Browse Items (35 total)

Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden, originally published in two volumes in 1792, was praised as a bestseller. Part Two: The Loves of the Plants was published in 1789, and Part One: The Economy of Vegetation was published in 1791 (Priestman).…

Published in 1876, The Hunting of The Snark by Lewis Carroll is a poem about nine men and a beaver on a quest for a snark. The poem focuses on the journey the characters embark on and is so outlandish that some have called it an epic, but the tale…

As described by the Oxford English Dictionary, a fable is “a short story devised to convey some useful lesson" and especially "one in which animals or inanimate things are the speakers or actors.” The dictionary then dates the word's first appearance…

A discussion of the Gomatos collection that appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of MU Today

Inscribed in the 12th century, this nameless lectionary contains an invocation to the Lord and was most likely used in the celebration of the Christian Mass. A liturgical book is one used during the ceremony of the Mass as opposed to a reference…

Books of Hours, or Horæ in Latin were often lavishly decorated books of prayers, rites for canonical hours of the day, and readings from the Bible developed during the 1300s and based on longer ecclesiastical texts of devotions performed during the…

Content Description:
On the front page of this piece (two lines from the top starting with the enlarged B) is Luke chapter 1 lines 68-79. This is known as the Benedictus or Canticle of Zechariah. This is the prayer which Zachariah said when John the…

Initially entitled Legenda sanctorum (Readings on the Saints), The Golden Legend was compiled about the year 1275 by Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa and a member of the Dominican Order. The Golden Legend was, perhaps, the most widely read…

This original copy was printed in 1789, the very plain design of the cover of the book with the rough uneven edges of the pages give the book a very notebook or journal like feel rather than a professionally printed book. Also the handwritten…

Rudyard Kipling is one of the most celebrated English writers of his time. He wrote novels, short stories, poems, and journal articles. Born in India in 1895 during its time in the British Empire, Kipling travelled to England to be educated in a…