by Talking Humanities | Jun 18, 2020 | Archives & Libraries, Features, Libraries & Publications, Research & Resources
Mathematician, physicist, inventor, religious controversialist, literary author: in a brief life terminated by a lingering, debilitating illness, Blaise Pascal (1623–62) was nothing if not multi-talented. As the curator of rare books at Senate House Library, I think...
by Talking Humanities | May 7, 2020 | Archives & Libraries, Languages & Literature, Publications, Research & Resources
Curator at Senate House Library Dr Karen Attar teases out what makes this novel different, including marriage and morality and clinical depression. One hundred and fifty years ago the final part of Anthony Trollope’s The Vicar of Bullhampton appeared – in accordance...
by Talking Humanities | Apr 28, 2020 | Archives & Libraries, Digital, Features, History & Classics, Languages & Literature, Libraries & Publications, Publications, Research & Resources
A new database of historic publications motivates Dr Karen Attar to rethink teaching with Senate House Library’s literary treasures. In 2019 Bloomsbury Digital Resources brought out Bloomsbury Medieval Studies, a database uniting ‘secondary content with visual primary...
by Talking Humanities | Apr 16, 2020 | Archives & Libraries, Features, Languages & Literature, Libraries & Publications, Research & Resources
Senate House Library curator Karen Attar celebrates 250 years of Wordsworth with a look at a rare publication that’s as beautiful in form as in content. Among those who have never knowingly read his poems, ‘The child is father of the man’ and ‘I wandered lonely as a...
by Talking Humanities | Mar 24, 2020 | Features, History & Classics, Languages & Literature, Libraries & Publications, Research & Resources
Rare books curator Dr Karen Attar gets her teeth into one of Senate House Library’s recent acquisitions. As an undergraduate, I read Old Icelandic. In one of the mediaeval family sagas a character renounces meat for Lent, and people travel from all over Iceland to...
