MetaFilter posts by verstegan.
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The Guaman Poma Website. Felipe Guaman Poma's El primer nueva coronica y buen gobierno (New Chronicle and Good Government) is one of the most remarkable manuscripts of the seventeenth century. Written by a native Peruvian, in the form of a 1200-page 'letter' to King Philip III of Spain, it provides a richly detailed account of Inca society before and after the Spanish conquest. Forgotten for three centuries, it was rediscovered in 1908 in the Royal Library, Copenhagen, which has now published a full digital facsimile online. The illustrations are extraordinary: glimpses of the abuse of colonial power ('Recite the doctrine, Indian troublemaker! Right now!') alongside gentler scenes of agriculture and everyday life ('Chew this coca, sister'). Scholarly articles help to set the manuscript in context. Browse and enjoy.
posted on Aug-2-05 at 9:39 AM
Cambridge Illuminations claims to be the largest exhibition of medieval illuminated manuscripts since 1908. To see all 200 exhibits, you'll have to visit the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge; but 65 of the best, including the sixth-century Gospels of St Augustine and the recently discovered Macclesfield Psalter, can be viewed online.
posted on Jul-27-05 at 10:09 AM
The papers of Francis Crick have been published online by the National Library of Medicine. The highlight of the collection is undoubtedly Crick's original sketch of the structure of DNA, but there are plenty of other fascinating items, including Crick's hostile comments on the manuscript of James Watson's book The Double Helix. (He later wrote to Watson that "if I had known you were going to write the sort of book you have written, I would never have collaborated with you".) For those who don't have time to browse the whole collection, images of selected highlights can also be found here, on the website of the Wellcome Trust, which bought the papers for $2.4 million in order to keep them in the public domain.
posted on Mar-4-05 at 4:54 AM
The Mitchell and Kenyon collection consists of 800 rolls of nitrate film documenting scenes of everyday life in England between 1900 and 1913. This extraordinary archive, now painstakingly restored by the British Film Institute, includes footage of trams, soup kitchens, factory gates, football matches, seaside holidays and much else besides. Here are some sample images and a short clip of workers at a Lancashire colliery, all astonishingly evocative and reminiscent (to me) of Philip Larkin's poem MCMXIV: 'The crowns of hats, the sun / On moustachioed archaic faces / Grinning as if it were all / An August Bank Holiday lark .. Never such innocence, / Never before or since .. Never such innocence again.'
posted on Jan-7-05 at 3:17 AM
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is published today, in print and online: a biographical record of everyone who's ever been anyone in British history (50,000 individuals) and an astonishing feat of scholarly collaboration (10,000 contributors from all over the world). Access to the full database is fearfully expensive, but the official site gives you a good selection of sample entries, with a new one added every day; and a feature in today's Times gives you some more, beginning with Mary Toft, the woman who gave birth to rabbits.
posted on Sep-23-04 at 1:13 AM
The Lewis Walpole Library has digitized 10,000 images from its superb collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century satirical prints -- not the only collection of its kind on the Internet, but certainly one of the largest and best. Search under "Gillray", "Rowlandson" or "Cruikshank" and browse a selection of images from the golden age of English caricature. Everyone will have their own favourites, but here are a few of mine: Rowlandson's Author and Bookseller, Cruikshank's The Headache and Gillray's Advantages of Wearing Muslin Dresses.
posted on Jul-31-04 at 2:04 AM
The Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi now has a digital archive containing 10,000 images of medieval stained glass from English churches and cathedrals: a wonderful resource for anyone interested in medieval art. These stunning images of the windows at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, are just a tiny fraction of the extraordinary riches available on the site.
posted on Jul-24-04 at 7:40 AM
Ugandan Discussions. Forty years of covers from the British satirical magazine Private Eye, indexed by date and subject. Highlights include Lyndon Johnson (from 1965), Ariel Sharon (from 1982), the Diana car crash and September 11. But above all it's fascinating to see how the magazine's style of satire has changed over the years.
posted on Apr-25-04 at 2:10 AM
Derelict London. A gently melancholy collection of photographs of abandoned shops, hospitals, housing estates, public lavatories, and much more. See also Britannia Moribundia, on the national obsession with dinginess and decay. This is where England most truly excels: in all the characterful shabbiness of its drizzled parks, soiled launderettes, frayed tailors, abject chemists .. and cowed solitary cafes.
posted on Apr-16-04 at 4:13 AM
posted on Aug-2-05 at 9:39 AM
Cambridge Illuminations claims to be the largest exhibition of medieval illuminated manuscripts since 1908. To see all 200 exhibits, you'll have to visit the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge; but 65 of the best, including the sixth-century Gospels of St Augustine and the recently discovered Macclesfield Psalter, can be viewed online.
posted on Jul-27-05 at 10:09 AM
The papers of Francis Crick have been published online by the National Library of Medicine. The highlight of the collection is undoubtedly Crick's original sketch of the structure of DNA, but there are plenty of other fascinating items, including Crick's hostile comments on the manuscript of James Watson's book The Double Helix. (He later wrote to Watson that "if I had known you were going to write the sort of book you have written, I would never have collaborated with you".) For those who don't have time to browse the whole collection, images of selected highlights can also be found here, on the website of the Wellcome Trust, which bought the papers for $2.4 million in order to keep them in the public domain.
posted on Mar-4-05 at 4:54 AM
The Mitchell and Kenyon collection consists of 800 rolls of nitrate film documenting scenes of everyday life in England between 1900 and 1913. This extraordinary archive, now painstakingly restored by the British Film Institute, includes footage of trams, soup kitchens, factory gates, football matches, seaside holidays and much else besides. Here are some sample images and a short clip of workers at a Lancashire colliery, all astonishingly evocative and reminiscent (to me) of Philip Larkin's poem MCMXIV: 'The crowns of hats, the sun / On moustachioed archaic faces / Grinning as if it were all / An August Bank Holiday lark .. Never such innocence, / Never before or since .. Never such innocence again.'
posted on Jan-7-05 at 3:17 AM
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is published today, in print and online: a biographical record of everyone who's ever been anyone in British history (50,000 individuals) and an astonishing feat of scholarly collaboration (10,000 contributors from all over the world). Access to the full database is fearfully expensive, but the official site gives you a good selection of sample entries, with a new one added every day; and a feature in today's Times gives you some more, beginning with Mary Toft, the woman who gave birth to rabbits.
posted on Sep-23-04 at 1:13 AM
The Lewis Walpole Library has digitized 10,000 images from its superb collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century satirical prints -- not the only collection of its kind on the Internet, but certainly one of the largest and best. Search under "Gillray", "Rowlandson" or "Cruikshank" and browse a selection of images from the golden age of English caricature. Everyone will have their own favourites, but here are a few of mine: Rowlandson's Author and Bookseller, Cruikshank's The Headache and Gillray's Advantages of Wearing Muslin Dresses.
posted on Jul-31-04 at 2:04 AM
The Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi now has a digital archive containing 10,000 images of medieval stained glass from English churches and cathedrals: a wonderful resource for anyone interested in medieval art. These stunning images of the windows at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, are just a tiny fraction of the extraordinary riches available on the site.
posted on Jul-24-04 at 7:40 AM
Ugandan Discussions. Forty years of covers from the British satirical magazine Private Eye, indexed by date and subject. Highlights include Lyndon Johnson (from 1965), Ariel Sharon (from 1982), the Diana car crash and September 11. But above all it's fascinating to see how the magazine's style of satire has changed over the years.
posted on Apr-25-04 at 2:10 AM
Derelict London. A gently melancholy collection of photographs of abandoned shops, hospitals, housing estates, public lavatories, and much more. See also Britannia Moribundia, on the national obsession with dinginess and decay. This is where England most truly excels: in all the characterful shabbiness of its drizzled parks, soiled launderettes, frayed tailors, abject chemists .. and cowed solitary cafes.
posted on Apr-16-04 at 4:13 AM
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