
Friday 24 February 2012
Are you celebrating the Feast of St Matthias?

Friday 17 February 2012
A secret ticket...

Wednesday 15 February 2012
Did you forget Valentine's Day?

Wednesday 8 February 2012
Birthday look-alikes
Senior Librarian at Chetham's Library - One of the greatest writers of all time
By an amazing coincidence, it so happens that Charles Dickens and Senior Librarian Fergus Wilde share the same birthday - yesterday marking the 200th anniversary of Dickens' birth and a happy 50th birthday for Fergus. Congratulations from us all.
Here's to you, Mrs Robinson

In later years Mary became an invalid and gained a new fame for her writing, including four collections of poetry, seven novels, a play, two political tracts, a translation, and countless individual poems. She was admired by Coleridge, whose Kubla Khan is said to have been inspired by a poem Robinson dictated to her daughter when she woke from a Laudanum-inspired dream. Her best known work, Sappho and Phaon, is loosely based on the Heroides and gained her a new soubriquet as the 'English Sappho'.
Her many portraits by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hoppner, and Romney provide her with an afterlife that her poetry failed to win, although Paula Byrne's 2005 biography Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson has helped to redress the balance between brains and beauty. This coloured stipple engraving from the Library's collections of prints was made by William Dickinson from a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds and was published in 1785.
Bring, bring to deck my brow, ye Sylvan girls,
A roseate wreath; nor for my waving hair
The costly band of studded gems prepare,
Of sparkling crysolite or orient pearls:
Love, o'er my head his canopy unfurls,
His purple pinions fan the whisp'ring air;
Mocking the golden sandal, rich and rare,
Beneath my feet the fragrant woodbine curls.
Bring the thin robe, to fold about my breast,
White as the downy swan; while round my waist
Let leaves of glossy myrtle bind the vest,
Not idly gay, but elegantly chaste!
Love scorns the nymph in wanton trappings drest;
From Sappho and Phaon
Congratulations Dr Joel

Wednesday 1 February 2012
Who was Apothecary Thyer?

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