Before there was Armistead Maupin, there was Valerie Taylor. Jennifer Dentel, researcher and curator at Chicago’s Gerber/Hart library and archive, on America’s first great author of books published in the lesbian pulp fiction genre.
In the 17th-century, Europe is in the throes of a love affair with the colour black. A rich, dark shade that could only be achieved by farming the palo campeche tree found in the Yucatan region in modern-day Mexico. In this article, New World Objects of Knowledge author, Dr Adrian Masters, a research fellow at […]
Rare books curator, Dr Karen Attar, turns her attention to a Senate House Library tome which concentrates on singing – Isaac Watts’s ‘The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament’.
When donors bequeath collections to libraries, they sometimes also leave money to develop the collections on the lines on which they were begun. Depending on the amount left, purchases may continue indefinitely, or the capital may be spent, and trust fund closed. Dr Karen Attar, Senate House Library’s curator of rare books and university art, […]
Graham McKerrow, a contributor to ‘Queer Between the Covers’ (University of London Press, May 2021), looks at Operation Tiger, the British state’s attempt in the 1980s to prohibit the importation of all queer books, newspapers and magazines, including the latest information about the health crisis then devastating the community.
Dr Christopher Ohge delves into the multiple levels and meanings of a classic piece of American literature.
Dr Karen Attar is fascinated by a rare Senate House Library autobiography full of art, politics and scandal.
Dr Elizabeth Dearnley discusses the eerier side of the capital and her recent book Into the London Fog, ahead of her upcoming online talk at the City of Westminster Libraries and Archives.
Self-help books about depression are nothing new. Institute of English Studies fellow, Dr Karen Attar, looks at an important example that was first published in 1621.
Dr Karen Attar, research fellow at the Institute of English Studies, uncovers traces of Thomas Becket in the Senate House Library.
