A Dog of Flanders

Recently, the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library could add some fine titles to its collection of A Dog of Flanders-publications, including a Japanese version of the Suske & Wiske-comic featuring Nello and Patrasche.

The trajectories of a sixteenth-century physician’s books

Upon opening a copy of the 1572 Venetian edition of Natale Conti’s Historiarum sui temporis libri decem, the ex-libris caught the attention of Dr. Nina Lamal. Opposite the title page of the book there was an engraved portrait of Alvarus Nonnius by Jan Wierix, dated 1586. In the following weeks, she came across the same portrait pasted in several other books in the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library. Her interest was piqued: she wanted to reconstruct Nonnius’ library and investigate how his books became part of the collection of the Conscience library. This short blog offers the first results of that quest.

Provenance research in the Conscience Library

Some books contain traces of earlier owners or users. These provenance marks can be used to research the way a book or text functioned in society, or to reconstruct the reading behaviour or book ownership of a person or a group of people.

Many marvellous histories

An anonymous 18th century manuscript has popped up

At Van De Wiele Auctions a remarkable eighteenth-century anonymous manuscript turned up earlier this year. It bears the title ‘Hier worden verhaelt veel wonderbaere gheschiedenissen’ [Herein many marvellous histories are told]. At the last minute, we were able to look into this manuscript and acquire it later on.

Accessibility

Everyone should be able to easily use and view the information on the website of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, not least the visually impaired, blind, hearing impaired, deaf and persons with other disabilities. The Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library strives to make its website as accessible as possible, by 2022 at the latest. We do this in accordance with the EU directives and the Flemish Administration Decree.

Porn, pulp & literature

Online exhibit

In December 2019, the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library presented an unknown and long-hidden part of Flemish literature and cultural history: pornographic literature with the exhibition "Porn, pulp & literature". View the online exhibition here.

The Esperanto collection of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library

In 2016, the Hendrik Conscience Library acquired a large part of the library of the Flandra Esperanto-Ligo or Flemish Esperanto League. We’re talking to Esperantist Cyreen Knockaert, who has been cataloguing this collection for us as a volunteer.

Pornography in the library

Interaction between porn and literature in Flanders

Until recently, pornography has mostly been neglected by literary scholars and historians. Academic attention to pornographic texts was confined to a small range of literary authors with a canonical status, such as the notorious libertine author Marquis de Sade. Similarly, librarians were not interested in pornographic publications, which usually circulated in a secondary circuit of junk reading. As a result of this, the mass of these pulp publications, printed on low-quality paper and deemed unworthy of keeping, has vanished through time.

Ulysses to Baedeker

Three centuries of travel advice in pocket size

Gerrit Verhoeven is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of History of the University of Antwerp. As an urban historian, he specialises in early modern Europe, particularly – but not only – the Low Countries and Western Europe. He has published on travel and tourism, on time awareness and human capital, on the resilience of social relations, and on book history. In this blogpost he writes about the research potential of travel guides kept in the collection of Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library.

"Antwerp is a colonial city"

Historian Bas De Roo has been scouring our collection for books on Belgium’s colonial past for his dissertation on the flow of taxes and customs duties in Congo Free State. After his dissertation, De Roo worked at the University of Leipzig, where he researched the role of the Congolese elite in the governance of the Free State and Belgian Congo. Today, De Roo is a researcher at Geheugen Collectief, which offers historical research in an accessible way to a broad public in the form of exhibitions, historical walks, apps, publications ...