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Francis Stevens (1781-1823) and the Devon and Exeter Institution
The South West Collection includes many rare items that shed light on the history of our region. This lovely pocket sketchbook, bound in leather with a brass clasp, contains pencil sketches and notes by the landscape artist, etcher and drawing master, Francis Stevens (1781-1823).
Early 19th century xylotheks
Xylotheks, or xylotheques, are book-like herbariums, made of wood and filled with wood specimens, including dried leaves, flowers, seeds and bark. They appeared towards the end of the 17th century […]
William Beckford’s travels in Italy (1834)
William Beckford (1760-1844) was an English novelist and travel writer, best known for his Gothic novel, Vathek (1786), and for building the magnificent (but structurally unsound) Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire. […]
William Hogarth’s complete works (ca. 1861)
William Hogarth (1697-1764) was a prolific painter, printmaker and social critic, best known for his often bawdy and satirical comic-strip series of pictures of life in 18th century England. His […]
Burckhardt’s Travels in Syria and the Holy Land (1822)
Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784-1817) was a Swiss traveller and geographer from Lausanne who later moved to England and found employment with the African Association. His mission from its President, Sir […]
Henry Nelson Coleridge’s Six months in the West Indies (1826)
Henry Nelson Coleridge (1798-1843) was born in Ottery St Mary, Devon. He was both nephew and later son-in-law of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) and edited his poetry. In […]
David Gregory’s first complete edition of Euclid (1703)
David Gregory (1659-1708) was a Scottish mathematician, best known for his Astronomiae Physicae et Geometricae Elementa (1702) – the first published work to apply the language of Newtonian gravitation to […]
Thomas Young’s course of lectures on everything (1807)
Thomas Young (1773-1829) was born in Milverton, Somerset, in 1773, the eldest of ten children in a Quaker family. Soon after his birth, he was brought up by his mother’s […]
Philip Henry Gosse’s Aquarium (1854)
In May 1852, the marine biologist and naturalist, Philip Henry Gosse (1810-1888), made his first serious attempt to create a marine aquarium. He put three pints of sea water into […]
Caroline Halsted’s Travels in the boudoir (1837)
In Travels in the boudoir (1837), Caroline Halsted (1803/4 – 1848) takes the young female reader on a world-wide Grand Tour via the everyday objects in her private sitting-room. At […]
