The Original Original...

The British Library is a pretty awesome place, and this needs to be acknowledged. It holds some of the most important pieces of writing in Western culture, from the Gutenberg Bible to Jane Austen's writing desk(!), and from pages from Leonardo da Vinci's notebook to the original notes for Handel's Messiah. Not only this, but it is the most amazing resource if you're interested in books and manuscripts, allowing you to flick through some of these awe-inspiring texts online.

This is where I discovered that they had, in their possession, THE ORIGINAL HAND-WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED COPY OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND given by Charles Dodgson (aka. Lewis Carroll) to Alice Liddell (the inspiration for her literary counterpart)!!! As you can imagine I was rather excited by this prospect and had to have a look. It's a strange experience looking at these texts and thinking about the minds who sat working on them, perhaps looking at the same page as you at that moment...you feel connected to the marks on that page.

The problem with books is that when they're on display, you can only see two pages at a time, but the link below leads to the British Library's virtual copy, the entirety of which you can flick through at your leisure - it's not the original but it's still pretty darn amazing.

http://www.bl.uk/turning-the-pages/?id=86825520-a671-11db-a264-0050c2490048&type=book

When I was visiting the Library, I also took a look at the illustrations on illuminated manuscripts, the colours and details on which are just staggeringly beautiful - I would recommend the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Medieval Bestiary.

If you're interested, as I was, in seeing more virtual texts, the link below leads to the whole list of their online collection.

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/virtualbooks/viewall/index.html

http://www.bl.uk/