Read on Twitter
Welcome to our second virtual visit to #SpecialCollections. Today we're looking at the Harsnett Collection -900 books from the personal library of Samuel Harsnett who was Archbishop of York from 1629 to 1631.
2) Samuel Harsnett was born in Colchester in 1561 and studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge. As might be expected, the volumes of his library are mostly on the subject of religion. There are some exceptions; here are two pages from a phrase book for travellers.
3) This page from the Harsnett Collection shows a setting of the 72nd Psalm, with a dedication to Queen Elizabeth I on the 26th anniversary of her accession to the throne. Many of the volumes in the collection are made up of sheets, pamphlets and tracts bound together.
4) Now, back to the book we started with. Here is the title page. It is a copy of Libri de re rustica, a book on agriculture containing works by classical Roman authors. The date of publication is 1528. The age of the book is interesting enough, but there is more...
5) To explain why this book is so interesting, we need to go back to the cover. The first picture in this thread showed the back cover. This is the front.
