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Good luck to everyone starting their leaving cert today! A little bit of addition to warm the brain, from 'Records Arithmetick', a manual to teach simple & practical maths.
Have a lovely bank holiday weekend! Whatever you're up to, may you be as entertained as these swans and fish!
It's very lovely to see all the irises in bloom around Dublin 8 at the moment. These lovely hand-coloured ones are from a mid-16th century herbal.
A happy looking dog at court! From the engraved title page of Hugo de Groot's Introduction to Dutch jurisprudence, printed in 1636.
An impressive bouquet of flowers from Paul Contant's 'Le Bouquet Printanier', printed in 1600 in La Rochelle.
Somebody went to real efforts to erase what was written on the title page of this work on Roman obelisks from 1589. They scribbled out the inscription and pasted a slip of paper over it. Must've been scandalous!
In our latest blog post, recent Maddock Fellow Dr Joe Borsato @TheEcoAlchemyst looks at how Indigenous peoples shaped Huguenot colonization in the seventeenth century.
marshlibrary.ie/the-indigeno…
The binder used a fragment of printed music to line the spine of the letters of Aldo Manuzio the younger, from 1592. Music was tricky to print & the page may have had an error, or perhaps it didn't sell. Whatever the reason, it ended up in the waste pile #Fragments #Bindings
On Newstalk's Talking History, Marsh's Director Dr Jason McElligott joined Prof Daniel Cook, Prof David Kenny & Dr Clíona Ó Gallchoir to talk about the continuing impact of Gulliver's Travels. You can listen back here: newstalk.com/podcasts/highli…
The pamphlet was printed during the Venetian Interdict of 1606-7, a quarrel between the Roman Church & Venice which led to a temporary excommunication of Venetian Catholics.
A later owner tried to wash out a scribble on the title page of this Byzantine novel, but still the ownership inscription remains. A good thing too, as it tells us the book belonged to poet & playwright Ben Jonson.
A very relatable look of 'can I just get five minutes peace with my book'. From Le Rommant de la Rose, a hugely popular Medieval poem, printed in Paris, 500 years ago.
A lovely piece about Jonathan Swift in the current issue of The New Yorker. Lots of references to Marsh's Library in it: newyorker.com/culture/the-we…
The printer's mark of Huguenot printer Conrad Badius from 1562 showing a printing press and a quote from Genesis 3:19 reminding us that to labour is the lot of mortal humans: 'by the sweat of your brow you will eat'. A fitting sentiment after the bank holiday!
Happy #MayDay ! Falalas from Thomas Morley's 1595 'Balletts to five voyces' and birdsong from Marsh's Library garden, 2026!















