Category Archives: Rare Books

#FolkloreThursday meets #NationalStorytellingWeek

Today’s #FolkloreThursday theme is favourite fairy tales, in honour of #NationalStorytellingWeek! We were absolutely spoiled for choice with this theme, as we have such a wonderful collection of beautifully illustrated children’s stories. To start, a Walter Crane illustration for Sleeping … Continue reading

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#FolkloreThursday : Traditional Leicestershire Food

For this week’s #FolkloreThursday #food theme we turned to the Leicestershire and Rutland Magazine to see what local traditions there are surrounding mealtimes, cooking and eating. First we found an account of the hearty fare served to the workers during … Continue reading

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Folklore Thursday 11/01/2018

As collections of European folk songs and poems, books on Nursery Rhymes became popular during the golden age of children’s literature in the mid-nineteenth century but many of the rhymes themselves are much older. Full of working-class imagery and trades … Continue reading

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DMUglobal in New York 2018

As hundreds of staff and students went on #dmuglobal’s second trip to New York  despite the disruptive weather bomb and the cancellation of many flights — and for all those that didn’t make it we’re pleased to know that a summer … Continue reading

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Closed for the Holidays: Happy Christmas 2017

Special Collections will be closed from 5pm on  21st December 2017 and will re-open on Tuesday 2nd January 2018! So, signing off with this gorgeous front cover of the Xmas edition of the Illustrated London News, 1906. Happy Christmas from … Continue reading

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A Christmas Nursery Rhyme

As #Folkore Thursday finished for the year last week we thought we’d make our own up today, a folklore Wednesday if you will (not wanting to encroach on anyone’s patch), finding one more opportunity to rave about our folkloric goldmines … Continue reading

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Folklore Thursday 14/12/2017

#Winter Folklore With so many beautiful winter and Christmas-themed books and illustrations to choose from for #Folklore Thursday this week we finally decided on these two because of their strong folkloric connections: First, this gorgeous 1881 children’s book, illustrated by … Continue reading

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Public School Stories

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of the first Harry Potter story, as author JK Rowling noted: The world of Harry Potter centres around the adventures of a young wizard while at a boarding school for magicians … Continue reading

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