In our last blogpost of 2025, Maddock Research Fellow Dr Zoë Van Cauwenberg @zvancauwenberg.bsky.social sheds light on some of the women authors and illustrators among the book owned by Benjamin Guinness, now part of our Benjamin Iveagh collection marshlibrary.ie/between-the-...

Marsh's Library will be closed for the Christmas period from 5pm Friday December 19th and will re-open at 10:30am Tuesday January 6th. Wishing you all a safe and happy 2026.

Join us for a tour in Ireland's oldest and coldest public library followed by a tasting of delicious whiskey from our friends at Teeling Whiskey Distillery! Tours are at 6:30-8:00pm January Friday 23rd and January Friday 30th. Book here: www.eventbrite.ie/e/teeling-wh...

A map of the arctic circle from Joan Blaeu's Atlas Maior, v.1 from 1662. Interesting take on a polar bear!

A break from Christmas content to enjoy this capybara eating a banana. From François Froger's 'A relation of a voyage ...' (London, 1698).

Some of the lovely 'baubly' bindings on display in our current exhibition 'Exquisite & Rare: Book Bindings from the Library of Benjamin Guinness, 3rd Earl of Iveagh' #Christmas #Bindings

Hand-coloured mistletoe from a 16th century herbal. Do people still hang it much in their homes over Christmas?

Tiny reindeer from a map of Norway in vol.1 of Joan Blaeu's 11 volume Atlas Major, 1662 #Christmas #Maps

Is your Christmas tree up yet, or is it still too early? Hand-coloured fir tree with bonus wildlife, from Hieronymous Boch's herbal printed 473 years ago.

A map of the topography of the moon from Johannes Hevelius' Selenographia, the first lunar atlas, printed in 1647 #supermoon #astronomy

Is it just us or is there a dog-like look to the sea monster in this 1576 map of Corfu?

A roaring fire is just the thing for a chilly Tuesday in November. Doodle found inside the 1672 'New Rules' for the regulation of cities and towns in Ireland.

We were so excited to welcome astronauts Dr Norah Patten & Dr Shawna Pandya to Marsh's last Friday organised by The Embassy of Canada in Ireland & Space Medicine Ireland. After a tour & a sit down in the chairs used by Bram Stoker & James Joyce, we showed them some of our astronomy books! 🚀✨🪐

Galileo explaining the cosmos to the muses. The frontispiece from the first edition of his collected works, printed in Bologna 1655-6.

And that's why you can't have ink in the reading room! Historic damage to a 1647 pamphlet on infant baptism by John Cotton #readers

Our collection of parrots, watercolour on velum, from Eleazar Albin's 'Natural History of Birds', mid 18th century

A fine head of hair on this doodled gentleman! From the pastedown of our very heavily annotated copy of the catalogue of the Bodleian Library, printed in 1620 #Readers #Doodles

So many heretics out there, but thankfully you can spot them by their pointy ears!

Our Maddock fellow Ben Card spotted this error correction in a 1645 pamphlet 'The primitive practise for preserving truth' this morning. We think the errors in every copy were corrected manually in the print shop before they were sent out. A lot of work for some poor apprentice! #errors #printing

If you are in Dublin over the next few months, don't miss this gorgeous exhibition of some of the treasures in our Benjamin Iveagh Library at the Farmleigh Gallery in the Phoenix Park. #opw #farmleigh

Who's a good weesle headed armadillo?! This engraving of what we now call a a nine-banded armadillo is from Nehemiah Grew's 'Musaeum Regalis Societatis', a 1681 catalogue 'of the natural and artificial rarities belonging to the Royal society'.

We have it on good authority that this 17th century play by Francis Beaumont & John Fletcher is one of the dirtiest in English!

Remember remember! Some very blurry printing on this highly sectarian pamphlet about 'the 5th of November' printed in 1679

Best to look away now if you're squeamish! Surgical instruments for use on the eyes, from 'Les Oeuvres de chirurgie de Jacques Guillemeau' printed in 1694.

A teeth-rottingly happy hallowe'en to all! Skeleton from William Cowper's Anatomy of Human Bodies, 1698. The plates in this enormous book are from the 1685 Dutch edition of Govert Bidloo's 'Anatomia humani corporis' & were used by Cowper with no acknowledgement.

Gabriel Naudé's History of Magick, originally printed in French in 1625, was a defence of science & intellectualism against accusations of witchcraft & magic. Glad we're past that now!

We're seeing a Jacobus Riterus in this scribbled out inscription, anyone else fancy weighing in?

If you like old libraries and are in London next Tuesday evening, 4 November, this might be of moderate interest to you. If you're not in London, you can sign up via Zoom: ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

Gorgeous gourds, from 1552.

This is SO cute. A lovely sketch of the highlights of our little library by the French artist Dominique Montagnon. You can see more of her work at instagram.com/sketchbibli/

In the 17th century some Europeans believed that a bite from a tarantula (or rather wolf spider) led to tarantism, a type of hysteria that could only by cured by a frenzied dance, the tarantella!

Printed posthumously, Joseph Glanvill's 'Saducismus Triumphatus' recounted hundreds of stories to prove the existence of witches & spirits. It includes the first recorded account of a poltergeist, the 'Drummer of Tedworth', illustrated in the top left of the engraved title page.

Our 1584 Lyon edition of Malleus Maleficorum or 'The hammer of witches', Heinrich Kramer's infamous manual for identifying and prosecuting witches, first published in 1486.

The red of these anemones has really cheered me up on this miserable day in Dublin! From Hieronymus Bock's 16th century herbal, hand-coloured by an early reader.

For Oscariana, the Oscar Wilde Festival, we'll be displaying our first editions of 'An Ideal Husband' and 'A House of Pomegranates' from the Benjamin Iveagh collection in Marsh's until Saturday.

I think it's fair to say this early reader didn't quite hit the mark when they tried to recreate this double-tailed mermaid, the device of 16th century Venetian printer, Giovanni Varisco. From our 1569 edition of Bernardo Gamucci's 'Le Antichita' della citta'.

We had a lovely class on 'The Grand Tour' this afternoon with the students from Lynda Mulvin's MA students from UCD. This 1567 edition of Vitruvius' 'Ten books on architecture' was one of the many volumes we looked at as we reimagined walking through 17th century Rome!

We are advertising for an Assistant Director to join us in Marsh's Library. Full details about this exciting post here: marshlibrary.ie/vacancy-for-...

A very pretty acorn panelled binding covers our first librarian's copy of Horace's Odes, printed in Paris by Simon de Colines, 497 years ago. The 16th century binding was the work of another Parisian, binder & bookseller Jehan Norvis #autumn #bindings

Stamps from the earliest days of the Irish Free State in 1922. These are from a stamp book deposited in Marsh's in 1935 by then Keeper, Newport B. White #WorldPostDay2025

Small book, big map! As part of his research on Huguenot-Indigenous American interactions, Maddock Fellow Dr Joe Borsato @theecoalchemyst.bsky.social is looking at translations of Alexander Exquemelin's book on pirates. Apparently the pirates of the Caribbean used to hang out around Tortuga in Haiti

Delightful doodles of some pipe smoking Georgians found by Maddock Fellow Danielle Magnusson on the works of Ben Jonson, printed in 1616 #Readers #Epigrams

On 8th October, Dr Sarah Hendriks will be giving a separate talk about the project to recover history lost in the Great Fire of 1922 in Dawson Street as part of the Dublin Festival of History: ria.ie/events/dubli...

Very interesting talk by Dr Sarah Hendriks (Maddock Research Fellow) at lunchtime next 7 October in the National Library about recovering history lost in the Great Fire of 1922 at the Public Record Office of Ireland: www.nli.ie/exhibitions-...

'Where the Land floweth with milk and honey': Daniel Denton's 'A brief description of New York' printed in 1670 was the first English language account of the region & was intended to encourage settlers to the colony.

Recent Maddock fellow Kelley Glasgow explores how early modern history writing provided an outlet to criticise the political system marshlibrary.ie/how-to-insul...

Hecate, goddess of witchcraft, to usher in October! From Valeriano's 'Hieroglyphica' printed in 1602

Some lovely doggie doodles from our 14th century Psalter #Manuscript #Doodles

A section so important, it required two 'manicules' or pointing fingers, left by 16th century readers. It describes the coronation of Charles VII of France in 1380 & is from Fabyan's Chronicle, a history of Britain printed in 1516 #ManiculeMonday #MondayMarginalia

A stork and a poor auld 'unknown bird kill'd of yt coast of Affrica'. From Francois Froget's 'A Relation of a voyage ... on the coasts of Africa, Streights of Magellan, Brasil, Cayenna, and the Antilles' printed in 1698 #TravelLiterature #Birds