How to do a Scoping Survey at Manuscripts and Special Collections
August 16, 2024
This is a guest post by Hannah Kane, a University of Nottingham student, who recently completed a Summer Research Placement at Manuscripts and Special Collections. What is a Scoping Survey? A scoping survey involves identifying and checking material to establish its relevance to your research topic. In my case, another undergraduate student and I completed …
Absolute Units
September 30, 2021
There’s been talk in the news about reintroducing imperial units, and we here in the archives love nothing more than the chance to show off our knowledge of the archaic and obsolete. In this case, systems of measuring stuff. Imperial units have been used in Britain since the Roman era – the ‘imperial’ refers to …
Are you smarter than a 19th century 10 year old?
July 30, 2021
“My first is to ramble, my next to retreat; my whole oft enrages in summer’s fierce heat”. Any suggestions? This word puzzle sounds like a cryptic crossword clue but it’s actually a fun puzzle for children. The answer is at the bottom of the post, but if you didn’t solve that one, try this: “Without …
A Token of Childhood
August 20, 2018
Are the souls of your children of no value? Are you indifferent whether they be damned or saved? They are not too little to die…not too little to go to hell….not too little to go to heaven. And so begins James Janeway’s cheerful book, ‘A Token For Children: An Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and …
Remembering Hans
August 4, 2018
Today, 4 August, marks the 143rd anniversary of the death of Hans Christian Andersen, the prolific Danish author best remembered for his fairy stories, including The Little Mermaid, The Little Match Girl and The Ugly Duckling. Andersen was born in 1805, the only child of poor and uneducated parents who told him the family rumour …
From Rags to Witches: the grim tale of children’s stories
April 20, 2018
Once upon a time, fairy tales were not for children – and some were even banned by the church as a threat to faith or morality. Using original archives and rare books from the University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts & Special Collections, From Rags to Witches: the Grim Tale of Children’s Stories will explore a range …
Scary Tales
August 22, 2017
In the words of her own grand-niece Rosalind Constable, Favell Lee Mortimer wrote “one of the most outspokenly sadistic children’s books ever written” [New Yorker, 1950 – subscription required], yet she topped the Victorian best-seller lists and was well-regarded as an educational author. Today is the 139th anniversary of her death, and the book referred …
It’s All Fun and Games
September 26, 2016
Did you play Snakes and Ladders, hopscotch and draughts as a child? The chances are you did, as did your grandparents, and possibly generations beyond that. These games are simple and fun, and for those reasons have become classic childhood staples. Many more games which have not survived the passage of time, for equally valid reasons. …
The Advantage of Fairy Tales
March 17, 2016
This is a guest post from Samina Rickards, a second year Classical Civilisation student. These past weeks I have been conducting a placement at Manuscripts and Special Collections, as part of the Nottingham Advantage Award’s ‘Experience Heritage’ module. In writing a blog post on my time here I wanted to highlight something I’d found interesting, …
The Fall and Rise of Little Fanny
January 20, 2016
One of the best aspects of working with Manuscripts & Special Collections is that, every so often, we will stumble across something extraordinarily beautiful, profound or moving – and sometimes, we find something like ‘The History of Little Fanny: exemplified in a series of figures‘ (Briggs Collection Pamphlet PZ6.H4). Somehow missed off the list of great children’s …
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