comes to manage [cultural activities]: to feel that I am at the centre of a territory that irradiates. If we place ourselves and accept that we work, write, publish and manage at the margins, then we are facilitating that conflict […] Arroyo Leyes is the centre of a world that many people have built together and that is being replicated in many other areas of the country.”
Our Library is the only library in the UK holding items by Ediciones Arroyo. We are extremely grateful to their creators and to our local bookseller, García Cambeiro, who facilitated their acquisition. Our selection aims to represent a small but hopefully faithful sample of the world they continue to create; we have chosen poets from different Argentine provinces:
Fernando Callero (Entre Ríos)
Francisco Bitar and Larisa Cumin (Santa Fe)
Aníbal Costilla (Santiago del Estero)
Micaela Godoy (La Rioja)
Dafne Pidemunt, Tamara Pradon and Fernando Noy (Río Negro)
Walter Lezcano and Gustavo Tisocco (Corrientes)
They are available to consult in the Rare Books reading room. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us: hispanic@lib.cam.ac.uk.
Mon, 20 Nov 2023 09:15 – 18:30 (French Institute, 17 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2DT)
This event brings together leading specialists from academia, libraries and the book trade to explore French printed, archival, and digital collections in all their richness and diversity from across the United Kingdom. Found in major public institutions as well as hidden in lesser-known collections, they reflect the British Isles’ continuous engagement with France. Themes include collections of caricatures; the Second World War; Artists’ Books; Anglo-French collectors and their collections; and the French community in Britain. We will also consider how libraries shape research, and how they can play a role in cultural diplomacy. The event, which will provide a unique opportunity to foster the interpretation, promotion, and enjoyment of these collections, is aimed at a wide audience and will include ample time for discussion and networking. Continue reading “Event “French Collections in UK Libraries: Discovery, Research, Dissemination” at the Institut Français (London)”→
Hans Baldung Grien’s woodcut from 1515 edition, reproduced on title page of 748:25.c.95.13
In Britain the character of Robin Hood is a well-known folklore figure. An equivalent figure in Germany might be Till Eulenspiegel, perhaps best known here from Richard Strauss’s tone poem Till Eulenspiegel’s merry pranks. As with Robin Hood there is fascination around the question of whether he is a fictional character or a real historical person. What we do know is that the earliest version of the Till Eulenspiegel story was published in the early 16th century in German, and this was followed by many editions and translations (see Further reading below for some facsimile editions of early works). The story has continued to be a popular one and this post will feature some different illustrated versions in our collections.
Till is often depicted with an owl and a mirror (as the name literally means owl-mirror). Here are a few more examples (click on each one to see enlarged version):
Cambridge University Library is delighted to have received an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA) and invites applications for PhD studentships, starting in October 2024. The successful PhD candidate will receive funding to work on the Spanish chapbooks collections, as part of the Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) with the University of Oxford.
I recently completed cataloguing work on a collection of volumes of pamphlets on chiefly German political and economic history themes. These 560 pamphlets were collected and bound into 60 volumes by the economic historian Dr. William Otto Henderson and reflect his research interests. After his death they were part of a donation presented to the University Library in the 1990s by Downing College, Henderson’s undergraduate college. It was only more recently that departmental staff determined a way to deal with the volumes that allows all their contents to be discoverable in the catalogue without needing to use the dreaded “bound-with” workflow that would have involved 560 separate but interlinked records and an unfeasible amount of work.
One short pamphlet, The Nazi terror: a record by H.N. Brailsford, particularly caught my eye as I discovered that it dated from April 1933, not long after the Nazis came to power. Written for the Socialist League, it was not based on a personal visit to Germany but rather on information derived from established newspapers such as The Times and the ManchesterGuardian. Continue reading “H. N. Brailsford: a complicated progressive”→
A few months ago, we were delighted to welcome two visitors from Haiti to Cambridge University Library: Jean-Claude Legagneur, painter and director of the Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien, and the historian and writer Daniel Supplice. They were invited to Cambridge by colleagues from the Fitzwilliam Museum, in preparation for the forthcoming Black Atlantic exhibition, and were able to meet colleagues from the Modern Languages and History faculty. This gave us the opportunity to exhibit some of Cambridge University Library’s holdings related to Haiti, including current publications focusing on Haitian literature and art, in Creole and French, but also English and Spanish (academic works, along with other material, such as children picture books translated into Haitian Creole, from the Legal Deposit collections). The display included books published in Haiti (this year we added a new supplier, Libros de Barlovento), the UK, France, Canada, etc., and works about the history of the island (aspects of its earlier history; studies of Taíno archaeological remains and the culture of this indigenous Caribbean people; or later emblematic political figures, such as Toussaint Louverture). The visit of Cambridge UL was followed by a tour of the Wren Library at Trinity College with a display of livres d’artistes from its Kessler collection.
Last year the film director Edgar Reitz celebrated his 90th birthday. He is best known for his series Heimat which charts the lives of a family in the Hunsrück region of Germany throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. To mark his 90th birthday the autobiography Filmzeit, Lebenszeit (C219.c.2371) was published in October 2022 in which Reitz offers us a detailed insight into his development as a film director. I was particularly interested in the chapters covering his early career as I had recently cataloged a brochure (CCA.60.792) documenting the fascinating multi-media project “VariaVision” from 1965. This brochure is part of the library of Walter Schobert, former director of the Filmmuseum Frankfurt, which the University Library received as a donation and is a unique resource for film studies. Continue reading “Edgar Reitz – VariaVision “→
Languages across Borders 