On Wednesday I went to the Herbarium as usual, and asked whether I could have a little look through the Locked Cupboard of Old Books. There’s all sorts of stuff in there, from Henry Lyte’s Niewe Herbal of 1578 through to some beautifully illustrated Victorian books. It was a lovely surprise to open this unmarked leather-bound volume and find a dedication from Samuel Pepys!
The following day I went down to The MERL to see a pop-up exhibition of medieval manuscript pages that have recently been added to the university’s Special Collections.
There were so many different styles, many of them were tiny (the photo above is quite a lot larger than life size!) and all of them were extremely beautiful!
This, however, was perhaps my most confounding discovery of the week. I say “of the week”, I borrowed it from the library ages ago and have renewed it at least twice without opening it, but this week I actually started reading it.
It turns out that, in 1912, Agnes Arber wrote… well, basically exactly what I thought I was going to write. Its full title is “Herbals: Their origin and evolution, a chapter in the history of botany 1470-1670“.
Apparently finding gaps in the existing research is not my strong point!
I’m kind of hoping I might be able to expand on a similar framework, especially as I haven’t (yet) found a more recent book on this exact subject. Although I would quite like to go through it with a big red pen and correct every time Arber has said “the invention of printing” when she means “the invention of movable metal type”. </typographypedant>
But! If this is going to turn into a PhD (and it’s still a very big but, at the moment), I’m going to have to apply for funding, and the local deadlines for that are actually much sooner than I was expecting. I’d been vaguely planning to take December off for resting and tidying the house and spending some time with my husband, and then start to contact potential supervisors after Christmas. This week I found out that the funding application deadline is January 18th, which is the first week of next term, so it turns out I’d better get a move on with consolidating my ideas and trying to find the right person to supervise it all!
Meanwhile, I’m going to make an appointment to go in and spend a bit more time rummaging carefully through his Locked Cupboard of Old Books in the Herbarium, in case there are any more lovely surprises tucked away in there, waiting to be unearthed.