"The British Library Desk Diary 2015" focuses on classic book illustrations and includes images from favourite authors including Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens. There are illustrations from crime novels, science fiction and fantasy as well as children's classics like Alice's Adventure[...]

The Scale of Perfection is the major work of the late fourteenth-century contemplative writer, Walter Hilton, an Augustinian canon, presumed to have studied canon law at Cambridge before renouncing a promising legal career in order to become a recluse. He gave up the solitary religious life to enter[...]

The British Library Jane Austen Journal is a classic lined journal with quotes by Jane Austen and illustrated with silhouettes by Jane's nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh. The journal has an elastic closer and a storage pocket is included for keeping your notes and letters safe.[...]

The British Library Pocket Diary 2018 gathers together beautiful and fascinating images from the library's collection of natural history illustrations. Sourced from manuscripts, journals and rare books, the range of nature's beauty is represented, and includes birds, butterflies, insects, mammals, r[...]

The Bloomsbury Group remains of great public interest for its influence on art,literature and politics in the first half of the 20th century. Recordings of this informal association of writers, artists and intellectuals, which include Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Clive and Vanessa Bell, and Duncan Gr[...]

'If then, there is to be a festival, why should it not be the festival of Christmas?', asked Arnold Bennett. For as long as Christmas has been celebrated poets and writers have sought to explore every aspect of it, whether the story of the nativity, or the festive traditions that have grown up over [...]

This new CD from British Library Publishing contains recordings from the BBC archives spanning nearly thirty years. On it, the author discusses many diverse topics, including the causes of war and the effects of drug-taking on the writing process, and talks about his novels "Brave New World" and "Is[...]

Eerie screams, quiet snufflings, and snippets of song are just some of the wildlife sounds that can be heard after dark. While some animals turn in for the night, others are getting ready to begin their "day" and for some species, such as the Red Fox, Badger, Tawny Owl and Nightjar, the period from [...]

Writing is about communication. In our multimedia age, it co-exists with a developed oral culture of telecommunications, film and recorded sound. Through our television screens and popular press, it interrelates with sound and image in complex ways. Writing is nonetheless as important as ever as the[...]

With their decorations, images, bright pigments and finishing touches of gold leaf, illuminated manuscripts could be considered works of art. Drawing from the British Library's extensive collection, this calendar features 12 stunning and intricate details, many of which depict scenes of great religi[...]

'Scores of men and women died daily in London, but on this day of days one of them had died in the very midst of a crowd and the cause of his death was a dagger piercing his heart. Death had become something very real. When Bobbie Cheldon falls in love with a pretty young dancer at the Frozen Fang n[...]

With its fascinating mix of people rich and poor, British and foreign, worthy and suspicious London is a city where anything can happen. The possibilities for criminals and for the crime writer are endless. London has been home to many of fiction s finest detectives, and the setting for mystery nove[...]

The Notting Hill Mystery was first published between 1862 and 1863 as an eight-part serial in the magazine Once a Week. Widely acknowledged as the first detective novel, the story is told by insurance investigator Ralph Henderson, who is building a case against the sinister Baron R, who is suspected[...]