The British Library in the UK is a wonderful thing.

"Turning the Pages" has been created by the BL to enable people to access original / early manuscripts of classic books online.

It's still in its early stages at the moment, and so the selection of books on there so far is not enormous. But it's enough to be getting on with.

The most recent addition is the original 'Alice in Wonderland' book (Alice's Adventures Underground), hand-written and illustrated by Lewis Carroll. Unbelievably, jaw-droppingly beautiful. Inside the front cover is inscribed "A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer Day."



The website is http://www.bl.uk/onlinega...books.html Check it out.

what a great website

Nomad said:

Brilliant place - but - be warned. Unless it's changed, you can't look at much at all unless you get a membership card, which you can't get unless you can show that you need access for some reason - eg research, and the docs aren't available in public libaries.

I'm a member because of some research I had to do on medical patents a while back, so i'm very lucky.

Raine said:

It's brilliant.

I just can't get over what a labour of love the Alice book is! I think it's the most wonderful present i've ever seen.

Cloudbuster said:

TheFrog said:

damn it!

TheFrog said:

Wow, thanks Froggy! I can use this for my antique collection!

Nomad said:

I think they have a door policy.

BreddieMercury said:

aww it's such a shame you won't get in then... I'm sorry to hear that

Wow. That's really, really neat.

Nomad said:

TheFrog said:

I KNEW you were cheating on that quiz thing somehow!!

Very helpful people there too.

I'm trying access the site, but it's taking a million years to open!

REDBABY said:

I was kidding

minneapolisgenius said:

I've been trying to see Leonardo DaVinci's work but it won't let me either

Nomad said:

Nomad said:

Don't say that. You need to follow through. Add some cuss words if need be. Really drive it home!

Cloudbuster said:

Haven't you been banned for trying to eat the books?

LleeLlee said:

Thanks for spilling that info.

Thanks for the link. I'd read somewhere that the site was going to be set up, but I didn't know it was up and running I found several books on the list that I would love to see .I'm homeschooling my daughter and we're covering medieval life right now. Bound to be something to pique her interest too.

Cloudbuster said:

You're welcome

LleeLlee said:

Glad to see people like it.

I think i'm going to break into the British Library and steal that Alice in Wonderland book.

It does take a while to load, but it really is worth it.

TheFrog!

Cloudbuster said:

TheFrog said:

I haven't clicked on the link because my computer runs on rice whiskey with 96MB of RAM, but I thought I'd say 'hi' and do a waving emoticon.

Hi!