(Re)introducing the Inklings

5 August 2022

(Re)introducing the Inklings

Reading Room Assistant Louise Roberts has uncovered documents that offer a fascinating insight into the broader circle around the Inklings and events at Gladstone’s Library…

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The Ladies of Llangollen

28 June 2022

The Ladies of Llangollen

For this Pride Month’s blog we’d like to highlight something from the archive; a letter from Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, otherwise known as the Ladies of Llangollen. 

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A Room of One's Own by Sarah Watling

9 June 2022

A Room of One's Own by Sarah Watling

“At Gladstone’s, I don’t waste so much time working my way back into the world I left at my desk the last time I was there. To paraphrase ee cummings, here I can carry my book with me. I carry it in my head. I am never without it.”

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A Glance At the Letters of Lady Mary Glynne

26 May 2022

A Glance At the Letters of Lady Mary Glynne

Gladstone’s Library holds a valuable collection of letters written to Lady Glynne after 1800 that I had the privilege of viewing whilst researching a society that met in Chester in this period [1]. The picture that emerged, brief highlights of which are set out here, made it more than worth the while.  

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Judging Books By Their Covers

25 May 2022

Judging Books By Their Covers

By Thomas Moss I have the pleasure of working at Gladstone’s Library for five weeks as part of a university work placement. I’m a second-year…
On Keeping Moving by Rebecca Watts

20 May 2022

On Keeping Moving by Rebecca Watts

“For anyone aspiring to write the kind of poems that might reveal the movements of the imagination in words, the challenge is to keep moving.”

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Royal Reminiscence

18 May 2022

Royal Reminiscence

With the Queen’s Jubilee around the corner, members of the Hawarden community have been discussing Hawarden links to the Royal Family. Here, Warden Peter…
Beautiful, Borgesian, Benign - a Blog by Writer in Residence Glen James Brown

28 April 2022

Beautiful, Borgesian, Benign - a Blog by Writer in Residence Glen James Brown

I like the idea of the library as a sentient thing—something that can see inside into our skulls as we struggle with plot knots, school revision, whatever project we are bending our passions towards. And then it shifts itself about—subtly, it has over a century of practice—so the next time we glance at a certain shelf, the answers to our problems are right there, spine out.

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HERBOOK: Women book owners in the Gladstone’s Library Collections

31 March 2022

HERBOOK: Women book owners in the Gladstone’s Library Collections

Since March is Women’s History Month, it seemed appropriate to spotlight some of the women book owners recently identified within the collections.

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Mothers in the Archive

28 March 2022

Mothers in the Archive

I began to reflect on women’s experiences of maternity two hundred years ago: a time when maternal and infant mortality were far higher than today, when women had limited control over how many children they bore, and when difficult births were typically endured with little or no pain relief.

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