Category: United Kingdom
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Golf in Scotland: A swing through time
The origins of golf are a matter of mystery and controversy.
Shown here are some of the earliest sources for the history of golf in Scotland. They shed light on the birth of the game, its language, techniques and equipment.
Social side of golf
They also tell us much about the social standing of golf as it developed from an outlawed activity to the world's most internationally important game.
World's first golf club
Documents and texts from the National Library of Scotland's collections and other sources give an insight into the early days of the game.
12 key Scottish plays
Over the last 40 years we have seen many notable Scottish plays on stage.
Scottish theatre has reflected the times and the nation. Scottish playwrights have included activists, thinkers, show-offs, entertainers, and a genius or two.
Major plays and playwrights
This website introduces 12 of the major plays and major playwrights of Scotland – but there are many more worth exploring.
Here we take a tour through the political days of the 1970s and 1980s and the outward-looking years of the 1990s. We come up to date with the new millennium that has brought us – at last – a national company and a world hit.
These two albums of the Edinburgh Calotype Club, the first photographic club in the world, are among the earliest photograph albums in the world ever assembled. They contain over 300 images by a group of pioneering Scottish photographers working in Edinburgh and St. Andrews.
Early documents relating to events of the past make essential - and fascinating - reading for anyone interested in Scottish history. But these primary sources are often not readily accessible.
Fortunately, many of these rare documents have been published by historical clubs and societies, and are available at the National Library of Scotland.
The Murthly Hours is one of Scotland's great medieval treasures. Written and illuminated in Paris in the 1280s, it also contains full-page miniatures by English artists of the same period, and was one of the most richly decorated manuscripts in medieval Scotland. Medieval additions include probably the second oldest example of Gaelic written in Scotland.
The entire manuscript has been reproduced here. In the Folios section, you can browse page by page or select a folio from the complete list of titles.
The Medical History of British India collection consists of official publications varying from short reports to multi-volume histories related to disease, public health and medical research between circa 1850 to 1920. These documents form invaluable source material for the reconstruction of the history of disease and medicine in British India. Although a large section of it has an all-India scope, the collection is especially rich in documents related to Bombay and the Punjab. The Bombay plague of 1896-1899, one of the severest outbreaks, is particularly well covered.
Auchinleck has held a prominent place in discussions of the history and development of Middle English. Its texts provide important information about English dialects at an early stage (the 1330s) and dialect profiles are included in the Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English for all five Auchinleck scribes who copy literary texts (it is not possible to analyse the dialect of Scribe 4 as he copied only the Battle Abbey Roll, a list of names). These profiles locate the written language of Scribe 1 in Middlesex, Scribe 3 in London, Scribe 5 in Essex and Scribes 2 and 6 in areas close together on the Gloucestershire / Worcestershire border. Scribes 1 and 3 have received particular attention as they form a basis for M. L.
In the centuries before there were newspapers and 24-hour news channels, the general public had to rely on street literature to find out what was going on. The most popular form of this for nearly 300 years was 'broadsides' - the tabloids of their day. Sometimes pinned up on walls in houses and ale-houses, these single sheets carried public notices, news, speeches and songs that could be read (or sung) aloud.
The National Library of Scotland's online collection of nearly 1,800 broadsides lets you see for yourself what 'the word on the street' was in Scotland between 1650 and 1910. Crime, politics, romance, emigration, humour, tragedy, royalty and superstitions - all these and more are here.
For hundreds of years, Scots have left their homeland to set up a new life overseas.
Here we tell six stories of emigration from Scotland between the 1770s and the 1930s:
* Flora MacDonald – of 'Bonnie Prince Charlie' fame – and her husband Allan from Skye
* John and Mary Salmond from Montrose
* John and Martha Kerr from Dalry
* Peter Hastie from Edinburgh
* Alexander MacArthur from Nairn
* George Anderson from Innerleithen
* George and Jane Oliver from Hawick.
Original letters and journals
Using letters, journals, official documents, photographs and maps from the National Library of Scotland's archives, we piece together a picture of Scots abroad.
Related Reading: A complex network of intersecting financial, legal, political, and cultural factors all contributed to the development of the South Sea Bubble, the eventual collapse of the South Sea Company in 1720, and the financial ruin left in its wake. The years leading up to the South Sea Bubble were a time of financial promise and enthusiasm for Britain. Following the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714), there was the increased potential of foreign trade and the turn toward a more global marketplace. Wealth and luxury were no longer reserved to the aristocracy. Consumerism was on the rise, and class and gender boundaries were increasingly blurred when it came to investing in the stock market.
The public's fascination with the human drama of the courtroom did not begin with Perry Mason or Court TV. Cases involving the relationships between men and women, within or outside the bonds of marriage, have long engaged the popular imagination. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, published accounts of sensational trials provided the public with both entertainment and cautionary tales. Studies in Scarlet presents the images of over 420 separately published trial narratives from the Harvard Law School Library's extensive trial collections.
About the Collection As part of its holdings of legal art and visual materials , the Harvard Law School Library owns a collection of over 4000 portrait images of lawyers, jurists, political figures, and legal thinkers dating from the Middle Ages to the late twentieth century. Although most of these prints, drawings, and photographs depict legal figures prominent in the Common Law, a significant number portray jurists and legal educators associated with the Canon and Civil Law traditions.
Just as programs are sold at sporting events today, broadsides -- styled at the time as "Last Dying Speeches" or "Bloody Murders" -- were sold to the audiences that gathered to witness public executions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. These ephemeral publications were intended for the middle or lower classes, and most sold for a penny or less. Published in British towns and cities by printers who specialized in this type of street literature, a typical example features an illustration (usually of the criminal, the crime scene, or the execution); an account of the crime and (sometimes) the trial; and the purported confession of the criminal, often cautioning the reader in doggerel verse to avoid the fate awaiting the perpetrator.
Henry of Bratton (Henricus de Brattona or Bractona) was an English judge of the court known as coram rege (later King's Bench) from 1247-50 and again from 1253-57. After his retirement in 1257, he continued to serve on judicial commissions. He was also a clergyman, having various benefices, the last of which being the chancellorship of Exeter cathedral, where he was buried in 1268.
The Swinburne Project is a digital collection, or virtual archive, devoted to the life and work of Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne. When complete the project will provide students and scholars with access to all available original works by Swinburne and selected contextual materials, including contemporary critical reactions, biographical works, and images of artwork about which Swinburne wrote. Major Update to Swinburne Project In April 2006, the Swinburne Project was re-released with new content and a new software system based on the eXtensible Text Framework (XTF) from the California Digital Library .
Isaac Newton, like Albert Einstein, is a quintessential symbol of the human intellect and its ability to decode the secrets of nature. Newton's fundamental contributions to science include the quantification of gravitational attraction, the discovery that white light is actually a mixture of immutable spectral colors, and the formulation of the calculus. Yet there is another, more mysterious side to Newton that is imperfectly known, a realm of activity that spanned some thirty years of his life, although he kept it largely hidden from his contemporaries and colleagues.
