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Category Archives: English Men of Letters
The Wit and Wisdom of the Rev. Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith is described in his ODNB entry as ‘author and wit’, which somewhat overlooks the day job as a clergyman. In the two-volume ‘life and letters’ published in 1855 by his daughter Saba (a name he invented himself), she … Continue reading
The Diary of John Evelyn
One of my vital tools as a scribbler of blogs on books is a little pack of those things – I don’t even know what they are called – which you can stick on to a page to mark a … Continue reading
St Valentine’s Day
The estimable John Brand informs us that ‘It is a ceremony, says Bourne, never omitted among the vulgar, to draw lots, which they term Valentines, on the eve before Valentine Day. The names of a select number of one sex … Continue reading
The Most Celebrated British Libraries
William Clarke (about whom little, as they say, is known – at any rate to the web) followed the early nineteenth-century trend for snappy Latin titles with an explanatory English subtitle for those who had not had Latin beaten into … Continue reading
Child’s Ballads
It may seem odd that the foremost collector, compiler and editor of traditional British songs and ballads was an American, and odder still that he has a place among the great, good, and eccentric of the Oxford Dictionary of National … Continue reading
Cambridge Library Collection Blog 