‘His royal favour’ marks the 300th anniversary of the gift by George I to the University of Cambridge of 30,000 books and manuscripts that transformed the University Library for ever. It shows some of the highlights of the collection, and looks to the future of these books at the heart of University research and learning.
View online by clicking the image to the left.
Venue: Milstein Exhibition Centre
Opening on 17 November, a display of drawings relating to the nineteenth-century competition to design a new University Library, selected by Max Bryant, winner of this year’s History of Art student curatorial competition.
Venue: Entrance Hall cases, click on the image (left) for an expanded virtual exhibition.
‘A Damned Serious Business’ draws on the rich and varied collections of Cambridge University Library to highlight written records, maps and book arts relating to the Battle of Waterloo and the era in which it played so decisive a part.
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A major exhibition giving insights into the ways early books were decorated, annotated, bound, used and abused by their owners in the first hundred years after the development of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg.
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The Venetian printer Aldus Manutius produced nearly 120 editions during his twenty-year career from 1495 to 1515. This online exhibition highlights a selection of his works, which are renowned for their purity of proportion and elegance of the founts, and changed the appearance of books for ever.
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An exhibition commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Paris, showing books published, mainly in France, after the liberation of Paris and before the end of 1946, on the subjects of the Second World War, the German occupation of France, and the eventual liberation by the Allies.
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A virtual exhibition marking 500 years since the birth of the ground-breaking anatomist Andreas Vesalius, including images from Cambridge University Library’s unique hand-coloured copy of his Epitome of the seven books on the fabric of the human body.
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An exhibition by Julien Domercq, winner of the inaugural Cambridge University Library/History of Art Student Curatorial Competition, tracing the development of the print iconography of the death of Captain Cook.
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On D-Day, 6 June 1944, David Holbrook landed in Normandy as a twenty-one year old tank commander. His 1966 novel Flesh wounds recounted his experiences. This exhibition draws on Holbrook’s literary archive, held in the University Library, to mark the 70th anniversary of the invasion.
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An exhibition tracing the development of medieval literature in French, and the manuscript culture through which it was conveyed across Europe and beyond.
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An exhibition tracing the composition of John Riley’s poem Czargrad, from early notebook jottings through manuscript and typescript drafts to the first appearances in print. Click on the image to enter the virtual exhibition.
View online by clicking on the image to the left.
An exhibition of different ways in which colour was printed in books in Tudor England, resulting from the research of 2012-13 Munby Fellow of Bibliography Dr Elizabeth Upper.
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An exhibition of nineteenth-century Spanish and English pamphlets and broadsides illustrating wrongdoing, crime and retribution; why did people behave badly, and how did others find out what they had been up to? The display included tales of bandits, pirates, murderesses, poisoners and many more malefactors in highly (and gruesomely) illustrated detail.
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A virtual exhibition celebrating the tercentenary of the birth of Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713), author most famously of The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman. His works have inspired numerous imitations and parodies, and illustrations by Hogarth, Cruikshank and many others.
View online by clicking on the image to the left.
A display of early illustrated medical books from the collection of the distinguished surgeon and scholar Sir Geoffrey Keynes (1887–1982), acquired by Cambridge University Library in 1982.
View online by clicking on the image to the left.
For older exhibitions at Cambridge Unversity Library, see our Previous exhibitions page.