In amongst the riches of the Italian material held at The London Library, the collection of Per Nozze (literally “for a wedding”) deserves a special mention. Outside Italy this collection of epithalamia – writings published on the occasion of marriage – is a unique resource with a significance comparing only to those collections of Nozze or Per Nozzeheld at the Central National Library of Florence and the State Library of Berlin.

The origins of nuptialia – literary compositions in verse or prose written and printed to celebrate a wedding – might be traced back to classical times. As poetic compositions, nuptialia were popular in Latin literature, continuing the Italic tradition of rustic verses and poems, like thefescennini, the contents of which could be bawdy or openly licentious. The tradition of Per Nozze, publications presented as gifts and mementos to the spouses – for reasons which have yet to be properly investigated – would appear to have been an almost exclusively Italian custom. Usually printed in limited editions and for private circulation, these volumes or pamphlets of congratulatory verses, were often made without any expense being spared in their delightfully decorated appearance. Whilst some have been preserved in libraries on account of their importance or fine bindings, a great number were printed on poor quality paper, even on loose sheets, and by amateur printers. These works, due to their ephemeral and transitory nature, are now very scarce or no longer extant.

Eminent writers and scholars composed writings Per Nozze, amongst them: Carlo Goldoni, Giuseppe Parini, Giacomo Leopardi and Giosuè Carducci.

Written or compiled to mark the occasion of a wedding, epithalamia are not simply celebratory poems about married love. Compositions Per Nozze, often in prose, cover a remarkable and highly miscellaneous variety of subjects – from history and philosophy, to art, architecture and even scientific fields. These can represent serious contributions to their respective discipline, of lasting merit. Additionally, writings Per Nozze and their contents, can provide invaluable material in the analysis of cultural and social history and life of Italian society, with particular relevance to local events.

The eighteenth-century witnessed a plethoric production of Per Nozze, especially driven by the literary output of the numerous learned academies at the time popular throughout the Italian peninsula. Members of the Accademia degli Arcadi, founded in Rome in 1690, for example, were particularly prolific, as were the so-called frugonianipoets. Writings Per Nozze were printed by the thousand during the nineteenth-century. This sizeable production – which had already generated the veiled irony of Parini in his well-known Ode per nozze – prompted severe criticism. Venetian polymath Francesco Algarotti complained of an “incredible dysentery of sonnets”. French novelist Stendhal, having observed that Italy had faltered in its march towards progress, sarcastically posed the question: “l’Italie se remettra-t-elle à faire des sonnets imprimés sur du satin rose pour les jours de noces?” Several writers, nevertheless, encouraged this tradition. In 1899, man of letters, Luigi Settembrini wrote: “… the custom persists to the present day in every Italian city, this is laudable, and we hope it will last forever”.

The so-called Nozze collection at The London Library – the only UK-based institution to hold this material in such quantity – amounts to over 2,500 pamphlets, bound together in 144 volumes and boxes numbered in sequence and divided into “Poetry”, “Prose” and “Miscellanea”, according to their content. This discrete collection was put together patiently by former Librarian Charles Hagberg Wright and some of the works held would appear to be lacking in Italian libraries. The earliest work held is the fascinating Feste delle nozze del Serenissimo Don Francesco Medici Gran Duca di Toscana et della Sereniss. Sua consorte la Sig. Bianca Cappello, by Raffaello Gualteretto printed at Florence, and dated 1579. Several items feature fine engravings and printers’ devices, and, in some cases, the original highly decorative publisher’s bindings or paper wrappers have been preserved. Some are decorated with elaborate woodcuts or stencil-printed armorial design or embossed patterns. Conspicuously, in a few cases, the text is printed on charming pale blue leaves of paper. Within the collection, a number of publications were not intended to celebrate marriage but rather different occasions, such as all kinds of anniversaries, the taking of vows and promotion to high office. These, more correctly, are often referred to as ingressi, gratulatorie, or monacazioni, also known asNozze in Cristo.

The Library’s holdings would seem to originate mainly from the northern regions of Italy, Venice and the Veneto area in particular. However there are a number of eighteenth-century Per Nozzepublications from Lucca as well as a rare compilation from southern Italy, which includes a composition by the Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico, written to celebrate the wedding, in Naples, of Charles II and Maria Amalia of Saxony in 1738.
Amongst the many gems, there are several rare Nozze of historical interest and others relating to Italian travellers to Elizabethan England, England in the Cromwellian years and those of William and Mary of Orange. To this category belongs the diary of Anton Maria Ragona, a merchant from Vicenza, who travelled to England in the company of Filippo Pigafetta, the renowned traveller, in 1582. In his diary, Ragona recalls his meeting with Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State “who like all great men in England speaks Italian excellently”. Whilst Queen Elizabeth is described as “thin, with a long face, and not unpleasing in appearance”. Additionally, Ragona noticed that “Italians were well received in this court, especially if they had changed their religion”.

Another outstanding example is the rare Giornale del viaggio nella Svizzera, an elegant edition dated 1834, of which only twelve copies were made. The Giornale represents a primary example of the cultural and scientific cosmopolitanism which inspired the European Enlightenment. A noteworthy association of the journal – indeed its claim to fame – lies in its recording a meeting, on 16th September 1777, in the Swiss town of Ferney, between the author, Venetian senator Angelo Querini, and the French philosopher Voltaire, by this time of advanced years.

Furthermore, the Library possesses a set of rare Nozze relating exclusively to the Medici Family of Florence. These include reproductions of documents and letters drafted or composed by Gian Giorgio Trissino, papal legate to Venice and Vienna during the first half of the sixteenth century, and author of the once famous tragedy ofSofonisba. Other pieces of some rarity feature poetic writings of Fogazzaro, Zanella, and Cabianca.

From the early decades of the twentieth century the tradition of writingsPer Nozze started to decline. In a pamphlet published in 1928 the scholar Augusto Campana wrote “today the custom of Per Nozzepublications appears to have passed, almost not approved of. Per Nozze were the charm of a bygone era”. The golden age of publicationsPer Nozze, has undoubtedly waned away. In a 1915 article, however,The Times describes the London Library’s Nozze holdings through the words of Dante, Messo t’ho innanzi: omai per te ti ciba. The marvelous London Library Collection bears testimony to the popularity and significance of a literary genre which deserves indeed to be better known.

As the Library looks towards the next phase of its award-winning 21st century building project, our Collection Care team is already working hard to make sure our books are ready for action.

The past decade has seen many impressive developments to the Library building, from the refurbishment of iconic spaces such as the Times Room and the Sackler Study to the addition of a whole new wing in the form of T. S. Eliot House. Now the Library is looking forward to the next stage of its building programme, which will see an extension of the Victorian Back Stacks and the refurbishment of most of our collection spaces.

In order to keep our collections safe, clean and accessible while this work is taking place, we will need to move many of our books to alternative locations. Anyone who has ever moved home will know it is essential to ensure that one’s possessions are in good order, and that they are packed and wrapped in such a way that they will arrive safely at their destination. The Library’s collections are no different, and that’s why our Collection Care team is already preparing them for what promises to be one of the largest book moves in the institution’s history.

The scale of the challenge is considerable. The nineteenth-century Back Stacks occupy seven floors and house five and a half miles of books. To make sure the books can be safely transferred en masse from their existing shelves to other another part of the library, each volume needs to be thoroughly assessed. If a book’s binding is defective, the risk of it suffering further damage is greatly increased, and would be especially high during a complex operation such as a major book move. If the binding is failing, we don’t only risk losing the book’s covers. Without its sturdy protection, text-blocks can suffer tears, staining, crumpling, and pages may also go missing.

Collection Care assistants Frances and Bettina have taken on the challenge of working through the Library’s Topography holdings, checking each volume for structural damage or any significant weakness that would render it vulnerable to rapid degradation. They have learned to identify signs of deterioration, from a few loose pages to a partially detached spine, a board held in place only by sticky tape or a text-block that no longer stands properly within the square of the binding case.

The team’s mission is to select only the most vulnerable books for treatment. Books with only minor or cosmetic damage, which are in a stable condition, are returned to the shelves. It can be a tough call to leave a book on the shelf when it requires some minor repairs, or even if it just looks a little tired, perhaps having a small amount of old tape on the spine or few small tears to the text-block. This strategic approach is nevertheless proving successful, enabling us to commit our available binding funds to those volumes that are most at risk. As the average cost of rebinding an octavo volume comes in at about £20, we need to be selective to ensure we can cover as many shelves as possible before building work commences.

Any books which are found to be particularly fragile are taken off to our Collection Care department, where they are put through a kind of triage. Some may need some to be repaired in-house before they are sent off to the bindery. Page tears are patched with Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste. In some cases we may even be able to stabilise a binding so that the book no longer needs to be sent out to a commercial contractor. Carefully-placed strips of light-but-strong aerolinen can shore up a damaged spine and reinforce any weakened joints.

Other volumes need to be sent to the bindery with specific instructions to ensure that their aesthetic is preserved. We take great care to retain original features from the covers such as illustrated papers panels, printed textiles, and even early Library book labels, which give a taste of the object’s history. Decorative endpapers are preserved where possible, and any repairs are done in cloths and papers which tone in with the original design. In a few cases, where it is impossible to keep an original feature (for example, paper covers which have been glued down onto the book boards), we’ll make a facsimile of it so that the design can still be enjoyed by future readers.

The project has been an enjoyable one for Frances. She says, “I find the Topography section fascinating, as it covers such a large range of subjects, from physical geography to national customs and other aspects of social history. As a collection, it has a lot of character and, browsing through it, you quickly discover how attitudes to travel have changed. The ‘Hints to Travellers’ section is particularly interesting, and I’ve been struck by the eloquence of many of these early guides”.

Overall, it is the transformative effect of the project that has been the most rewarding for all those involved. “I hope that members will find the Topography section even more attractive now”, says Frances. “Some of the bindings were particularly lovely, my favourite being an 1834 Italian guidebook with original leather binding and decorated metal clasps. It is wonderful that we have been able to preserve these bindings for members to enjoy for years to come”.

With between two and five books in need of treatment per shelf, there is still a long way to go until all the of the Back Stacks have been covered, but it is heartening to see how the project is already enhancing the appearance of our collections and giving them vital protection. Crucially, all the books we’ve dealt with are now more stable, and so are in a much better position to be taken off the shelves and browsed, stamped at the issue desk and then taken off in a bag to read at home.

If you would like to learn more about our Back Stacks rebinding project, please get in touch with our Collection Care department. Email judith.finnamore@londonlibrary.co.uk

On the night of 23 February 1944 enemy planes flew over St James’s and dropped a deadly cargo of high-explosive bombs. Four landed between Jermyn Street and Pall Mall, with one hitting the London Library’s north-west wing. The Library lost four floors of its 1930s stacks and the blast affected many of the library’s most iconic spaces, including the Art Room and the Prevost Room (now the Sackler Study). Over 16,000 volumes were destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Even where books had escaped the full force of the explosion, these were seriously affected by the dust and dirt.

In the aftermath of the disaster, repairing the Library’s building fabric had to be a priority. Rebuilding the collections was also high on the agenda. Where books had been obliterated or were simply too damaged to put back on the shelves, the Library sought to replace them. New copies of the most popular volumes were acquired shortly after the disaster, while strenuous efforts to fill gaps in the art, fiction and biography collections went on well into the Fifties.

70 years later, bomb-damaged volumes can still be found on the library’s shelves. If you’ve spent time browsing the Library’s art collections, you may well have come across books with the words “damaged by enemy action” (or “e. a.”) lightly pencilled onto the reverse of the title page. In many cases, bomb-damaged books were retained because they were still serviceable, despite the odd warped board, tear or water stain. In others, more seriously mutilated volumes were retained because there was no replacement copy to be had.

Over the years, work has been carried out to stabilise many of these surviving books. Bindings have been strengthened, shrapnel holes patched, and tears mended. These kind of repairs fall well within our in-house conservator’s repertoire, and all are carried out with archival quality materials, such as Japanese papers and wheat starch paste, to ensure that they can be removed should the need ever arise. There is never any attempt to hide the original damage, or to make the book look ‘as good as new’, as our Collection Care team follows a programme of conservation rather than restoration. We act to arrest the degradation of our collections rather than to reverse it, and try as far as possible to maintain the historical integrity of the books in our care.

A handful of our surviving bomb-damaged books remain almost unusable, their bindings shattered by shrapnel and bits of blasted mortar. Where fragments punctured the text-blocks, pages have become ‘mechanically adhered’: each page has curled around the other at the point of impact, with an interlocking effect. In this state, the pages cannot be turned without snagging and tearing. We could flatten these pages by a process of humidification, but to do so would remove primary evidence of an event which not only affected this book, but also had ramifications for the Library’s wider collections.

In these rare cases of extreme mutilation, we have elected to preserve the books in their damaged state, carrying out only minimal repairs where these are needed to prevent further degradation. Where bindings were blown off or are no longer able to protect the pages within them, we have boxed these volumes. We have removed embedded shrapnel and mortar as this could cause the paper to decay, and encapsulated any interesting fragments in archival-quality plastic, so that they can still be seen but won’t harm the books. Having carried out this essential preservation work, the risk of loss to the bindings and paper is now low.

Since the disaster some 70 years ago, interest in our bomb-damaged volumes has transferred from the textual document to the historical object. We would not want to restore the volumes to how they were before the disaster, as to do so would undoubtedly result in losses of a different kind – this time cultural and historical. Preserved in their war-torn state, they are poignant reminders of a dark period in the Library’s history and of the institution’s remarkable resilience.

As we edge towards Christmas Helen O’Neill, our Archive, Heritage and Development Librarian, takes a peek at Christmas advertisements in 1914 and looks at the depiction of the Christmas Truce both today and 100 years ago.

In the five days preceding 12 December 1914 the Post Office reported that 250,000 parcels had been sent to troops at the Front and the following week 200,000 more were despatched along with two and a half million letters. The Post Office increased its van fleet by half to cope with demand, and as rail services were disrupted by the war and vehicles were in scarce supply, post was transported in a range of conveyances including open cars and furniture vans.

So how did the recipients of these letters and parcels spend Christmas 1914? The Christmas Truce depicted in this year’s Sainsbury’s advertshows the point at which the fighting stopped during World War One and opposing sides met in a temporary peace in No-Man’s Land. The carol singing, handshaking, swapping of caps, cigarettes and mementos, and football all feature and are historically referenced in soldiers’ letters and diaries and newspaper reporting of the time. At the time of writing the advert has had a staggering 15,682,873 YouTube hits, and some criticism, but how was the truce illustrated in 1914 and what impact did the war have on advertising in the run up to Christmas 100 years ago?

Christmas adverts in the pages of The Times in December 1914 include household brands such as Boots, Perrier, Oxo, Bovril, Horlicks, Burberry’s, Moss Bros and Shell, to name a few, which capitalised on their presence and use at the Front. From Burberry fleece lined gabardine trench coats to Shell fuelling the ambulances of the Allied forces, the adverts are rich in detail, many using soldiers’ testimonies as proof of their efficacy. Acquasctuum, Burberrys and Moss Bros all advertised officer’s kit. Burberry used no less than six quotes from those on active service as endorsements, including this from A.D.P. of the 16th Battalion London Regiment: “All officers coming out for the winter should have a Burberry with detachable fleece lining and Gabardine overalls. They will be covered in mud the first hour in the trenches but Gabardine dries well and the mud drops off.”

If testimonies from the Front were not suitably persuasive Burberry had a secret advertising weapon in the shape of Antarctic explorer and national hero, Ernest Shackleton: “Gabardine is a lightweight weatherproof material of such remarkable warmth-maintaining powers that Sir E. Shackleton recently said nothing would induce him in polar regions to use any substitute even if the price of gabardine doubles and the substitute were offered free of charge.”

Benson’s advertised an “essential” part of an officers’ kit – an “active service watch” with fully luminous figures and hands so that the time could be seen at night. Boots ran several versions of an advert for its own brand of British cologne: White Heather and Jersey Castle under the header “No more German eau de cologne”. Food stuffs featured too. Oxo adverts claimed to be “exactly suited to the needs of our men at the Front – made in minutes and sustains with bread and a few biscuits for hours”. If a few minutes were not to be had, Horlicks Malted Milk tablets were advertised as “invaluable to any soldier in the field. Most efficient at relieving hunger and thirst and preventing fatigue”. Horlicks offered free post to the Front if the name, regimental number, brigade and division of the soldier was supplied. Bovril used a military metaphor in its advertising asking “Are your communications threatened? Build up the defensive forces of your body. Bovril is and has always been at the Front.” Paisley Flour addressed itself to mothers of sons on active service in an advert that encouraged the baking and sending of home-made cake to the Front:
“You could not offer your boy in camp or at the Front any greater treat than a good wholesome home-made cake like those he used to get at home. Send him one this week with Paisley Flour”

If cake, Perrier water and a waterproof gabardine failed to stave off colds Dr J. Collis Browne’s Chloradyne –a remedy for “coughs, colds, colic, ague and kindred ailments” claimed to do the trick:
“Next to the weapons he bears, the best safeguard of a soldiers’ life is a small bottle Dr Collis Browne’s Chloradyne…it is a medicine chest in itself…Every man on active service should have a supply.”

The Civil Service Supply Association advertised service kits and camp equipment but also “Gifts for the Troops“ which included small items such as tobacco, cigarettes, socks, mittens, mufflers, caps, chocolate, ointments, foot powder, pocket knives, postcards and pencils. Taken in their totality the adverts provide a grim picture of conditions at the Front.

So in these grim conditions how was the temporary, spontaneous and informal Christmas Truce (or more accurately Christmas truces) depicted in 1914? The truce featured in the pages of The Illustrated London News on 9 January 1915. In a remarkable double page spread on page 5 the meeting of German and British soldiers in No Man’s Land is rendered as an etching from a photograph with the following description:

“The spirit of Christmas made itself felt in at least one section of the trenches at the front, where British and German soldiers fraternised…during an informal and spontaneous truce there was ‘peace on earth and goodwill to all men’…British and Germans met and shook hands, exchanged cigars and cigarettes, newspapers and addresses and wished each other the compliments of the season…A group of British and German soldiers, arm-in-arm, some of whom had exchanged head-gear were photographed by a German Officer…Some of the British it is said visited the German trenches and an Anglo-German football match was even played…”

The cover page illustration of this edition is an image of a single German solider, approaching the British lines with a small illuminated Christmas tree and the caption: “The light of peace in the trenches”.

By the time these images appeared on 9 January 1914 The Times had already reported that friendly approaches by German soldiers to the British line were now being treated as acts of treason and no further informal and spontaneous truces would break out over the remaining four years of the war.

The Sainsbury’s advert does not show the burial of the dead or the work to shore up and repair trenches, which also happened during the period of the truce, but a photo which appeared in The Illustrated London News on Jan 9 1915 p. 55 showed trench repair along with a detailed commentary of the shared trench experience of British and German soldiers:

“The life led by the infantry on both sides at close quarters is a strange, cramped existence with death always near, either by means of some missile from above or some mines exploded from beneath: a life which has the dull monotonous background of mud and water. Even where there is but little fighting the troops are kept hard at work strengthening the existing defences and constructing others, improving the shelter which is imperative in such weather and improving the sanitary condition and communications of the trenches.”

On Christmas Eve 1981 a BBC2 documentary about the Christmas Truce was aired called Peace in No Man’s Land which was written and produced by Malcolm Brown and researched by Shirley Seaton. In the programme veterans present at the truce spoke about their experience. In the programme (which has a modest 5000 YouTube hits), an 84 year old veteran called Albert Morrow makes a simple but profound observation. He was a 17 year old private in the Queen’s Regiment when he took part in the truce and his observation captures the essence of why the informal and spontaneous Christmas Truce of 1914 continues to resonate in the popular consciousness 100 years on:

“If the truce had gone on and on there’s no telling what could have happened, it could have meant the end of war, after all they didn’t want war and we didn’t want war, and it could have ended up by finishing the war altogether.”

Conservation and Restoration student Jo Berzins has just completed a 10 week work placement with The London Library’s Collection Care department. As her time at the Library drew to a close we caught up with her to talk about her experiences.

What inspired you to come to the London Library?

I’m studying for a BA in Conservation and Restoration at the University of Lincoln, and as part of my studies I needed to undertake a work placement in a conservation department. Although my course is mainly to do with objects (such as ceramics, wood and metalwork) I have a real passion for books. When my tutor suggested The London Library, I knew this was where I wanted to come. I was attracted by the prestige of the institution, as well as the opportunity to have one-to-one guidance and instruction from Rachel, the Library’s Conservator.

Did you have any experience of book conservation before you came here?

I first became interested in book conservation when I was Custodian of Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire. While I was there, I carried out a major cleaning project on the Hall’s historic library collections. It was hard work, but I was very proud of my achievement. I even got a two-page feature in the local paper!

Since starting my BA course I’ve undertaken a very short project on conserving a pamphlet, but other than that book conservation was a new world for me.

What were your first impressions of the Library?

I felt awestruck when I first arrived. The building had more original features that I’d imagined and I was impressed by the quiet and studious ambience of the Reading Room. I was also taken aback by the scale of the Library and its collections. I had two or three orientation tours of the Library that first day, which left me feeling quite exhausted and had my head spinning!

My first task in the Conservation Studio was to learn how to make a book box. Frances, the Library’s Preservation Assistant, was a great teacher. The atmosphere in the Collection Care department was wonderful. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming.

Tell us about the project you have been working on during your internship

I’ve been working on the Library’s holdings of The Lady magazine, which cover 1885 through to 1985. I had to draw up a survey of all the volumes to show which repairs would be needed, and once that was completed I got on with implementing the treatments. It has been a fabulous project and I’ve enjoyed looking through the magazines while I’ve been working on them. It made me smile to find a small feature on bookbinding as an ideal handicraft for the genteel lady at home! I found lots of wonderful adverts too, from shoes to hair tonic.

Some of the books were in fairly poor repair. There were quite a few broken headcaps to be repaired, and some of the spines were completely detached. Where the bookcloth covering had abraded, often at the corners, layers of book board had started to come apart or ‘delaminate’.

I’ve learnt so much through working on this project. I now know how to attach spines, insert pages, and even sew sections of a book together on a wooden frame. I’ve had a lot of practice in repairing tears. All the treatments I’ve done have used archival quality materials and where possible, have been in keeping with the book. For example, where I’ve needed to repair bindings with special lightweight linen, I’ve toned this to match the colour of the original binding.

Has anything surprised you?

Before I started my internship, I hadn’t realised how long each repair can take. You can be working on one volume, another thing will be drying so that you can carry out a further process on it, and you can easily find yourself with four or five books on the go at once! I soon realised I had to slow down and be patient, and found that if you take one step at a time you get a better result.

Has there been anything you’ve found difficult?

So much has been new to me, so of course I have needed guidance as I’ve undertaken different kinds of treatment for the first time. Rachel, the Library’s Conservator, has taken the time to demonstrate and explain each repair to me really clearly and she has also shared some of the tricks of the trade that help her to get a great finish.

Not long into the project, I realised that I needed to learn more about how books are made so that I could make the right decisions about how to repair them. The Library arranged for me to visit a commercial bindery to find out more. It was a fascinating day. The binder walked me through every stage of the bookbinding process and it was reassuring to find that some of the binding repairs I had found fiddly were also considered difficult by the professionals!

How would you sum up your time at the Library?

I’ve absolutely loved it, every minute of it. Would I recommend a placement to other conservation students? Definitely!

Redemption can take many forms. A little book held at The London Library, containing iconic images of cruelty and suffering, is a eulogy for a fallen comrade, an attack on his torturers and killers and an attempt to silence those who accused the author of cowardice for escaping the martyr’s fate. By Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros, Head of Bibliographic Services at The London Library. Adapted from an article originally written for History Today.

The book’s title is De persecutione Anglicana libellus quo explicantur afflictiones, calamitates, cruciatus, & acerbissima martyria, quæ Angli Catholici nūc ob fidē patiuntur  (On the English persecution, a book in which are explained the suffering, misfortunes, torture and bitterest martyrdom that the English Catholics suffered for their faith). It was printed in Rome in 1582 and although published anonymously its author has been identified as the English Jesuit Robert Persons, (also known as Parsons).

The recusant dean of Balliol College Oxford was expelled from the university in 1574 and after travelling to Italy he entered the Society of Jesus the following year, becoming a priest in 1578.

In April 1580 Parsons and Edmund Campion, also a former Oxford scholar turned Jesuit, returned to England as Catholic missionaries; Parsons disguised as an army captain and Campion as a jewel merchant.  Their main purpose was to strengthen the faith of English Catholics by disseminating books and religious objects. They were supposed to avoid political discussion and to proceed with extreme caution, particularly because the authorities had intercepted a letter and already knew of their presence in England.

Parsons was pretty good at keeping a low profile but Campion was much more conspicuous. Using clandestine presses he produced two books: Challenge to the Privy Council (also known as Campion’s Brag), where he defended the purely religious purpose of his mission, andDecem Rationes or Ten Reasons against the Anglican Church. Parsons also published while on the run, producing his Confessio fidei but was altogether more careful in his movements. Consequently, Campion was arrested on the charge of treason and the printing presses he used were seized. As soon as he heard the news of Campion’s arrest, Parsons fled back to the continent and to safety, leaving his friend behind.

In December 1581 Campion was tortured on the rack, hanged, drawn and quartered. Parsons obviously knew that had he stayed in England he would have suffered the same fate and it seems surprising that he should have chosen self-preservation over martyrdom when, as the rector of the English College in Rome, he had advocated martyrdom as the most powerful form of Catholic propaganda. It is tempting to think that Parsons lived to regret his moment of weakness and that his writing De persecutione immediately after Edmund’s death was prompted not only by his abhorrence at the atrocities inflicted on Campion but also by an uneasy conscience.

The book’s denunciation of Elizabethan barbarism is a very graphic one as it includes six powerful and moving engravings depicting every stage of the Catholic martyr’s suffering (although equally horrific torments had been inflicted on Protestants during Queen Mary’s reign). The images that at first recorded Campion’s ordeal took on a life of their own and had a lasting influence. The plates were originally designed by the publisher, engraver, journalist and Catholic spy Richard Verstegan to accompany Thomas Alfield’s eye witness account of Campion’s execution at Tyburn. They were used again in William Allen’s A briefe historie of the glorious martyrdom of XII reverend priests, becoming classics of Jesuit iconography that would be often imitated.

As Open House 2014 approaches, The London Library will once again open its doors to the public and showcase the building’s architectural history. It’s the fourth consecutive year the Library has taken part, and along with hundreds of other inspiring buildings across the capital, the Library will be offering tours to non-members that will provide a fascinating insight into one of the world’s largest independent lending libraries. Not everyone managed to get a place on this year’s tours, so we’ve put together a brief history of this historic building.

The London Library is a mere stone’s throw away from the hustle and bustle of Piccadilly. Yet quietly tucked behind it’s façade in the north-west corner of St James’s Square, is a building which houses over one million books on 15 miles of shelves spread across a labyrinth of disparate buildings which have been acquired over the Library’s  173 year history.

The origins of The London Library…

Founded in 1841 by Thomas Carlyle, The London Library was originally based at 49 Pall Mall in rented rooms with a part-time Librarian. It wasn’t until 1845 that The London Library moved to its present location at 14 St James’s Square. Since then the building has continued to change and grow as the demand for space to house an ever growing collection of books and periodicals has increased.

The London Library’s current location in St James’s Square was originally the site of a Georgian townhouse, Beauchamp House, which was built in 1676 and renovated at later dates. A proposal in the 1770s to rebuild it to a design by Robert Adam was abandoned, but it was refronted shortly afterwards. It is often noted that the frontage of The London Library is smaller than its neighbours, as was described by A.I. Dasent in 1895 as “admittedly the worst house in the Square”. The Library rented the house from 1856, and in 1879 bought the freehold.

1890s – 1920s: James Osborne Smith and the Book Stacks…

At the turn of the century, the building was entirely demolished and rebuilt to the designs of James Osborne Smith. The façade, overlooking St James’s Square, is constructed in Portland stone in a broadly Jacobethan style, described by the Survey of London as “curiously eclectic”.

The main reading room is on the first floor looking out over St James’s Square; and above this, three tall windows which light three floors of book stacks. Another four floors of book stacks were built to the rear. The book stack, known as the ‘1890s Stacks’, are Victorian metal frames and grille floors which still house some of the Library’s Science & Miscellaneous, History and Topography collections.

Tony McIntyre, architect and author of The Library Book, explains:

“The steel grille floors of the 1890s stacks, while unfriendly to anything but the most sensible footwear, are a triumph of practicality. Air circulates freely, light can permeate several floors and the structure is extraordinarily strong; the book stacks themselves are load bearing, meaning that this part of the Library truly is ‘made of books’.

“The unusual architecture and magical atmosphere of the 1890s stacks also make them a firm favourite with photographers and television makers: Spooks, The Culture Show’s World Book Night special, and even an episode of New Tricks have all been filmed here.”

Osborne Smith was also responsible for an additional seven-storey book stack, built further back still in the early 1920s.

1930s – 1950s: Extensions and the effects of the Second World War…

Between 1932 and 1934, further extensions were carried out to the north of the building by architectural firm Mewès & Davis. During this period a new committee room, an Art Room, and five more floors of book stacks were incorporated.

In the first few months of 1944, substantial German air raids resumed on London in the so-called ‘Little Blitz’. In February, the northern book stacks suffered considerable damage when the Library received a direct hit from a bomb. 16,000 volumes were destroyed, including most of the Biography section. The Library reopened in July 1944, yet repairs to the buildings were not completed until the early 1950s.

1970s – 1990s: Further extensions…

The London Library never discards a book from its collection while acquiring books at the rate of some 8,000 volumes a year, and as a result, the Library continues to need ever expanding space for its growing collection. In the 1970s when expansion options were limited, development included a mezzanine constructed in the Art Room; four floors of book stacks constructed above the north bay of the Reading Room in 1992; and in 1995 the Anstruther Wing was erected at the rear of the site, a nine-storey building on a small footprint designed principally to house rare books.

2000s and the Future: The 21st Century Capital Campaign

In 2004, the Library acquired Duchess House. This four-storey 1970s office building, adjoining the north side of the existing site, was refurbished and renamed T S Eliot House in 2008. This was the start of an ambitious project of two stages encompassing four distinct construction phases. The first two phases of Stage 1 remodelled and integrated the T S Eliot House with the existing Library site, completed by Haworth Tompkins Architects to great acclaim and winning a number of architectural awards in 2011.

The refurbishment of the Reading Floor completed Stage 1 in summer 2013, and in 2014 the Library won RIBA London and National Awards for the architectural excellence of its designs. RIBA also shortlisted the Library as one of four projects for the RIBA London English Heritage Award for Preserving the Historic Environment.

The Library is now working towards the second stage of its Capital project plans. This will see the creation of The Andrew Devonshire Reading room – a modern complement to its Victorian counterpart on the first floor, and a new Members’ Room which will lead on to a roof garden offering views over St James’s Square and across to the Palace of Westminster and the London Eye.

Further Reading
Library Book: An Architectural Journey through The London Library by Tony McIntyre, London: The London Library, 2006 (available to buy online)

Securing our future: The 21st Century Capital Campaign

Books are often vandalised and mutilated by those who find their content offensive. On the other hand, they are sometimes taken apart by those who find the beauty of their component parts simply irresistible. By The London Library’s Head of Bibliographic Services, Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros. Adapted from an article originally written forHistory Today.

In 1573 Christopher Saxton, a Yorkshire map maker born around 1542, was employed by the lawyer, MP, philanthropist, patron and administrator Thomas Seckford to produce a set of maps of England and Wales. The enterprise counted with the enthusiastic support of Elizabeth I who issued Saxton with a number of letters and passes to guarantee the full co-operation of the locals wherever his surveys took him. The Queen also granted him a decade of exclusive rights to publish the resulting atlas. The royal protegé produced a book of maps charting the whole of England and Wales, the like of which had never been seen before and was handsomely rewarded for his work. TheAtlas of the counties of England and Wales, printed in London in 1579, consists of thirty-four county maps, introduced by a map of England and Wales. It was never printed in a standard edition and the preliminary pages varied from one copy to another, although most have a stunning frontispiece depicting the work’s royal patron wearing a robe of bright red velvet. The maps that follow the frontispiece are just as beautiful but, most important of all, they are also very accurate. Each engraved map was printed on a single sheet, hand-coloured, folded in the middle and then attached to a stub in the book. It is perhaps this fatal combination of beauty, accuracy and ease of removal that proved the downfall of the atlas, at least from a book lover’s point of view. From a cartographic point of view the wealth of precise detail of these maps had a long-lasting influence. It became the canon for later English map makers but also served as an inspiration for the likes of Jan Blaeu, part of the Dutch mapmaking dynasty and official cartographer of the Dutch East India Company. Saxton’s maps have had a very long life being surpassed in accuracy only as late as the 19th century by the work of the Ordnance Survey. His atlases, however, have suffered a harsher fate and very few perfect copies have survived.

The London Library’s copy was first owned by Sir Henry Maynard (1547-1610), administrator and secretary to William Cecil, first Baron Burghley, who was also Seckford’s master and who had a great interest in and knowledge of cartography. The Maynards settled in Burghley’s Essex, building a manor in Easton. The book was handed down the family and finally received the addition of a bookplate bearing the name Charles Lord Maynard (1690-1775).  The next recorded owner is the famous book collector Richard Heber (1774-1833). After Heber’s death the atlas was sold at Sotheby’s where the merchant and antiquary Joseph Brooks Yates (1780-1855) acquired it. When in 1857 his grandson, Henry Yates Thompson (1838-1928) inherited it two pages, including the glorious frontispiece, were missing and as Yates Thompson observed, the town of Easton on the map of Essex (now also missing) ‘was much rubbed by finger marks of the Maynard family’. In 1885 Yates Thompson was fortunate enough to come across another copy, this time a perfect one, which he bought from the antiquarian bookseller and publisher, Bernard Quaritch, and it was with the help of Quaritch that he used his perfect copy to make facsimiles for the incomplete one he inherited. In a manuscript note written on the book’s endpapers and dated 1887 Henry Yates Thompson describes how he paid a Mr. Sadler two guineas to have the facsimiles coloured and he goes on to say that the facsimiles ‘are not readily distinguished from the originals, unless by the colour of the paper.

The volume, with its missing pages and remarkable, though by today’s standards invasive Victorian repairs, was given to the Library in memory of Mrs. Yates Thompson in 1941.

By Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros, Head of Bibliographic Services at The London Library. Adapted from an article originally written for History Today.

In 1558 Mary Tudor’s brief Catholic reign came to an end.  Just as English Protestants  who had fled to Lutheran and Calvinist havens on the continent were beginning to return home, in Oxford and Cambridge Catholic scholars who refused to conform to the new Elizabethan order  started packing their bags and planning their escape to France and the Spanish-ruled Low Countries.  Although some were headed for the universities of Douai and Louvain many were scattered across Europe until an Oxford don, William Allen (1532-1594), founded an English college in Douai in 1568 where they could all continue to study together.  With Papal approval and the financial support of Philip II of Spain the college began to attract more and more learned exiles.  It was so successful that a subsidiary branch in Rheims had to be set up in 1576 to accommodate the great numbers of students enrolling.  Allen fervently believed that England should become Catholic again and he used the college to train English priests in readiness for the happy day he was sure must come.  But he did much more than that.  He encouraged his graduates to travel back to England, despite the obvious danger, in order to fight the apathy and fear of the Catholics back home.  A great number of the priests trained at the English college became missionaries and many of those suffered martyrdom after returning to England. These martyrs were the subjects of hero-worship back in Douai.  The possibility of being revered after death or perhaps the allure of gaining a place in heaven through martyrdom may have played an important part in attracting new recruits.  The London Library has a copy of Allen’s An apologie and true declaration of the institution and endevours of the two English Colleges, the one in Rome and the other now resident in Rhemes against certaine sinister informations given up against the same  printed in 1581. In it he explains his reasons for founding the colleges.  Ostensibly, this was meant an answer to his critics but it would also have served to explain himself to Catholics in England who may have disagreed with his methods.

Not content with his martyrs’ proselytizing and the powerful propaganda their deaths offered Allen also worked with the Spanish king and the pope on several plans for an invasion of England.  It was probably this plotting that made him the target of several failed assassination attempts.

His strong connections with Spain were also the reason Allen and his students had to flee to Rheims when in 1578 Douai was taken over by Protestant forces.  It was in Rheims that Allen’s most enduring work was completed.

The English Catholic version of the Scriptures known as the Douai or Rheims-Douay Bible was the work of Gregory Martin, one of the lecturers at the English College, but it was Allen’s brainchild and he was the one who raised the money to finance the work.   Allen’s motivations for undertaking the project are not clear. Some say he did it because he wanted to be able to defend Catholics of the charge of keeping the Scriptures in inaccessible Latin, others say that, realising Protestant English Bibles were everywhere, he wanted to redress the balance by creating a Catholic version for English readers.  Martin completed his translation from the Vulgate in 1580 and lived just long enough to see the New Testament printed in Rheims in 1582, which was as much as the funds could stretch to.

Allen ended his days as a cardinal in Rome where he died in 1594, surrounded by powerful friends but impoverished and disheartened after the defeat of the Spanish Armada. He did not live to see his Old Testament printed in Douai (the college had returned there in 1593) in 1609 and 1610 nor did he live to learn of his New Testament’s influence on the King James Bible of 1611. We will never know whether he would he have seen the absorption of his Catholic rendering of the Bible by a new Protestant version as victory of sorts or as the final insult.

As St. Bartholomew’s Day is coming up this month, our Head of Bibliographic Services, Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros discusses wellbeing and welfare. Adapted from an article originally written for History Today.

In the 16th century two doctors from enemy nations were moved to write about personal wellbeing and social welfare. They were both compassionate, prominent in their field and had powerful connections but their temperaments, careers and the reasons that drove them to write the two books now held at The London Library were very different.

Timothy Bright (1550-1615) began his academic career at the University of Cambridge and later traveled to the continent to train in medicine. While in Paris he witnessed the massacre of Huguenots on St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1572 and only survived through the protection of Sir Francis Walsingham, who was English ambassador in France at the time. The experience strengthened Bright’s Protestant beliefs as well as his patriotism and was probably a factor in his decision to abandon medicine later on in favour of a career in the Anglican Church.

Bright had a brilliant mind but seemed to lack the discipline to train it on one subject at a time and whilst holding the title of Chief Physician at the Royal Hospital of St. Bartholomew he neglected his patients, spending most of his time devising a new system for shorthand or ‘characterie’ and writing on the nature of melancholy. His A Treatise of Melancholie: Containing the Causes thereof, & Reasons of the Strange Effects it Worketh in our Minds and Bodies, with the Phisicke Cure, and Spirituall Consolation for Such as Haue thereto Adioyned an Afflicted Conscience…. was first printed in London 1586. His interest in the subject may have been triggered by a personal tragedy: Bright and his wife had lost one of their seven children some months before the book appeared.  Bright understood that the reasons for depression could be physical as well as psychological and in the book he covers the role of both drugs and diet in the management of this devastating condition.

The work influenced not only other physicians and medical writers interested in mental illness; some Shakespearean scholars believe that the bard relied on it when writing Hamlet. There can be no doubt as to the importance of Bright’s contributions to shorthand, cryptography and psychiatry and perhaps he should have devoted his life to research.  His boyish enthusiasm for all manner of subjects was perhaps the reason why he could not commit himself to the service of others for any length of time. Even before he was sacked from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Bright became rector of Methley in Yorkshire and later received also the living of nearby Barwick in Elmet.  Unfortunately, he went on to neglect his parishioners in the same way that he had neglected his patients earlier.

This erudite great-great-grandfather of the dramatist William Congreve profited enormously from the patronage of Sir Francis Walsingham throughout his professional life, both as a physician and as a rector. In return, it is likely that Bright’s knowledge of cryptography would have been employed by the Elizabethan spymaster in his efforts to gather information on England’s enemies. The very next day after the English fleet and the Spanish Armada clashed off the Isle of Wight, Queen Elizabeth granted Bright a fifteen year monopoly on the teaching and publishing of shorthand.

Our second author served on one of those doomed ships Spanish. Cristóbal Pérez de Herrera (1558-1620?) was “Protomédico de Galeras”, the most senior physician of the ‘invincible’ Armada. Comparatively little is known about Pérez de Herrera. During his naval career he played an active and heroic role in many sea battles, capturing several enemy flags and surviving being shot through the shoulder.  When he was not busy carrying out courageous feats the swashbuckling doctor was a daily witness to the horrific conditions suffered by galley slaves. The practice of condemning men to long years of rowing in war ships, often after committing only minor offences was very common at a time when Spain had a pressing need to find the necessary manpower for a growing navy.

This frequent interaction with the galley slaves had a profound effect on Pérez de Herrera. After leaving the Armada he devoted himself to charitable works. He wrote several treatises on improving the lives of the most vulnerable people in 16th century Spanish society.  In 1598 he published Discvrsos del Amparo de los Legítimos Pobres, y Redvcción de los Fingidos : y de la Fundacion y Principio de los Albergues destos Reynos (Discourses on the Protection of the Legitimate Poor and Reduction of those Feigning and on the Foundation and Principle of Shelters in these Realms). In the book he describes the ideal location and layout of a shelter in Madrid where the poor could live in clean and healthy conditions, be taught good examples and given daily structure to engage them in useful occupation: an intriguing illustration in his book has the caption ‘with eyes in their hands and [hands] busy with work they will have better habits’.

He wanted to help the genuinely needy: wounded and disabled war veterans, the sick, the elderly, prisoners, orphaned children, impoverished students, and even ‘vagabond and delinquent women’.  He spent the rest of his life fundraising, even begging when necessary, in order to realize his vision in the Atocha district of Madrid. His shelter later became the site of the first general hospital in the Spanish capital.

Is love a gentle emotion that inspires sonnets, an all-consuming passion that drives people to desperate actions, an enigma that defies explanation, an absurdity that deserves to be ridiculed or a dangerous affliction that should come with a health warning? By Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros, Head of Bibliographic Services at The London Library, adapted from an article originally written for History Today.

Judging by some of the earliest books in the London Library’s collections writers in the 15th and 16th centuries believed that love was all of these things. The approach to love in these books ranges from sentimentality to cynicism.

Among these are two volumes of love poems by fairly obscure and unlikely figures who couldn’t be further removed from the ideal of the romantic poet.

Caio Baldassare Olimpo Alessandri (1486-ca. 1540) from Sassoferrato was a member of the Franciscan Minorite order and a ‘most acute bachelor’. Encouraged by his friends he composed love poems to rest his ‘fatigued mind’ after years of studying philosophy. He even recited his poetry accompanying himself with a lute, just as the young man depicted on the title page of this edition of his last work, Aurora (printed in Venice in 1536), though in his friar’s habit Alessandri probably did not look quite so dashing.

Giovanni Bruni (1474-1540) from Rimini suffered a great loss when his first love and muse died in 1500. Still, his broken heart soon mended and in 1501 he married and went on to father ten children.  He was a ‘passionate dilettante and a mediocre poet’ and that may be the reason why the Venetian printer who produced this 1533 edition of his Rime Nuove Amorose felt the need to ‘spice things up’ by decorating the title page with suggestive vignettes. Any buyer who purchased the book looking for titillation would have been sorely disappointed to discover its chaste content. The work was nevertheless quite popular and was reprinted many times both in Venice and Milan.

In  Cárcel de amor (Prison of love) we have a stunning example from the pen of Diego de San Pedro (fl. 1500) of a Spanish sentimental novel in the best tradition of courtly love. Cárcel de amor, first printed in Seville in 1492, proved an instant bestseller and was translated into many languages. The London Library copy, printed in Venice in 1530, is the first Italian translation of this tragic story of unrequited love.

Leriano is in love with Laureola, daughter of the king of Macedonia and professes his love to her in his numerous letters. Laureola does not return his love but she does accept his letters and even writes back.

When a love rival tells the king that his daughter has dishonoured herself the furious father locks her away. Even after Leriano rescues her Laureola remains indifferent .

Rejected and desperate, Leriano commits very slow suicide by refusing food and drink. With his dying breath he proclaims his love for Laureola and his admiration for all women.  Just before dying, Leriano who cannot bear to destroy Laureola’s letters or to leave them behind, tears them up, places the pieces in a cup of water and drinks the mixture.

In marked contrast to this uncontrolled and even comical passion we have the cerebral analysis of León Hebreo, the Jewish physician, poet and philosopher born in Lisbon around 1460. Hebreo was a religious exile forced to leave first Portugal and then Spain to settle in Italy where he spent most of his life. His most influential work, Dialogues of Love, attempts to explore the true nature of love through the conversations of two characters, Philo (Love) and Sophia (Wisdom).  The work opens with a dialogue on the difference between love and desire. Philo begins by telling Sophia that meeting her awakens both love and desire in him and Sophia replies that these are mutually exclusive. She maintains that we only desire that which we do not have and that once we obtain it, love replaces desire. Hebreo is believed to have written his Dialogues in Italian and the first edition, printed in Rome in 1535, was probably a posthumous one. The London Library copy is a Spanish translation printed anonymously in Venice in 1568.

If Hebreo was able to write dispassionately and evenly about love, our next two authors seem to be openly against it.

Martial d’Auvergne (ca. 1430/35-1508) was a French jurist and poet who indulged his wicked side when he wrote Arrêts d’amour (Judgments of love). In it he parodies both love and the judicial system by presenting fifty one cases tried in a fictitious court of love. The cases presented to the court, such as that of the young woman who complains that her lover objects to her choice of clothes for being too revealing, would not be out of place in a modern day reality TV show. The Arrêts, first written in the early 1460s, were enormously popular as our edition printed in Paris in 1544 proves.

Martial uses satire to poke fun at lovers’ behaviour while Battista Fregoso (1453-1504) carries out a frontal attack on love itself in his Anteros (Anti-Cupid). This Genoese Doge, who had written about Christopher Columbus’ attempts to gain support for his transatlantic travels and produced a series of books on remarkable and memorable facts, also wrote this unequivocal caution where he warns of the harmful effects of erotic brooding, which he likens to a disease.  To prevent falling prey to the illness he advocates an avoidance of ‘lascivious sounds’, bawdy songs, and love stories, which may cause dangerous sensual stimulation. The work was first printed in Milan in 1496 and once again our 1581 Parisian edition attests to its lasting appeal.