A collection of out-of-copyright and rare books from the Cambridge University Library and other world-class institutions that have been digitally scanned, made available online, and reprinted in paperback.
A collection of out-of-copyright and rare books from the Cambridge University Library and other world-class institutions that have been digitally scanned, made available online, and reprinted in paperback.
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Well versed in oriental languages and antiquities, Claudius James Rich (1786/7–1821), the East India Company's resident at Baghdad, visited and described many historic locations in present-day Iraq and Iran. Following his early death from cholera in Shiraz, Rich's widow prepared his writings for publication. His two-volume Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan, and on the Site of Ancient Nineveh (1836) is also reissued in this series. The present work, which appeared in 1839, contains Rich's 1811 journal of his first visit to the site of the ancient city of Babylon, followed by the archaeological memoir he published in 1815. 'Remarks on the Topography of Ancient Babylon', an 1815 paper by the geographer James Rennell (1742–1830), who queried Rich's conclusions, is included, and Rich's 1818 memoir of his second visit then responds to Rennell. A narrative of Rich's Persian travels in 1821, featuring 'hitherto unpublished cuneiform inscriptions copied at Persepolis', completes the work.
Richard Wagner (1813–83) grew up in Dresden and served as Kapellmeister to King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony there from 1843 until he was forced to flee the country after the 1849 uprising. His operas Rienzi and Der fliegende Holländer received their first performances at the Dresden Court Theatre. During his time in the city, Wagner became firm friends with the composer and violinist Theodor Uhlig, the stage manager and chorus master Wilhelm Fischer, and the comedian and costume designer Ferdinand Heine. This collection of letters from the composer to his three great friends covers the period 1841–68. First published in 1888, the letters are reissued here in the 1890 English translation by the pianist and Beethoven scholar John South Shedlock (1843–1919). They offer an intimate and compelling insight into Wagner's personal and professional life and his forthright views on many contemporary musicians and public figures.
This three-volume history of England from before the Roman conquest through to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was originally serialised in Charles Dickens' magazine Household Words between 1851 and 1853. The text was published in book form in the same period, although each volume was post-dated to the following year. Dickens dedicated the work to his own children, intending it to be a stepping stone to more substantial histories. The volumes were popular with readers for decades, and were used in British schools well into the twentieth century. Dickens employs his signature style to bring events and personalities to life, making use of vivid similes, unabashedly partisan language and direct speech, as well as the occasional moral lesson. Volume 2 covers the period from the reign of Henry III through to the death in 1485 of the 'usurper and murderer' Richard III.
It is not known why Caroline Molesworth (1794–1872) began to make these detailed observations in the garden of her home in Cobham, Surrey. She was interested in botany, and when she moved with her widowed mother from London to Surrey in 1823, she undertook an almost daily survey of nineteen categories of information, which she maintained (with help in later years, as her health failed) until 1867. This 1880 publication, edited with a biographical introduction by the entomologist Eleanor Ormerod (1828–1901), summarises Molesworth's records for the period 1825–50. Ormerod explains the methods and instruments Molesworth used, and provides a complete record of the phenological detail over a 25-year period: she therefore omits what she considers less relevant meteorological data. The records enable year-on-year comparisons of dates on which flowers bloomed or migratory birds arrived, and this information remains of use to anyone studying long-term changes in climate.
Founded in 1868 by the Cambridge scholars John Eyton Bickersteth Mayor (1825–1910), William George Clark (1821–78), and William Aldis Wright (1831–1914), this biannual journal was a successor to The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology (also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection). Unlike its short-lived precursor, it survived for more than half a century, until 1920, spanning the period in which specialised academic journals developed from more general literary reviews. Predominantly classical in subject matter, with contributions from such scholars as J. P. Postgate, Robinson Ellis and A. E. Housman, the journal also contains articles on historical and literary themes across the 35 volumes, illuminating the growth and scope of philology as a discipline during this period. Volume 20, comprising issues 39 and 40, was published in 1892.
Harvard's first professor of English, the American scholar Francis James Child (1825–96) had previously prepared a collection of English and Scottish ballads, published in 1857–9, before he embarked on producing this definitive critical edition. Organised into five volumes and published in ten parts between 1882 and 1898, the work includes the text and variants of 305 ballads, with Child's detailed commentary and comparison with ballads and stories from other languages. Although he did not live to fully clarify his methods of selection and classification, modern scholars still refer to the 'Child Ballads' as an essential resource in the study of folk songs and stories in the English language. The work also contains a helpful glossary of archaic terms and a long list of sources. Volume 3, Part 1 (1888) contains ballads 114-155, including many about Robin Hood.
In the early nineteenth century, the gifted stratigrapher and amateur geologist William Phillips (1773–1828) gave several lectures to interested young people in Tottenham on the subject of geology. These lectures were later collected into a book, which Phillips expanded in later versions. This reached its peak in 1822 when the clergyman William Daniel Conybeare (1787–1857) collaborated with Phillips to produce this rigorous and improved assessment of the geological composition of England and Wales. Although no second volume was ever published, the book had a tremendous impact on geologists throughout the United Kingdom and Europe, inspiring foreign scholars to produce equivalent volumes about their own countries. Conybeare's concern for the stratigraphy of fossils is especially remarkable for the time. William Fitton, later president of the Geological Society of London, praised the book highly, remarking that 'no equal portion of the earth's surface has ever been more ably illustrated'.