What can be found in the Vatican's Secret Archive? How many books did Charles Darwin's library aboard the Beagle hold? Which library is home to a colony of bats? Bursting with potted histories, quirky facts and enlightening lists, this book explores...

Early manuscripts in the English language include religious works, plays, romances, poetry and songs, as well as charms, notebooks, science and medieval medicine. How did scribes choose to arrange the words and images on the page in each manuscript?...

Many beautiful illuminated manuscripts survive from the Middle Ages and can be seen in libraries and museums throughout Europe. But who were the skilled craftsmen who made these exquisite books? What precisely is parchment? How were medieval manuscri...

In their celebration of 'little matters' – the regular round of visiting, dining out, drinking tea, of reading and walking to the shops and sending to the post – Jane Austen's letters and novels have many similarities. The thirteen letters collected...

Ever wondered how ink is made? Or what is the bestselling book of all time? Or which are the oldest known books in the world? Highbrow to lowbrow, all aspects of the book are celebrated and explored in "The Book Lovers' Miscellany". From a list of u...

This collection of essays offers an intimate history of Austen's art and life told through objects associated with her personally and with the era in which she lived. Her teenage notebooks, music albums, pelisse-coat, letters, the homemade booklets i...

"Here I am once more in this Scene of Dissipation and vice, and I begin to find already my Morals corrupted". Much loved for the romantic plot lines of her novels and witty observations on relationships, Jane Austen was also a prolific letter writer...

Pyramus: "Now die, die, die, die, die". [Dies] "A Midsummer Night's Dream" "Shakespeare's Dead" reveals the unique ways in which Shakespeare brings dying, death, and the dead to life. It establishes the cultural, religious and social contexts for th...

Thames aficionado Robert Gibbings once wrote that "the quiet of an age-old river is like the slow turning of the pages of a well-loved book". "Writing the Thames" tells a much-loved river's story through the remarkable prose, poetry and illustration...

In late November 1623, Edward Blount finally took delivery at his bookshop at the sign of the Black Bear near St Paul's of a book that had been long in the making. "Master William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies" was the first collec...