A Journey Around the World Mind

A journey around th e world mind CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s design for the East Elevation of the University Library Over the course of six centuries the So while we conserve this unique University Library’s collections have cultural heritage for the future, we are grown from a few dozen volumes on a simultaneously finding new ways to handful of subjects into an extraordinary share it with the present generation by accumulation of several million books, building a digital library. Anyone with an maps, manuscripts and journals, internet connection and a desire for augmented by an ever-increasing range knowledge can view letters written by of electronic resources. They cover every Moses Maimonides, Newton’s autograph conceivable aspect of human propositions on elliptic motion, or endeavour, across three thousand years sketchbooks from Darwin’s voyage of and in over two thousand languages. the Beagle . Through the digital library, From its beginnings as an asset for a tiny communities of readers around the Anne Jarvis community of theologians and canon globe can help create a richer University Librarian lawyers in the medieval university, the understanding of the material held in Library’s mission has expanded to serve our care. the international scholarly community and now, through its digitisation Great collections are brought to life by projects, to reach new audiences across great people – students and scholars, the world. and visitors to the Library past, present and future. We hope this book brings The Library keeps evolving. In recent the Library to you wherever you are, and years we have been given the we welcome those of you who visit us in magnificent Montaigne Library of Cambridge and those who join us in a Gilbert de Botton and purchased the virtual journey around the world mind. important archive of the war poet Siegfried Sassoon, following a campaign to save the papers from possible dispersal. Even the greatest collections, though, count for little unless they can be discovered and explored. Cambridge University Library 1 Tablets of bone The soothsayer who painstakingly same answer to both questions would carved inscriptions on the oracle bones be incorrect. over 3,000 years ago could never have predicted their fate. Once used to divine The texts provide rare insights into what the future, now these earliest known concerned people most; in an agrarian specimens of Chinese writing are society engaged in frequent wars with consulted by scholars from all over the neighbouring tribes they would be world who are seeking answers to interested in such matters as the questions about China’s past. weather, the failure of crops, hunting and military expeditions. It was believed The bequest of Lionel Charles Hopkins that the deceased ancestors could (1854–1952), the 800 Chinese oracle influence the outcome of events. If bones dating from 1400 to 1200 BC, are something went wrong, this was by far the oldest items in the Library. because the ancestral spirits were Heat was applied to hollows chiselled displeased, so they would be asked out on the reverse of specially prepared through the medium of the oracle ox scapulae and turtle shells and this bones what sacrifice could be made produced characteristic cracks. The to placate them. cracks were then interpreted as answers to questions that had been posed of Chronicling strange lands the ancestral spirits. Exactly how this and interesting times was done was obviously kept secret by The ancient oracle bones are just a the diviners themselves, but it is known part of one of the most outstanding that questions were posed in both Chinese collections outside China. It The cover (an incised Imperial dragon) positive and negative form, so as to includes about 100,000 volumes of from Yu bi Baita shan wu ji (Five views ensure that the answer was correct. For printed books, the earliest of which date of White Dagoba Hill ): 1773. Jade books were reserved for the exclusive use of instance: is it going to rain tomorrow? Is from the 12th century AD, with rarities the Emperor of China. it not going to rain tomorrow? – the such as the unique Illustrated chronicle 2 Cambridge University Library Tablets of bone The only known copy of Zhu yao xi wen Fo shuo da cheng guan xiang man na luo jing zhu e qu (Proclamation on the extermination of demons) , a jing (a Buddhist text, translated into Chinese from publication of 1861, at the height of the Taiping Sanskrit). The oldest printed book in the Library: Rebellion, which cost over 10 million lives. 1107. of strange lands (I yu tu zhi ) (c.1489); glimpses into everyday life in China over pamphlets and ephemera relating to the centuries. the mid-19th century Taiping insurrection (most of those in China Thanks to a generous donation, the were subsequently destroyed); a set of Aoi Pavilion was constructed to ensure the Imperial encyclopaedia (Qin ding Gu that these and other East Asian jin tu shu ji chen g), deposited on loan by materials could be kept in one place for the China Society of London; microfilms the first time, with 180,000 books on of nearly 3,000 rare titles from the open access. This ease of accessibility National Library of China in Beijing; and attracts many scholars from all over two of the 11,095 fascicles (volumes) the world, including China. which originally constituted the encyclopaedic work Yongle da dian , The Chinese collections continue to salvaged from the fire in Beijing which grow and to embrace the digital age. in 1900 destroyed most of what then One of the biggest single benefactions remained of the sole surviving copy. in the history of the Library occurred in 2009 when Premier Wen Jiabao of the These and other rare items, such as People’s Republic of China visited the the gigantic examination papers from University during its 800th Anniversary the Chinese civil service, some as big celebrations and donated 200,000 A Chinese oracle bone of about 1200 BC. as a baby’s blanket and which must Chinese electronic books. This has more have daunted many a candidate, or than doubled the size of the Library’s the only complete bound set in the Chinese monographs collection, which UK of Renmin Ribao (the People’s Daily is now the largest in Europe. newspaper) from 1946 to the present, which therefore dates back to before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, offer fascinating Tablets of bone Cambridge University Library 3 ‘Prettifying the past’ The Sassoon ‘Look up, and swear by the green of and soldiering, veers towards the Archive that the spring that you’ll never forget’, fictional, at times concealing or has been acquired by wrote Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967), omitting the truth. the University Library one of the leading poets of the First “is of the greatest World War, in his 1919 poem ‘Aftermath’. The relationship between George importance, nationally It is never that simple. In much of his Sherston and Siegfried Sassoon is and internationally. subsequent writing, memory – and his handled playfully by the writer himself: As a memoirist and recalling in written form of those when, in the second trilogy, he as a poet, Sassoon memories – was to be a strange mix touches briefly on his horse-racing occupies a unique of ‘fictionalized reality’ and ‘essayized exploits, Sassoon simply invites his place in the history autobiography’, a complex amalgam readers to imagine that ‘George has of writing in English – of documentation, recollection and been somehow mysteriously someone who fiction. embodied in his author’. But the combines writerly, inclusion of transcripts from his political and social Famous for his powerful poems that diaries in the Sherston books significance to an so graphically depicted the horrors of undermines their claim to be read exceptional degree. the ‘war to end all wars’, in the decades as novels, while the downplaying of following the Armistice Sassoon wrote family tensions and the omission of Sir Andrew Motion two prose trilogies. The first was the any mention of Sassoon’s romantic Poet lightly fictionalised ‘memoirs’ of life lend a fictional quality to the George Sherston, a fox-hunting, autobiographies. steeple-chasing young man who goes to war as an infantry officer with Copious illustration the ‘Royal Flintshire Fusiliers’. In contrast Throughout both trilogies, the it could be argued that the second, documented, the remembered and the ‘real autobiography’ focussing on the imagined are inextricably tangled, Sassoon’s inward and literary existence as Sassoon weaves fiction around life, rather than his ‘outdoor’ life of horses and life around fictions. This ‘prettifying 4 Cambridge University Library ‘Prettifying the past’ Frontispiece in a volume of notes and drafts relating to The old century , Sassoon’s memoir of childhood. A decorated copy of a poem first printed in the A decoration in a diary kept by Sassoon during the Heinemann edition of Vigils , 1935. Second World War. the past’ is also apparent in a more memory – sensuously evoked but literal sense. The young Sassoon stringently selected – is central to his ‘believed in copious illustration, literary achievements. As a dedicated however incongruous’ and his taste for diarist and preserver of artistic decoration continued correspondence, Sassoon could draw throughout his life as numerous on a documentary archive of first-hand examples in the Library’s collection sources for the reconstruction of his reveal. Some of Sassoon’s own drawings personal story. adorn his working notebooks, and others, equally elaborate, illustrate fair Sassoon studied law and history at copies of his verse that he wrote out Clare College Cambridge from 1905 specially as gifts to friends. to 1907. Although he left without a degree, he was made an honorary In his memoir of childhood, The old fellow in 1953.

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