Historical Travel Literature – a ‘rough guide’

SCOLAR has just launched a new onsite and online exhibition based on its historical Travel Writing works, and a presentation has been given on this topic in the ongoing Cardiff  Rare Books Lecture Series. Investigation of this topic was spurred by enquiries from the School of European Studies, so an oultine listing was produced of our historical books (1500-1914), and this shows we have around 2,000 volumes in stock for this topic and era (not all yet catalogued though). We have not yet explored our ancient/medieval travel sources amongst our rare books, nor looked at our modern 20th century travels in the Library’s collections.

We have a wide ranging collection of early modern overseas travel works, from Drake and Raleigh, through later sources from Cook and Dampier, up to more recent works by H.M. Stanley, Shackleton and others. However, the main strength in our collections lies in the wide coverage we have of British travels and the ‘Grand Tour’ of the continent in the 18th and 19th centuries; this is supported by our very strong holdings of Welsh travel writers on this topic.

Amongst the well known authors in our collections are Lady Montagu, Mary Wollstonecroft, and Isabella Bird, as well as Addison, Boswell, Sterne, Goethe, Voltaire and Wordsworth. On top of this we hold a multitude of volumes by minor or unknown authors, all providing a barometer of cultural opinion on their travels across the centuries and the continents. Our collections include works from slaves and shipwrecks, missionaries and ambassadors, traders and adventurers, and many by early ‘tourists’ !

 

 

 

 

 

( See  our  online digital travel writing exhibition selection at:     www.cf.ac.uk/insrv/libraries/scolar/digital/travel.html    )

( See our online listings of Welsh related travel writings at: www.cf.ac.uk/insrv/libraries/scolar/special/welsh/index.html   )

From Macedonians to Musketeers: Aelianus Tacticus and the art of war

Aelianus Tacticus was a Greek military writer whose famous treatise, Taktikē theōria (“Tactical theory”), is a detailed handbook for organising, arming and manoeuvring an army in the field. Probably written around 106 AD, the book covers the technical aspects of drill and tactics as practiced by the Macedonian armies after Alexander the Great, using armoured hoplites supported by light infantry and cavalry screens. Aelian, resident in Rome at the time of writing, also provides a brief account of the constitution of the Roman army and claims to have consulted all the best authorities , including a lost treatise by the Greek historian, Polybius.

Aelian strongly influenced the military systems of both the Byzantines and the Arabs, who translated his text for their own use in 1350. The copious details on army drill also rendered the Tactiks of considerable use to the army organisers of the 16^th century, who found that the armoured phalanx and cavalry screens of Aelian bore many similarities to the solid masses of pikemen and the squadrons of horse which typified warfare in the 1500s, and translations formed the groundwork of numerous books on drill and tactics.

Together with the works of Xenophon, Polybius and Aeneus Tacticus, the Tactiks again became an essential manual for every 16^th and 17^th century soldier who hoped to master the art of war.

The Cardiff Rare Books Collection holds two copies of Captain John Bingham’s translation, Tactiks of Aelian, Or art of embattailing an army after ye Grecian manner, published in 1616 and 1631. Both contain dozens of detailed engravings  showing the arms, armour and tactics of early 17^th century musketeers, pikemen and cavalry.

Library history: not just old book stamps

I’m currently cataloguing SCOLAR’s collection of archives relating to the history of Cardiff University Library. It contains the usual types of records you’d expect to find in an organisation’s archives – annual reports, correspondence, minutes, accounts, building plans and personnel records, as well as records specific to the library’s function, such as catalogues, user statistics, readers’ surveys, staff newsletters, and registers for requisitions, accessions, donations, and binding.

The archives do not just consist of paper records – there are slides and audio cassettes used for 1970s library inductions; a gold key used to open the Draper’s Library in 1909, library bookplate printing blocks, a framed Concrete Society prize, awarded in 1976 for the Arts and Social Studies Library (right), and yes, old book stamps.

I have been asked – why keep such archives? Would anyone want to consult ‘201/1/3/1/1 – Inter-Library loan receipts, 1936-37’? Many would be surprised to hear that library history is in fact a thriving academic field, connected to related social history disciplines such as information history, the history of the book, computing history, provenance studies and the history of reading. The archive has recently been consulted by a postgraduate student at Université de Caen, Basse-Normandie, who has written his dissertation on the history of Cardiff University Library, and kindly deposited a copy with us to aid future research.

My favourite item in the collection is a 1980 manual for one of the first personal computers, with enclosed original ‘punch-cards’. These computers processed very basic data stored on stiff card, which had with holes punched in pre-defined positions. Every position represents a single binary digit or ‘bit’ of information: no hole=0, hole=1. It serves to remind me just how far technology has advanced in the last 30 years.

The forthcoming British Librarianship and Information Work 2006-2010 will feature a chapter on Library History authored by Katie Birkwood. If you know of conferences whose proceedings have not (yet) been published, online projects, resources and databases that might not be mentioned in the traditional literature, or any particular trends that you have noticed in recent years and think are worthy of note (ideally with supporting evidence!), Katie needs you!

Testament Newydd 1567

Ar y 7fed o Hydref 1567 cyhoeddwyd llyfr pwysig yn hanes y Beibl ac yn sgîl hynny yr iaith Gymraeg: Testament Newydd William Salesbury a’r Esgob Richard Davies. Yn 1563 y pasiwyd y Ddeddf a fynnodd gael cyfieithiadau o’r Ysgrythyrau a’r Llyfr Gweddi Gyffredin yn Gymraeg ble bynnag yr oedd yr iaith yn arferedig: heb y Beibl yn Gymraeg, byddai hanes yr iaith wedi bod yn wahanol iawn.

Un o wŷr y Dadeni a’r Diwygiad oedd William Salesbury, yn ysgolhaig gyda’i syniadau ei hun am darddiad geiriau a’r orgraff. Yn y diwedd fe ffraeodd Salesbury a Davies ar faterion ieithyddol. Cam tuag at y Beibl cyfan yn Gymraeg oedd y Testament Newydd 1567 i fod, ond yn y pen draw yr Esgob William Morgan gafodd y fraint o gyflwyno’r Beibl cyfan yn 1588.

Yr oedd rheolau llym ynghylch argraffu hyd at 1695, felly nid yng Nghymru ond yn Llundain a baratowyd y Testament Newydd i’r wasg. Argraffwyd y llyfr gan Humphrey Toy, argraffydd o dras Cymreig yn St. Paul’s Churchyard, Llundain, gyda Salesbury yn symud mewn i’w dŷ er mwyn goruchwilio’r gwaith. Yn y rhagymadrodd, y mae Davies yn tynnu sylw at y ffaith bod yr iaith Gymraeg yn iaith estron yno:

“hwn yw’r Testament cyntaf a fu irioet yn Gymraeg yn, a’r printwyr eb ddyall ungair erioed or iaith, ac am hyny yn an hawdd yddynt ddeall y Copi yn iawn” (“This is the first Testament there ever was in Welsh, and the printers have never understood one word of the language, and so it is difficult for them to understand the Copy correctly”.)

Cyffrous felly yw cyhoeddi ein bod wedi darganfod copi o’r Testament Newydd 1567 ymhlith rhoddion diweddar, ac mor agos at benblwydd ei gyhoeddi ar y 7fed o Hydref!

[A recent acquisition, William Salesbury’s Welsh New Testament, a significant publication in the history of the Welsh language. It was printed in London by printers who spoke no Welsh but were supervised by Salesbury. It was published on 7th October 1567]