Marsh's Library

Image of a page from a 16th century book showing a hand-coloured woodcut of a fir tree with a stag underneath and a squirrel running up the trunk, and Latin text below the image.

Is your Christmas tree up yet, or is it still too early? Hand-coloured fir tree with bonus wildlife, from Hieronymous Boch's herbal printed 473 years ago.

An engraving showing the moon with cherubs in each of the four corners of the sheet

A map of the topography of the moon from Johannes Hevelius' Selenographia, the first lunar atlas, printed in 1647 #supermoon #astronomy

Spot on!

Detail of a map of Corfu from L'Isole piu famose del mondo by Thomaso Porcacchi

Is it just us or is there a dog-like look to the sea monster in this 1576 map of Corfu?

Tiny ink drawing of a cottage with a pencil next to it for scale

A roaring fire is just the thing for a chilly Tuesday in November. Doodle found inside the 1672 'New Rules' for the regulation of cities and towns in Ireland.

Picture of the old reading room in Marsh's Library with two astronauts sitting reading books at the table facing the camera

Two astronauts sitting in front of a table smiling at the camera with 17th century astronomy books open behind them

We were so excited to welcome astronauts Dr Norah Patten & Dr Shawna Pandya to Marsh's last Friday organised by The Embassy of Canada in Ireland & Space Medicine Ireland. After a tour & a sit down in the chairs used by Bram Stoker & James Joyce, we showed them some of our astronomy books! 🚀✨🪐

frontispiece to Opere di Galileo, showing Galileo pointing out heavenly phenomena to three women (muses), one holding a telescope

Galileo explaining the cosmos to the muses. The frontispiece from the first edition of his collected works, printed in Bologna 1655-6.

Ink damage (possibly intentional?) to a page from the pamphlet 'The grounds and ends of the baptisme of the children of the faithful' by John Cotton, 1647

And that's why you can't have ink in the reading room! Historic damage to a 1647 pamphlet on infant baptism by John Cotton #readers

18th century watercolour of a parrot

18th century watercolour of two parrots

18th century watercolour of a cockatoo

Our collection of parrots, watercolour on velum, from Eleazar Albin's 'Natural History of Birds', mid 18th century

Detail from the pastedown of a 17th century book showing the book's shelfmark with doodles of dogs and a man

A fine head of hair on this doodled gentleman!
From the pastedown of our very heavily annotated copy of the catalogue of the Bodleian Library, printed in 1620
#Readers #Doodles

Title page from Daniel Featley's 'The Dippers dipt', printed in 1645

So many heretics out there, but thankfully you can spot them by their pointy ears!

Detail of a page of a 17th century pamphlet with a line of the printed text blacked out in ink and the correction 'to kill an heretique' added in ink in the margin

Our Maddock fellow Ben Card spotted this error correction in a 1645 pamphlet 'The primitive practise for preserving truth' this morning. We think the errors in every copy were corrected manually in the print shop before they were sent out. A lot of work for some poor apprentice! #errors #printing

If you are in Dublin over the next few months, don't miss this gorgeous exhibition of some of the treasures in our Benjamin Iveagh Library at the Farmleigh Gallery in the Phoenix Park. #opw #farmleigh

detail of an engraving of an armadillo from Nehemiah Grew's 'Musaeum Regalis Societatis', a catalogue 'of the natural and artificial rarities belonging to the Royal society'

Who's a good weesle headed armadillo?! This engraving of what we now call a a nine-banded armadillo is from Nehemiah Grew's 'Musaeum Regalis Societatis', a 1681 catalogue 'of the natural and artificial rarities belonging to the Royal society'.

All playwrights should be dead for 300 years!

Title page of the play 'The Custome of the Countrey' from Comedies and tragedies, by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

We have it on good authority that this 17th century play by Francis Beaumont & John Fletcher is one of the dirtiest in English!

Title page of John Williams' 'The history of the gunpowder treason'

Remember remember! Some very blurry printing on this highly sectarian pamphlet about 'the 5th of November' printed in 1679

Plate showing 17th century surgical instruments for the eyes

Best to look away now if you're squeamish! Surgical instruments for use on the eyes, from 'Les Oeuvres de chirurgie de Jacques Guillemeau' printed in 1694.

Engraving of an animate skeleton in a mausoleum holding a cloth

A teeth-rottingly happy hallowe'en to all!
Skeleton from William Cowper's Anatomy of Human Bodies, 1698. The plates in this enormous book are from the 1685 Dutch edition of Govert Bidloo's 'Anatomia humani corporis' & were used by Cowper with no acknowledgement.

Title page of English translation of Gabriel Naude's 'The history of Magick', printed in 1657

Gabriel Naudé's History of Magick, originally printed in French in 1625, was a defence of science & intellectualism against accusations of witchcraft & magic. Glad we're past that now!

Thank you! I'm not sure about the first letter of the surname, but I think it's 'iterus' after that

Detail from 17th century flyleaf showing name (Jacobius Riterius?) and inscription (dated 1641?) scribbled out

Title page from 1609

We're seeing a Jacobus Riterus in this scribbled out inscription, anyone else fancy weighing in?

Books for Old Soldiers. The Pensioners' Library at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, 1833-1929

If you like old libraries and are in London next Tuesday evening, 4 November, this might be of moderate interest to you. If you're not in London, you can sign up via Zoom: ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

Page showing hand-coloured woodcut of gourds from Hieronymus Bock's 1552 Herbal

Gorgeous gourds, from 1552.

This is SO cute. A lovely sketch of the highlights of our little library by the French artist Dominique Montagnon. You can see more of her work at instagram.com/sketchbibli/

Detail from a frintispiece of Tractatus physicus de tarantula, 1668, showing wolf spiders in the foreground and a smaller spider suspended from a tree, with a blue pencil for scale

In the 17th century some Europeans believed that a bite from a tarantula (or rather wolf spider) led to tarantism, a type of hysteria that could only by cured by a frenzied dance, the tarantella!

Engraved title page of Saducismus Triumphatus, 1682

Page from Saducismus triumphatus showing 'Relation I' the story of the daemon of Tedworth

Printed posthumously, Joseph Glanvill's 'Saducismus Triumphatus' recounted hundreds of stories to prove the existence of witches & spirits. It includes the first recorded account of a poltergeist, the 'Drummer of Tedworth', illustrated in the top left of the engraved title page.

Title page of 1584 Lyon edition of Malleus Maleficorum (originally Meleficarum) with ownership inscription of Fr Patrick Everard

Our 1584 Lyon edition of Malleus Maleficorum or 'The hammer of witches', Heinrich Kramer's infamous manual for identifying and prosecuting witches, first published in 1486.

Page from Hieronymus Bock's 16th century Herbal, showing a woodcut of anemone's hand-coloured in red with text in Latin below and flower names above in Latin and German

The red of these anemones has really cheered me up on this miserable day in Dublin! From Hieronymus Bock's 16th century herbal, hand-coloured by an early reader.

Front cover of 'A House of Pomegranates' printed in red with peacock, basket of pomegranates and fountain embossed in gold.

For Oscariana, the Oscar Wilde Festival, we'll be displaying our first editions of 'An Ideal Husband' and 'A House of Pomegranates' from the Benjamin Iveagh collection in Marsh's until Saturday.