Rare Books Display: Robert Browning 1812-1889

 

ROBERT BROWNING, 1812-1889

A Display celebrating 200 years of ROBERT BROWNING

In Rare Books and Special Collections, Tony Miller Reading Room, Upper Floor, Jubilee Library

1^st June – End of September, 2012

Jubilee Library is fortunate to have part of the personal library of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It was donated by Leonard Lionel Bloomfield who brought the Collection at Sothebys a few years before his death in 1916.

Some of the items that will be included in the display are interesting in their own right and not just because they belong to the Brownings, for example -

• A collection of 23 Italian Chap Books, c1830-40, brought by Browning in Naples in 1844, inscribed by Robert Browning and given to his father, Robert Browning Sr. As very little is known about the 1844 visit to Italy, this book provided documentary evidence of his interests at the time.  

• The Chicago and Alton Official Railroad timetable which included the complete works of Robert Browning! An unusual and rare piece of ‘Browningiana’. The plan of combining high-class literature with railway time-cards was adopted in the belief that it would appeal to the highest culture and most refined taste and the travelling public would  prefer works of permanent value. Browning himself was amused and surprised by this enterprising method of presenting his works to the American reading public.

• Six manuscript volumes on the history of the Marozia family of Rome, written by Robert Browning Sr., an antiquarian,  and used by Robert as a source for his masterpiece, ‘Ring and the Book’. The research was probably carried out specifically for his son.

• The library holds the best collection of Robert Browning’s music, 400 pieces of printed music, which includes a presentation copy from Clara Schumann, a good friend of the family. The importance and value of this collection lies in its completeness. Virtually no other music owned by the Brownings survives and music was very important to Robert Browning who wrote a number of important musical poems, such as ‘Abt vogler’, ‘A Toccata of Galuppi’s’ and ‘Master Hugues of Saxe-Gothe’.

Anyone can join the Rare Books Membership Scheme and consult some of the wonderful treasures held in the Special Collections.

 —

Margaret – Rare Books Manager 

For more information on our Rare Books collection call 01273 294005 or e-mail RareBooks@brighton-hove.gov.uk or stop in at Jubilee Library

Paperback 2012 – Desert Island Books

QRZ – Dr Raudive – Cyanotype by Grant Newman

I wanted to take a quick opportunity to blow the trumpets of various library staff currently exhibiting work inspired by some of their favourite books. A wide range of media and approaches are currently on display in Jubilee library.

Clay Dreaming – Ceramics by Mark Thompson

It’s really inspiring to see how much talent surrounds and fills up the organisation. Staff from all levels of the service have contributed, and the end result is an inspiring transformation of a space we work in every day, into a stimulating cultural challenge.

Living in the End Times – Jake Smith

Of course, in reality, libraries are inherently cultural spaces, which presumably attracts the wealth of talent on display. A library is a place someone can (just about) make a living, whilst giving something to the community, and engaging with people. We work surrounded by the wealth of literature and human knowledge, spending our day talking to and helping the public. All life is here.

Midsummer Night’s Dream – Robert Patching

It’s utterly enlightening to see the people you work with every day, showing off their creative sides. Knowing someone who you sit with for a group mither in the staff room is capable of producing an exquisite and emotional artistic statement seems surprising, even though it is clear that we all have this side to us. We are not just workers and colleagues. We are creative, unique and challenging people.

Various works by Carrie Lambe

 So a space is transformed through an artistic intervention, and we get to see inside some of the souls that keep the library chugging along. Precious pieces of work are displayed, by the same people putting books on the shelves, scanning barcodes and answering phones.

Masque of the Red Death – Photograph of sculptural installation by Meghan Limbrick

A building. A workplace. A job. These things are all empty without the person within. A library is not just a room full of books, it is a space full of people.

1Q84 – Lucy Eldridge

Those people have been touched by the books they work with. The books owned by the public, and then shared freely. Books seem to have souls that reach from author to reader. All these pieces are responses to favourite works. People trying to express the power and wonder of the texts that have left marks on them. The books don’t take these impressions, so you can’t know what mark the book in your hands has left on the previous readers.

Animal Farm – Josef Cabey

So come to Jubilee library. Take a look at the work on display. These are the marks books have made on people. These are the extensions of the stories we read. A book makes a mark, makes a person, makes a life. Come to the library and find some stories; not necessarily the ones you expected.

A Woman’s Face – Alan Pierce

 

I’ll leave you with some words from Carl Sagan. Poached from the ever fascinating book-delving blog Brain Pickings:

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

Come to Jubilee Library, and see if you can find some magic.

On the walls or the shelves.

—

Alex – Library Officer

Alex is trying hard not to self-promote too much, but some of his work is also on display, and more can be found on unstruck.wordpress.com.

There are plenty more images of work on show on the group’s facebook page.

Please stop by Jubilee library and have a look. The exhibition is running until the 26th May, and there are plenty of other things to see (besides even the books).

 

The Sound of the Music Library

The Old Music Library – Image courtesy of The Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove

I was talking to a musician at a concert in Brighton last Tuesday, who said “It’s such a pity the music library in Brighton closed (our old collection on Church street, now the Cote Restaurant), I had to go to Hove Library for a score”

To all you musicians out there: it hasn’t closed, it’s just spread over two floors at the Jubilee Library!  Compact Discs are in the Sound & Vision collection on the ground floor and books and scores on the top floor.  The collection of printed music in Brighton and Hove consists of some 7,500 titles.

I have been working with the collection for over 20 years and making many additions in the last few months. Musicians, I have noticed, mainly take scores out if they are available “to hand” on the open shelves.  Therefore a great project of updating the store scores has been taking place.  Tens of shiny new yellow Eulenburg miniature scores have arrived “like the daffodils of spring”, as well as playing parts for a wide range of instruments.

Readers may be interested in using our song index.  Years ago we started song indexing all our vocal anthologies.  In the old library in Church Street it was housed in massive wooden catalogue drawers, a card for each song.  Something like “101 Hits for Buskers” would have us scribing for weeks on a forest of paper cards.  Thankfully, I can now just add them to our catalogue.  I have indexed everything from “Kidney Stew Blues” to “Frim Fram Sauce”.  Just  type the song into our catalogue search box (ideally checking the phrase box below), type in the song and then “click and find”.

A very popular section is our “Music Tutor” collection, of DVDs and books, helping you to learn an instrument.  A few years ago we couldn’t get enough titles on playing mandolin – the Captain Corelli effect. Now the whole of Brighton seems to have gone mad for banjos and ukuleles.

At another concert I attended on Sunday it was great to hear that the vocal scores had all come via Brighton & Hove music libraries.  If you are interested in putting on a choral or instrumental concert we either have the sets of scores or should be able to get them for you. Send an e-mail to libraries@brighton-hove.gov.uk for more information. 

Years ago I remember people sitting in the music library for hours making programme notes for concerts, pouring over the “Grove Dictionary of Music”.  Musicians used to save up their pennies to purchase a home copy at great expense.  Although we still have the hardcopy of this book in the library, you can also access it via our Virtual Reference library under Oxford Music Online (which in addition to Grove includes “Encyclopedia of Popular Music”, “Oxford Dictionary of Music” and “The Oxford Companion to Music”).

—

Jane – Library Services Manager – Information

To investigate our music resources, you can use our catalogue, our Virtual Reference library or just pop in and talk to staff at your local library. The Jubilee library enquiry desk is on 01273 296969, or you can e-mail us at libraries@brighton-hove.gov.uk.

Thanks to the Brighton History Centre, based in Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, for the photograph.

Lost treasures – Making Lemonade with Virginia Euwer Wolff

I have just posted a request to publishers Faber and Faber to ask if they would re-issue Virginia Euwer Wolff’s two brilliant books about 14 year old LaVaughn and Jolly, the struggling single mum she babysits for.

The books are written in free verse form but don’t let that put you off – they are really easy to read. Here’s a little bit from Make Lemonade

Here’s how it was at Jolly’s house:

the plates are pasted together with noodles

and these rooms smell like last week’s garbage

and there isn’t a place where I can put my book to study for school

except places where something else already is

LaVaughn has plans to escape her violent, poor neighbourhood by going to college and getting a good job. But before that there’s a lot to discover – about friendship, about belief, about sexuality and about how to make sense of the world.

Here’s a bit from True Believer about the after-school grammar class that LaVaughn’s teacher advises her to go to.

This is the very scary Dr Rose, on the first day of the new class:

This is an after-school tutorial,

But do not be mislead by that.

Do not even begin to think you’ll drop in

When you fell like dropping in.

Do not even begin to think you will do the lessons

When the mood strikes you.

Do not even begin to think you will

Dillydally about your work here.

Now: why are you here, young man?

She has pointed her eyes toward a slumped boy.

“I want to be a senator”, he says, barely hearable.

Her eyes go around watching our reactions

which there aren’t any

among us motionless bodies.

I don’t want her eyes pointing into me like that.

“And you, young woman?” Her eyes go to the girl behind me.

“I’m here so I can talk good for TV, which I want to go into.”

“And you young man?” She means the boy in front of me.

“I want to rise above myself” he says.

By this time nobody in this room would laugh,

this teacher has us all on some kind of strings

attached to the waves of her voice.

Her eyes come to me.

“And you?”

My voice comes out puny. “I was sent here

by last year’s teacher

to get improved.”

Dr Rose breathes in very deep, her jacket swells just an iota,

and she says, “We have a multitude

of obstacles to overcome here.

We’ll begin.”

Dr Rose turns out to be totally inspiring and completely committed to helping her students achieve their aims.

Make Lemonade and True Believer are un-put-downable reads and I’ll be amazed if you don’t feel more hopeful about a world with people like these in it!

So I’m waiting to hear back from Faber and Faber and in the meantime I’ve brought Make Lemonade and True Believer out of the store and even though their pages are a bit yellow with them being over ten years old, they’ll be out on the shelves in the Young People’s area waiting for someone to pick them up and get to know Jolly, Jeremy, Jilly, Jody, Patrick, LaVaughn’s wise Mom, LaVaughn herself and all the friends and teachers who believe in her.

—

Rosemary Lynch – Young People’s Services Manager

At the Enquiry Desk

I’ve worked on the enquiry desk for over a year now, and it still feels like a huge learning process. I guess that’s bound to happen if you work in the vague and immense field of ‘information’.

It’s my job, for large chunks of the day, to sit at a desk and wait for people to come and ask me questions.

A lot of people come, but I sometimes worry that there’s still a lot of people don’t realise quite how much we do, and, hopefully, how much help we can be. So I’m writing this, to try and give you an idea of the variety of questions we get asked, and maybe encourage you to think of us next time you’re looking for a piece of information and even google turns up a blank.

In the last week, I’ve found songs for funerals, forms for immigration, directories for businesses, addresses for councillors, phone numbers for agents, legal documents, circuit diagrams, exhibition catalogues, string quartets and cricket almanacs. That’s only looking at some of the ones that stand out, missing out all the everyday enquiries for biographies, cookery books, health information, DIY, computer manuals, local history, art, fashion, Which? reports, the electoral roll and just about anything else you could imagine.

We can’t always find everything, and we certainly don’t know everything, but we’ll be ready to try our hardest to find what you’re after. If we don’t have it here, we’ll order it in, or tell you where it is.

We are like human versions of google, and, if we’re honest, we use google ourselves, but we also have shelves of other information sources all around us. There’s a book that (theoretically) allow you to look up a famous classical theme if someone whistles it. There’s almanacs and yearbooks and handbooks and directories and atlases and all manner of reference guides. There’s law digests and guides, as well as the Acts of Parliament and Statutory Instruments. We’ve got art price guides and stamp catalogues and so many ridiculous (and wonderful) things that I feel that no matter how many I list, I’m barely even scraping the very top of the tip of the iceberg.

Put it all together, and my job becomes doubly great, because I’m not just helping people, but I’m also learning stuff. Specifically, I am normally learning stuff that I had no idea that I wanted to learn. Perhaps I never did want to learn it, but there it is, in my brain, because of you lot, the general public, and your incessant clamouring for answers.

Keep it up. Bring us a question, and even if we don’t know the answer, we’ll try our best shot at finding out where that answer would be.

—

Alex – Library Officer (Not pictured)

The Jubilee Library enquiry desk can be called on 01273 296969, or just pop in to your local library for assistance.

Reader Recommends – What do you think?

We’ve been looking recently at different ways you can tell each other what you think of our books, DVDs, CDs, talking books, and all the other things you can get out from the library.

One of the main things to come out of World Book Day was that we want to be more than just a place where you can get books, we want to be a hub for people to talk about books, discussing what they like and passing on recommendations.

There’s already at least two simple ways you can do this, one old fashioned, and one on the web. Here’s a quick guide to how to do them.

From your library you should be able to pick up one of these Reader Recommends slips. The idea here is that as you return the book, you can fill this in, pop it in the cover, and let the next person to pick it up know what you thought of it.

Couldn’t be simpler.

The ‘high tech’ version, is on the catalogue system. In the catalogue entry for any item, there should be an ‘add your review’ link, near the bottom of all the bumph. Click on that, rate the item out of ten, and tell us what you thought of it. It’s only more complicated because you need to put your card number and PIN in as well, but otherwise, it’s still fairly straightforward. Reviews are moderated and only your first name will be shown to other members of the public.

Want to go into more detail? Send us an e-mail at: libraries@brighton-hove.gov.uk, and if we get enough reviews, we’ll do a round up of them right here on this very blog. Anything in the blog is open for comments, so we hope that’ll become a great forum for discussion about books, music, films and everything else.

So. What do you think?

—

Alex – Library Officer

Our Economy – BBC Southeast debate hosted at Jubilee Library

Jubilee library was proud to host a BBC debate this weekend. The debate discussed possible options for economic recovery in the South East. Plenty of controversial opinions and ongoing arguments relating to the concept of economic growth at the expense of our environment, and plenty more besides.

 

Here it is, available on the iplayer archive until 27 March.

 

My personal opinion is that our current economic woes can be linked to our banking system whereby the majority of money created is in the form of debt created out of nothing (ie not against deposits, literally created out of thin air) by private banks that have to be paid back plus interest (you can check Bank of England docs to verify this). This system of banking sucks money out of our economy for the enrichment of a tiny minority.

 

The other major problem is an economic model based on infinite growth; impossible to achieve on a planet of finite resources. The only outcome of this model is economic and environmental collapse.

 

Oddly neither of these points came up for discussion. It seems there is a total lack of desire to look at the big picture as to why we are at this point economically and how we got here.

 

What do you think?

 

—

 

Jake – Information and E-services Manager

Information on more personal financial matters can still be found on the Money Matters section of our website.

Rare Book Spotlight – Image: Poodle and Bulldog

This is an interesting image depicting two dogs from opposite ends of the image spectrum. The book was published in 1840 and shows the two dog breeds looking quite unlike the pedigrees that you might see today. Early books about dogs such as this one are a good way of identifying just how much some breed types have changed over the years; something of a hot topic currently in professional dog breeding circles due to ailments that some breeds suffer after years of selective breeding.

The differences are clear. The Bulldog (as shown in this illustration) was a much longer legged beast somewhat closer to what we know today as a Boxer. The Poodle is shown as  being stockier and slightly less curly coated than we might see these days.

Have a look next time you are at the Brighton Pride dog show or Crufts, or compare them to images from any of the books on dogs in our main collection (shelfmark 636.7 is a good place to start).

The series of books from which the illustration is taken was edited by Sir William Jardine (1800-1874) who at the time owned the finest private natural history museum and library inBritain. Jardine popularised natural history to all levels of Victorian society with his publication the Naturalist’s Library (1833-1843) and the series ran to some forty books. This series was divided up into themes: Ornithology (14 vols), Mammalia (13 vols), Entomology (7 vols) and Ichthyology (6 vols). Each of them was written by a leading naturalist of the day.

Volume 10, which contains this illustration, was written by Charles Hamilton Smith, the illustration by James Hope Stewart. Stewart illustrated many of the volumes of the Naturalists Library and although his illustrations for the series ran to a great number and arguably contributed greatly to the success of it, he was always considered an amateur artist who remains in relative obscurity. Other volumes were illustrated by more well known figures such as Edward Lear.

This is one of many volumes of the Naturalists Library in Jubilee library Rare Books and Special Collections.

Main Title: Dogs  

Author:  Lieut.-Col. Charles Hamilton Smith.

Imprint: Edinburgh: W. H. Lizars, [n.d.].

Series Title:   The Naturalist’s Library: edited by Sir William Jardine; parts 1-2, Mammals; vols 18-19.

—

Josef – Library Officer

The book this illustration is taken from can be found on the catalogue here. To view it and thousands of treasures like it, you will need a Rare book membership. Details can be found here.

Fantastic Fruit at Hangleton Library

 

Hangleton Library celebrated a healthy fruit and vegetable themed family activity, which staff organised during the recent half term weekend.  Participants were given all kinds of fun activities to complete which included: a word search, a competition prize draw to find and name the many different fruit and vegetables pictured around the children’s library, and creating unique drawings.   The lucky winner for the prize draw was excited to win a fantastic goodie bag with presents to take home which included books, puzzles, craft items to make, fruit foam stickers and a pineapple!.  Children also chose fruit and vegetable pictures to personalise, which were made in to badges, and used their creative skills to make colourful and imaginative pictures and designs using craft items including stickers, fruit and vegetable stencils and paper cutters. 

 

The event was very well attended and ran very successfully with over twenty five children and parents who enjoyed and appreciated a great family morning event at their local library.  One of the mothers who regularly participates in children’s activities atHangleton Librarycommented, “Thank you so much.  My daughter and I really enjoy these events.  They are always presented so well, with quality and thoughtful ideas.  The staff are so friendly, welcoming and relaxed, it is such a nice environment.  When will the next one be advertised?!”

 

—

Mark – Library Officer, Hangleton Library

Med Attityd – Books in Swedish and Other Languages

Brighton & Hove Libraries have a small selection of books in foreign languages such as Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Russian and Swedish. The customers borrowing these books are mostly people who want to read a novel in their mother tongue, but there are also people who borrow these books because they want to improve their skills in a second or perhaps third language. Of course there might be other reasons too. Some people insist on reading books in the language they were originally written in.

I was born and grew up in Sweden, but ever since I started learning English at the age of ten I was keen on reading novels in English. Unfortunately the selection of English fiction in my local library wasn’t great so I ended up reading authors like Rosamunde Pilcher and Johanna Trollope whom were aimed at my mum’s generation. When I moved to Brightonto study English in my late teens a new world opened up to me as I could find pretty much any novel I wanted to read in the library. I had previously read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in Swedish, but reading it in its original language was a whole other experience; it felt like the author was talking directly to me. Sometimes that immediate “connecting feeling” gets lost in translation.

I’m an author myself and write in both Swedish and English, but I find translation extremely difficult as you can’t translate a sentence word by word. My debut novel Punkindustriell Hårdrockare med Attityd (“Punk Industrial Hard Rocker with Attitude”) is available in Swedish at Hove Library. 

‘When is the translation going to come out?’ my frustrated workmates ask. ‘Don’t know!’ I reply. ‘Before you learn Swedish I hope …’

Even though Scandinavian thrillers are very popular, I doubt there’s going to be a revolution of Brits learning Swedish, just for the sake of being able to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in its original language, titled Män som Hatar Kvinnor (“Men who Hate Women”).  There are quite a few Swedish people in Brighton though, and every time I serve a fellow countryman, I talk him or her into borrowing my book. Even my colleagues have got into the habit of mentioning my novel if they detect a Swedish accent.

If you want to learn Swedish or perhaps Greek or Thai there is a good selection of language courses in the library.

 —

Louise H – Library Officer

If you want to find out more about my writing, please visit my personal blog: http://louisehalvardsson.blogspot.com/

This post was written a month or so ago. Louise has since left the library service, and we wish her all the best in her new adventures, some of which can be read about here.

You can find information on how to search the library catalogue for books in other languages here (pdf).