From Manuscripts to Metal

by Laurence Worms - Ash Rare Books

Material Witness

Owen Coggins blogs about the workshop ‘Text as Object 2: Printed Books and Pamphlets’ held at Canterbury Cathedral Library in January 2014

I’m studying religious discourses and mystical practices surrounding an extreme form of heavy metal music, in the Music and Religious Studies department at the Open University. So, heading to Canterbury Cathedral Library for the Material Witness event ‘Text as Object 2: Printed Books and Pamphlets,’ I was confident I’d be learning something new about medieval papers and marginalia, but wasn’t too sure how closely it would relate to my own project. Happily though, as is often the case with such interdisciplinary inquiries, it turned out there were some unexpected and thought-provoking points of contact between the heavy manuscripts and the heavy metal.

Canterbury Cathedral Library

Arriving at the cathedral library through some invitingly confusing passageways, I found the group sat discussing all kinds of research interests under stained…

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Countdown

by Laurence Worms - Ash Rare Books

Directory of Rare Book and Special Collections in the UK and Republic of Ireland

As I mount this, there is just under a month to go before entries for the Directory of Rare Book and Special Collections are due. The first couple arrived very shortly after my January emails requesting updates to old entries, and submissions have been trickling in ever since. Sometimes I have sent back questions; often I have just saved the documents in the growing folder of 2015 entries and acknowledged them with brief thanks while concentrating on making initial contacts with elusive repositories. If Barry Bloomfield’s experience when editing the second edition of the Directory is a guide, in the next four weeks the trickle will become a flood. A daunting prospect in a way, but an exciting one.

Producing my own library’s entry has been on my work “to do” list for several weeks now; I can’t myself fail to meet a deadline that everybody else is heeding conscientiously!…

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George Hebert, librarian and bookseller

by Laurence Worms - Ash Rare Books

London Street Views

Street View: 38
Address: 88 Cheapside

This story starts when George Hebert, a weaver, and Ann Peltrau get married in St. Leonard Shoreditch Church on 16 April 1772. They were both of French Huguenot descend and their children were baptised in the French Protestant Church in Artillery Street. Two of the children, George David and Guillaume (later more often called William) were to set up a bookshop and circulating library.⁽¹⁾ On 1 April, 1794, William Lane, Citizen and Stationer of London takes on apprentice George (David) Hebert at a premium of £100. This premium was paid by David Descarrieres who, according to the indenture, was George’s guardian. George acquires his freedom after the regular 7 years. His brother William was apprenticed in 1799 to Richard Lekeux, Citizen and Fishmonger, which does not sound likely in view of William’s later career, but although Lekeux (or Le Keux) happened to be…

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