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Blog post
Hume’s Stray Feathers
Allan Octavian Hume (1829-1912), British administrator and one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, recorded an extraordinary story of resilience, the ability of people to cope with disruptions. Hume was a respected ornithologist. In January 1875 he boarded an old gunboat fitted for the Indian Marine Survey to...Déri, Andrea
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Blog post
Book of Affairs of Love
Karnama-i ‘Ishq (Book of affairs of love) by the Hindu poet Rai Anand Ram Mukhlis (d. 1751) is a romance in Persian on the afflictions of a young man’s heart and the challenges he faces for eternal love. The poetical narrative is derived from an existing Hindi literary work, the...Roy, Malini
Mughal India, South Asia, and art
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Blog post
Marianne North's Visions of India
The British Library holds one of the richest archives of prints, drawings and photographs from South Asia. As Visual Arts Curator, exploring the vast collections and learning about the history of the works of art is just part of my daily activities. Although my previous blog posts have focused on...Roy, Malini
South East Asia, South Asia, and art
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Blog post
A farewell to the Mughals
British Library's exhibition Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire closed on 2 April 2013. The last few days of the exhibition saw a record number of visitors! Since opening in November 2012, we have been surprised by the overwhelming response from the press and social media. We never anticipated being...Roy, Malini
science, Mughal India, and art
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Blog post
Mughal painting by Faizallah recently acquired by the British Library
In our recent exhibition and the accompanying publication Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire, we featured paintings made in Delhi as well as at the Mughal province of Awadh during the 18th century. In March, we were able to add to our collection a splendid work by the artist Faizallah...Roy, Malini
Mughal India, South Asia, and art
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Blog post
Conference on Digital Islamic Humanities
Two representatives from the British Library attended the recent conference, ‘The Digital Humanities + Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies’, hosted by the Middle Eastern Studies Department of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Organised by Dr Elias Muhanna and held on 24-25 October 2013, this conference sought to bring together...Lowe, Daniel ; Sobers-Khan, Nurs
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‘Persian Gulf tragedy’ – the death of John Gordon Lorimer
On the morning of Sunday 8 February 1914, John Gordon Lorimer, the officiating British Resident in the Persian Gulf at Bushire, retired to his dressing room to ascertain the exact calibre of his automatic pistol as he wished to order cartridges from Bombay. He was later found lying on the...Lowe, Daniel
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Blog post
‘The Jewish State of Eastern Arabia’
In September 1917, Lord Francis Bertie, British Ambassador to France, received an unusual proposal from Dr M L Rothstein, a Paris-based Russian Jew. Bertie explained to the Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, that Rothstein proposed the Entente Powers should equip and organise an army ‘for the conquest of the Turkish...Lowe, Daniel
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The Death of Queen Victoria: the Politics of Mourning and Memorialisation in the British Persian Gulf
This blog post marks the 195 anniversary of Queen Victoria’s birth on 24 May 1819. On the afternoon of 22 January 1901, Queen Victoria died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. In the United Kingdom, as well as many thousands of miles away around the Empire, reactions ‘were...Lowe, Daniel
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Distinctive leg-of-mutton legs and fine jewels: a new display of Indian paintings in the Treasures of the British Library
Regular visitors to the Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library, may have encountered our recent display of Natural History drawings from India next to the entrance to the Magna Carta. From 8 March 2014, a new display of Indian paintings from the Visual Arts collection will be...Roy, Malini
Hinduism, South Asia, exhibitions, and art
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Blog post
The accident that befell Sir Donald Friell McLeod
Even if the attendant or station inspector had shouted ‘Mind the Gap’ (the phrase first used in 1969 at rail stations in the United Kingdom), it would not have prevented the horrific accident that befell Sir Donald Friell McLeod at the railway station at Gloucester Road in 1872. Arriving at...Roy, Malini
religion, South Asia, art, and visual arts
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Blog post
William Beckford's albums on Hindu mythology
The English novelist and noted bibliophile William Beckford is highlighted in the British Library’s current exhibition ‘Terror and Wonder: the Gothic Imagination’. Exhibition curators (Greg Buzwell, Tanya Kirk and Tim Pye) feature Beckford’s Gothic novel Vathek as one of the earliest examples in this style. Beckford’s masterpiece expressed the ‘orientalist...Roy, Malini
Hinduism, religion, South Asia, exhibitions, and art
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Blog post
George Percy Churchill’s Biographical Notices of Persian Statesmen and Notables
In 1906, the Government of India Foreign Department published (and republished in 1910) an index of prominent Qajar statesmen, compiled by George Percy Churchill, Oriental Secretary at the British Legation in Tehran. According to Cyrus Ghani, this collection of notes and genealogical tables, entitled Biographical Notices of Persian Statesmen and...Lowe, Daniel
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Performing Authority: the ‘Islamic’ Seals of British Colonial Officers
The function of seals as symbols of textual authority and ownership is deeply rooted in the Islamic world, especially in Arabic and Persian-speaking societies. Historically, seals were used for authorising various documents, including letters and legal contracts, and for marking the ownership of books and manuscripts. Edward William Lane attests...Lowe, Daniel
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Colonial Knowledge: Lorimer’s Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia
John Gordon Lorimer’s monumental Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia – often simply referred to as ‘Lorimer’ by many researchers - has been digitised and is now accessible for free through the Qatar Digital Library.Lowe, Daniel
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Blog post
The Death of a Political Agent: Captain Shakespear
Today, 24 January 2015, marks 100 years since the death of colonial officer and Arabian explorer and photographer, Captain William Henry Irvine Shakespear, who died in a battle at Jarrab between the forces of Ibn Saud, the founder of modern-day Saudi Arabia, and his adversary, Ibn Rashid. Shakespear was well...Lowe, Daniel
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Blog post
Speaking out: political protest and print cultures in West Africa
West Africans made powerful use of writing and publishing to oppose colonialism and fight for independence. Since then, authors have not been reluctant to comment on the state of their nations and the world. Stephanie Newell (Yale University) and Marion Wallace (British Library) reflect on these developments.Newell, Stephanie ; Wallace, Marion
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Blog post
Battle of Panipat 1761
Panipat, north of Delhi, is the location of three historic battles that shaped Mughal history. On the battlefield here in 1526, Babur defeated the Afghan Sultan of Delhi Ibrahim Lodi, which not only ended Lodi rule but gave the Mughals a stronger foothold on the subcontinent. The second battle took...Roy, Malini
Mughal India, South Asia, art, and visual arts
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Blog post
‘White Mughal’ William Fullerton of Rosemount
Scottish surgeon William Fullerton (d.1805) from Rosemount enlisted with the East India Company and served in Bengal and Bihar from 1744-66. Developing close ties with locals, including the historian Ghulam Husain Khan, he remained in the region after retiring. Although his impressive linguistic abilities brought him attention, Fullerton’s prominence stems...Roy, Malini
Mughal India, language studies, South Asia, art, and visual arts
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Blog post
Shubbak Literature Festival at the British Library
On Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 July 2015, the British Library will host the Shubbak Literature Festival as part of Shubbak, London’s largest biennial festival showcasing the best in contemporary Arab culture.Lowe, Daniel
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J. G. Ballard: Streets in the Sky and the Secret Logic of the High-Rise
Hardly a day goes by without a news report about London’s social housing crisis. There are currently more than 260 high-rise buildings (of 20 floors or more) either under construction or in the pipeline that are set to dramatically change the London skyline. Yet the high prices of the apartments...Beckett, Chris
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Lebanese LGBTQ publications: essays, magazines, memoirs and narratives
Blogger and novelist Fadi Zaghmout, together with translator Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, recently visited the British Library. His debut novel, ‘Arūs ʻAmmān (ʻThe bride of Amman’), deals with the various struggles facing young Jordanians, including sexual orientation and gender identity. With this subject in mind, we looked at different sources –...Lowe, Daniel
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Blog post
Calcutta to Bihar: an artist's journey
As part of the Visual Arts collections at the British Library, we hold an extensive collection of drawings, sketches and watercolours by amateur British and European artists who travelled through the Indian subcontinent. In 2015, we acquired a wonderful little sketchbook, measuring a mere 80 x 204 mm, by an...Roy, Malini
Hinduism, South Asia, art, visual arts, and Islam
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Blog post
East India Company headquarters on Leadenhall Street
BBC One’s new period drama Taboo with actor Tom Hardy follows the story of James Keziah Delaney and his encounters with the East India Company. As the headquarters of the East India Company on Leadenhall Street was demolished in 1861 which is the present day site of Lloyds of London,...Roy, Malini
trade, South Asia, art, and visual arts
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Blog post
First report from the Will Self archive: family matters
Will Self’s review (for the New Statesman) of Peter Ackroyd’s Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination (2002) begins with the suggestion that his grandfather would have enjoyed the book. Before telling us why (Cockney visionaries both, with a tendency to compendiousness), we are treated to a pen-portrait of grandfather...Beckett, Chris
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The writing of J. G. Ballard’s Crash: a look under the bonnet
Shock greeted the publication of J. G. Ballard’s Crash in 1973. Cult status quickly followed. Today, the novel is widely considered to be a modern classic, a novel that speaks both of its time – the darkening close of a decade of colourful liberation – and speaks dystopically to us...Beckett, Chris
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No Longer in the Garage: The Archive of Galloping Dog Press, Poetry Information and Not Poetry
The small press publisher Peter Hodgkiss begins his memoir essay ‘It’s All in the Garage’ contemplating ‘a tatty cardboard box’ with ‘GDP’ written in fading red felt-tip pen on the side: ‘It has moved from landing to attic to garage 1 to garage 2 in two houses in Newcastle to...Beckett, Chris
literature, poetry, Contemporary Britain, manuscripts, and new collection items
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‘Post-it’ notes in the Will Self archive
'My books begin life in notebooks, then they move on to Post-it notes, the Post-its go up on the walls of the room […] short story ideas, tropes, metaphors, gags, characters, etc. When I'm working on a book, the Post-its come down off the wall and go into scrapbooks.’ (‘Writers'...Beckett, Chris
literature, Contemporary Britain, manuscripts, and new collection items
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Blog post
Archive of Joan Bakewell joins the British Library’s Contemporary Archives Collections
Joan Bakewell’s autobiography, The Centre of the Bed (2003), begins in a white room – a room as white as ‘a fresh sheet of paper’ – at the top of the house in which she has lived for many years. Boxes and packets of papers long-forgotten have been retrieved from...Beckett, Chris
literature, television, Contemporary Britain, manuscripts, and archival research
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Shubbak 2017: contemporary Arab culture at the British Library
The biennial Shubbak Festival returns to London this year between 1st and 16th July with a range of exciting and engaging events on contemporary Arab culture, with an array of literary events taking place once again at the British Library.Lowe, Daniel
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Adam Munni Ratna, a Buddhist monk in England in 1818
The Visual Arts section has recently acquired a portrait of Adam Sri Munni Ratna, a Singhalese Buddhist monk, who accompanied Sir Alexander Johnston (1775-1849) from Sri Lanka to England in 1817-18. Raised between Scotland, Madras and England, Johnston would be appointed as the President of the Council of Sri Lanka...Roy, Malini
religion, South Asia, art, visual arts, and Buddhism
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Blog post
The Lives of Typewriters and Large Data-sets: The Will Self Archive
Chris Beckett, Manuscripts Cataloguer at the British Library is currently working on the Will Self archive. The archive, which was acquired by the Library in 2016, consists of 24 large boxes of papers along with artwork, audio-visual material and the author’s computer hard drive. The first tranche is now discoverable...Beckett, Chris
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Blog post
Open Access Discovery Workshop at the British Library
The solid foundation of the open access movement is the importance of public access to research, but it is clear that discovery of this open research remains one of the barriers to fulfilling this goal. There are many organisations making progress in this space and it is not always easy...Flanagan, Dimity
workshop; collaboration; open access; discovery; user experience; metadata; repositories
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Open and Engaged: Open Access Week at the British Library
One of the key arguments in favour of open access to research is that the public should have the right to read the results of publicly funded research. While much effort is put into creating policies, workflows and business models to enable openness, are we succeeding in engaging the public...Flanagan, Dimity
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Karl Marx’s 200th birthday
This year sees the 200th birthday of political philosopher Karl Marx, who was born in the German town of Trier on 5 May 1818. In connection with the anniversary, the British Library opened a new display in its Treasures Gallery earlier this week. ‘Karl and Eleanor – Life in the...Siclovan, Diana
British Library, Germany, Eleanor Marx, Anglo-German, Germanic, history, printed books, exhibitions, British Museum, and Karl Marx
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Blog post
Languages of Reckoning: The Gagauz Number System
The more languages you speak, the more perspectives you have on the world. Bulgarian, Czech and Hungarian proverbs capture this observation: ‘Човекът е толкова пъти човек, колкото езика знае’ (Bulgarian: a person is as many times a person as many languages knows), ‘Kolik jazyků znáš, tolikrát jsi člověkem’ (Czech: as...Déri, Andrea
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A Bioluminescent Christmas
Christmas is associated with sparkling lights that lift the eyes up to the stars in motionless awe. On Christmas 1875, a curious traveller wrote about a less-known yet equally magical light that drew his eyes below the horizon, a light that flared up with the breaking waves: sea sparkle. The...Déri, Andrea
science, Hungary, history, and South Asia
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Blog post
Oil, storms and knowing part 2: Pliny, Franklin and the IPCC Special Report on Oceans
This post is the second of a pair to mark the period of the 25th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and is contributed by Andrea Deri, Cataloguer. In addition to seafarers, fishers in the Mediterranean Sea applied oil as Pliny the Elder and Plutarch...Déri, Andrea
science, maps, Americas, modern history, curiosity, travel, and environmental science
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Oil, storms and knowing part 1: Seafarers Calm Waves with Oil
This post is to mark the period of the 25th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and is contributed by Andrea Deri, Cataloguer. A storm at sea is one of the most feared experiences, as it often presages shipwreck. Mariners would do anything to survive...Déri, Andrea
South East Asia, science, maps, Medieval history, East Asia, South Asia, Middle East, curiosity, travel, and environmental science
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Blog post
Digital Literature and Emerging Media: 10 Years of the New Media Writing Prize
On 18 July, The British Library hosted a Digital Conversations event to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the New Media Writing Prize. Digital Conversations is a series of events that explores the way in which technology is changing how we experience our life and how we communicate. New media writing...Rossi, Giulia Carla
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Open and Engaged 2019: Open Access Week at the British Library
There are opportunities and benefits for growth in open access and open scholarship when experience and knowledge is shared between Higher Education Institutes and cultural heritage organisations. On Tuesday 22nd October, The British Library celebrated Open Access Week with the event, Open and Engaged - Forging links between higher education...Miles, Susan
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Clouds: How Luke Howard linked Weather Lore and Natural Philosophy
William Wordsworth’s (1770-1850) ‘lonely as a cloud’ poem was conceived in April 1802 on a spring day walk in the Lake District. A few months later, in December 1802, a pharmacist and amateur meteorologist, Luke Howard (1772-1864) delivered a paper in London, on the dynamics of cloud formations. The two...Déri, Andrea
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Diarists and diaries
‘But one shower of rain all this month.’ - entered John Evelyn in his diary on 29th April 1681. What would you write about April 2020 in your diary? John Evelyn (1620–1706) is one of the best-known English diarists. He is known as a diarist but he was also a...Déri, Andrea
science, modern history, curiosity, writing, and environmental science
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Blog post
The Botish Library: developing a poetry printing machine with Python
In June 2020 the Office for Students announced a campaign to fill 2,500 new places on artificial intelligence and data science conversion courses in universities across the UK. While I’m not planning to retrain in cyber, I was lucky enough to be in the cohort for the trial run of...Rossi, Giulia Carla
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Blog post
Esperanto and Endangered Languages
Esperanto can be described as the language of hope, peace, and solidarity as Professor Renato Corsetti, General Secretary of the Academy of Esperanto has discussed in his previous posts for the European Studies blog. Hope remains the governing principle, as the name of the language attests (espero in Esperanto). Driven...Déri, Andrea
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Blog post
Writing Tools for Interactive Fiction
Interactive fiction (IF), or interactive narrative/narration, is defined as “software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment.” The British Library has been collecting examples of UK interactive fiction as part of the Emerging Formats Project, which is a collaborative effort from all...Rossi, Giulia Carla
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Blog post
When is a persistent identifier not persistent? Or an identifier?
Ever wondered what that bar code on the back of every book is? It’s an ISBN: an International Standard Book Number. Every modern book published has an ISBN, which uniquely identifies that book, and anyone publishing a book can get an ISBN for it whether an individual or a huge...Cope, Jez
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The British Library’s Response to the UKRI Open Access Review Consultation
The British Library holds Independent Research Organisation status with UK Research & Innovation. This has enabled us to develop an AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships Programme and to work with various partners to attract joint funding for major research projects. In addition to these UKRI-funded projects, the British Library seeks to...Walker, Dominic
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The Legacy of Slavery: A 19th Century Newspaper and 21st Century Racial Inequity
This blog post introduces a newly digitised collection of 18th/19th century Barbadian newspapers and commented on the slavery related content of these newspapers within the context of 21st century racism.Jevon, Graham
newspapers, Christianity, resistance, Barbados, racism, empire, Americas, colonialism, Caribbean, slavery, digital images, and British Empire
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What’s in a name? The Sovietisation of the Mongolian language and the Challenges of Reversal
This blog post introduces a newly digitised collection of Mongolian newspapers and discusses how the script of the text within these newspapers highlights issues relating to the Sovietisation of the Mongolian language.Jevon, Graham
newspapers, Russia, Central Asia, Mongolia, digitisation, China, writing, digital images, and Russian revolution
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Character, costumes and comedy: Pantomime posters in the Evanion collection
This blog post explores three pantomime posters within the Evanion collection at the British Library. The blog traces developments in Victorian pantomimes such as costumes, comedy, elaborate sets and celebrity appearances.Solomons, Amy
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Star Baker or Avid Taste-Tester? – Exploring Evanion’s 19th-century baking ephemera collection
Developments in baking products in nineteenth-century Britain made baking easier, quicker and cheaper. Using advertisements from the Evanion collection, this blog looks at the revolution of the pudding in Victorian Britain.Solomons, Amy
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Jane Austen and the Georgian Social Whirl of Bath
This blogpost introduces the findings of a Doctoral Fellowship jointly supervised by the British Library and the National Trust, about Jane Austen and Georgian Bath. The Fellowship is linked to National Trust work on the Bath Assembly Rooms, and the blog post situates the fellowship research in that wider contect....Edwards, Joanne
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Mapping Caribbean Diasporic Networks through the Correspondence of Andrew Salkey
This is a guest post by Natalie Lucy, a PhD student at University College London, who recently undertook a British Library placement to work on a project Mapping Caribbean Diasporic Networks through the correspondence of Andrew Salkey.Lucy, Natalie