What can an 1848 sea-serpent sighting tell us about the workings of the mid-19th-century newspaper industry? Sixty feet long!Awfully strong!It held its course straight on, for right or for wrong,And many a brave tar on board of the Daedalus,Thought to himself if he comes here he’ll settle us. … Its size and its hues,All who…
Then and Now: The Wall by the Church-Yard
For today’s Then and Now post, we don’t have a pair of images side by side. Instead, we have a textual description of a part of Chapelizod as it was in the early 1800s, from one of Ireland’s great masters of horror, and to compare against it, a set of photographs which I took around…
Then and Now: The Chapel Royal at Dublin Castle
This post was suggested by my finding the British Library’s beautiful engraving of the Chapel Royal at Dublin Castle, on Flickr Commons. This picture dates to 1816, and shows the newly rebuilt Gothic chapel, designed by Francis Johnston, which replaced a 17th-century chapel that had been located on the same site, but which had become…
Lies and Litigation, Part Two: the cost of the Autographs
Part One of this post can be found here. Last year, I acquired a partial copy of Geraldine of Desmond from John’s Bookshop in Athlone. It was the only original Crumpe novel that I’ve ever seen for sale, and I was keen to own one for myself. It’s not in perfect condition, but this is…
Lies and Litigation, Part One; or, When is a First Edition Not a First Edition?
It’s 1831. You’re a recently-published novelist, and you suspect that your publisher – who has a bit of a dubious reputation in the business – is withholding the proceeds from your book. Worse still, you’ve asked repeatedly for the return of a manuscript, and he’s refused to provide it. There can only be one solution:…
Then and Now: A Lost Mansion in North Dublin
Today’s post brings us quite literally into my neck of the woods: Santry Demesne Park, which is beautiful, historical, and very conveniently located five minutes away from my house. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Santry Demesne belonged to the Barry family, and contained their stately home and extensive gardens. The house was first built…
Guest Post: The Real-Life Houses That Inspired Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Today’s guest post has been written by Will Leary, a former student of English with Film at University College Dublin. Will is especially interested in the crossovers between the two mediums of literature and film, particularly film adaptations of novels. Whom amongst us hasn’t dreamt of traversing the hallways of Pemberley? Or longed to take…
Teaching A Neural Network to Write 19th-Century Book Titles
This post is inspired by one of my all-time favourite blogs, AI Weirdness, whose author Janelle Shane uses machine learning to develop new and strange approaches to familiar tasks. The blog showcases her experiments in training neural networks on large textual datasets, in order to create names for guinea pigs, generate new college courses, and…
Then and Now: Trinity College Gates
This view of the corner of College Green in Dublin comes from The Illustrated Dictionary of Dublin, a guidebook by Strangways and Cosgrave, and dates to around 1895. To the of the picture is the front entrance to Trinity College, and in among the throng of pedestrians and omnibuses you can also see a few…
Found: Two Unknown Letters by Thomas Moore, 1845
On Tuesday March 25th, 1845, the poet Thomas Moore sat down in his study at Sloperton, in Wiltshire, to write a short – and somewhat confused – thank-you note to an old friend. The letter’s recipient pinned it carefully into a collection of treasured documents, but apart from herself, a handful of library staff members,…
Then and Now: St. Stephen’s Green and the Shelbourne Hotel
Over the course of our work with the British Library Labs images collection, we’ve found that a significant portion of these digitized works are on travel: both traveller’s accounts of their journeys, and also many guidebooks. Some of these books provide advice that would raise eyebrows nowadays; for example, Dignam’s Dublin Guide enthusiastically recommends Mountjoy…
Reading Sherlock Holmes in Context
Today’s feature is a guest post on social networks in the Sherlock Holmes novella The Sign of the Four, by former student Helen Kirrane. Helen studied English at University College Dublin. Her research interests are late Victorian gothic fiction, the literature of the fin de siècle, and the aesthetic movement. First published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine…
The Sea of Books 