Wonderous wonders

by Ruth Barker, 9 Feb 2010

Hello,
last week I spent quite a bit of time in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. Not just for Jonathan Bonfiglio’s talk about which I grumbled ungenerously last time, but I’ve also been doing a fair bit of research into The Jeffrey Room, for an upcoming project. And that, happily, has been a wonderful experience. Visit the Virtual Mitchell here

The Jeffrey Room is a beautiful space on the top floor ot the Mitchell, which houses the personal collection of the late Mr. Jeffrey – an individual with an eclectic but warmly personal taste for the classics, as well as natural history, architecture, and geography. The room itself is ornamented and baroque in its interior, lined with glass-fronted bookcases filled with the rare treasure of the collection. Tantalisingly, the Jeffrey collection has never been digitally archived, and so remains trancribed in ink in a suite of huge leather-bound books. If curious about exactly what the room holds, you can request these books and then lose yourself in them utterly in the hushed environment of the Archive Room, several floors below. From these arcane handwritten lists you can make requests and the books will be brought to you. You place them on cotton cushions in the Archve room, weight their pages with leather pads and straps, and peer inside. It’s addictive.

I made the following longlist of titles that took my fancy. So far I’ve requested and read those marked with a * but I may go back for more…

Cook, Howard T
Studies in Ruskin
1911

Costume: A Cyclopedia *
Planche
1879

Fashion in Paris
Uzanne
1901

Chronicles of Newgate
Griffiths, A
1884

Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland
Miller
1860

Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches
Carlyle, T
date unknown

Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk
George Cruikshank
1864

Dance of Death
Holbein
(Berwick, T)

Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
C Mackay
1841

Specimens of Ancient Sculpture
(Society of Dilettanti)
1809

The Shipwreck, A Poem *
William Falconer
1858

Flagellation and the Flagellants: A history of the rod in all countries
JG Bertram
1896

Grecian Legends and Early History *
G Grote
1843

The Mythology of Ancienct Greece and Italy
Keightley
1852

Ancient Songs and Ballads *
Ritson J
1829

History of the Witches of Renfrewshire who were burned on the Gallowgreen of Paisley
John Miller
1809

I can’t decide if I’m reassured or dissappointed that most of these texts are now available to either buy as reprints through Amazon or to read online at Google Books…

more later,
R