Exhibitions
Exhibitions of Special Collections items are usually on display in the Membership Area of Senate House Library, on the fourth floor of the South Block. Material selected generally highlights a project, celebrates an anniversary or supports an external conference. Entrance for the purpose of viewing an exhibition is free to all.
Details of what is on display at any given time can be obtained by telephoning Special Collections on 020 7862 8470, or by emailing shl.specialcollections@london.ac.uk
Current Exhibition: Charles Dickens and Popular Culture (9 Jan. - 9 July 2012)
Dickens drew upon many sources for his writings: from his own life and experiences, from his observations of his fellow man, and from literature and the theatre. This exhibition looks at the inspiration Dickens drew from his youthful readings of popular literature and exposure to the theatre, and how, in due course, his own output, and the characters he created, fed into popular culture through theatrical, literary and other adaptations and plagiarisms.
Previous Exhibitions & Displays
- Reading the Bible
- Literary London 2011
- Victorian Popular Culture 2011
- Geoffrey Chaucer
- Health in History
- Jane Austen and the Cultural and Literary Currents of her Time
- Walter de la Mare and T. Sturge Moore: Literary Champions
- The M.S. Anderson Collection: Perceptions of Russia, 1525-1917
- Restoration London
- Literary London
- Sixteenth-Century Selections
- Henry VIII: The Seventeenth Century Looks Back
- Projects 2008 (display featuring collections catalogued in 2008)
- In this Year ... Anniversaries 2008 (works pertaining to Oliver Cromwell, Robert Owen, Elizabeth I and John Milton)
- More than Bacon: Treasures from the Francis Bacon Society Library
- Seeing is Believing (photographs from the Harry Price Library)
- Beyond Baconian Boundaries (Bibles in the Durning-Lawrence Library)
- Sir Louis Sterling and his Library: Fifty Years at the University of London
- Arthurian Legend: Tristan and Isolde
- The John Burns Collection
- Manuscript Facsimiles (Jacobus Mathey; the Apocalypse)
- Icons of Western Literature
- The People's London
- The Colonial & Postcolonial History of the Book, 1765-2005
- 1755-2005: Dr Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language
- Natural History Illustrated
- The Magical Library of Harry Price
- A Pratchett Preview
- Friend and Foe (Anglo-German affinities and antipathies in the long 19th century)
- Senate House Library - from Burlington Gardens to Senate House
- The Book Beautiful (private press books from the Sterling Library)
- Samuel Pepys’s Tercentenary
- Dreams or Swords: Further Themes... (books of social and cultural change)
- Dreams or Swords (books of social and cultural change)
- Worth Ten Thousand Words (illustrated printed books)
- Centenary of the Federal University of London
- Book Conservation
- Victorian Encounters (Victorian periodicals)
- The Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature
- Irish Writing - English Reading
Virtual displays relate to the following collections:
Augustus De Morgan (mathematical books)
The Sterling Library (English literature)
