Marginalia and manicules and manuscripts, oh my!

books and library history

[nemfrog]

Galileo, his life and work. 1903.

Internet Archive

[bookaddict24-7]

“I wanted to live among books.”

―A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel

[polkadotmotmot]

Neon Mary - The Antiquarians Corner, 2025 - Acrylic, Oil and Pigments on Canvas

[etherealacademia]

I'm graduating from my Master's this month. Here's a 400 year old book I looked through recently, with centuries of marginalia in it

[michaelmoonsbookshop]

The Reader - Harold Knight 

[michaelmoonsbookshop]

from a 19th century bookplate..

[ducissatenebrarum]

Memento mori: doodled skeleton death holding an hour glass (Engelberg, Stiftsbib 339)

[uispeccoll]

Book clasps whooooooo

From top to bottom: xGT509 V4 1664 Springer 332.6 H77s Ranny fB C726S xfPA6519 A3 1480 xN7433.4 C655 U55 1995 xBX2079 G4 1610

All from the University of Iowa Special Collections.

-Lindsay M.

[nemfrog]

To the reader.

Source

[ancientsstudies]

Oscar Wilde’s Handwritten Edits to The Picture of Dorian Gray.

[michaelmoonsbookshop]

from a 19th century bookplate..

[uispeccoll]

Multi-Mini Monday!

(Okay, posted on a Tuesday, but, whatever)

Let me just start this by saying that the absolute joy that I felt from holding an actual handful of miniature books is unparalleled.

These are dollhouse books! There are 26 books, and the coolest part is that they are all readable! Sometimes when miniature books are made for dollhouses, they are blank books with decorated covers. These books were created by a wide variety of people and publishers, and I think that it shows how wide ranging the world of miniature book creation is!

Each book is unique, and they range in size from 18 to 25 mm. Some of them are gilt, some are illustrated, and some are quite plain. The bookcase itself is 11 x 9 x 4 cm. It is a beautiful wooden case that is decorated with gilt embellishments, orange silk, and golden ribbon trim.

More often than not, the miniatures in our collection are housed individually. It was very cool to see these items in a context that they originally could've been in. You can imagine playing with and reading these books and putting them back on their shelf as one would a standard sized book. It is so fun!

-- Hailee M.

Smith Miniatures Collection Z1033.M6 M56

[arthistoryanimalia]

For #NationalSerpentDay:

Jörmungandr (the Midgard Serpent) gets fished by an ox head

From the 17th century Icelandic manuscript AM 738 4to, now in the care of the Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland.

[cuties-in-codices]

parchment stitching

pages from a cistercian breviary, produced in the cistercian nunnery lichtenthal abbey, c. 1450-1500

source: Karlsruhe, BLB, Cod. Lichtenthal 29

[gouged-doll]

pages of hilma af klint's sketchbook

[cuties-in-codices]

de avibus (the book of birds)

illustrations from a copy of hugh of fouilloy's moral treatise on birds, de avibus, from a composite manuscript containing texts by hugh of fouilloy, achard of saint victor, and gebuinus trecensis. produced in flanders, early 13th c.

source: Bruges, Grootseminarie, Ms. 89/54

[cuties-in-codices]

female members of the welf & staufer dynasties

miniatures from the weingartner stifterbüchlein (historia guelphica cum iconibus), containing 40 full-page portraits of historical members of the welf and staufer genealogy. produced in weingarten (swabia), c. 1510

source: Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. hist. qt. 584