Exhibitions
One to two cases 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: The M. S. Anderson Collection: Perceptions of Russia, 1525-1917
Over some forty years, Matthew Smith Anderson (1922-2006), Professor of International History at the London School of Economics, assembled a collection of some 1,850 titles of Russica, printed between 1525 and 1917. These range from poems to parliamentary reports, from chapbooks and pamphlets to multi-volume works, from cheap mass-produced literature to expensive, exquisitely illustrated tomes, in a variety of languages and formats. The collection of translations and original works – some anonymous, some by writers as well-known as Voltaire – sheds light on European views of Russia and what happened there; an outstanding demonstration of historiography as well as of views of literature. The M. S. Anderson Collection of Writings on Russia Printed Between 1525 and 1917 was presented to the University of London in 2008. This exhibition presents a sample of its richness.
The exhibition is devided into two phases. Phase 1 (March - June) features the themes of travel, costume, Peter the Great and the Napoleonic Wars. Phase 2 (August - September) features Catherine the Great, the Crimean War, and fiction.
Clcik here for a virtual display from the collection.
Previous Exhibitions & Displays
- 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)
