Source Archives Archives: The National Library of Scotland, Special Collections

Compass detail from Marine Charts of Scotland. Willem Janzoon Blaeu, 1658

Poseidon riding a Hippocumpus, detail from Tarritoria Angelen et Schwansen, Blaeu Atlas Maior, Joan Blaeu, Amsterdam 1665 The  Cosmographia Blaviana or Blaeu Atlas Maior was published in 1662-5. It is a splendid and one of the largest examples of the multi-volume Dutch world atlases. It contains 3,368 pages of texts and 594 maps and presents the […]

Battle at Sea, detail from Europae Map, Claudius Ptolemy, Atlas. 1584

The Bass Rock (detail), Theatrum Scotiae. John Sletzer, 1693 Engraved views from the 17th century. ‘Theatrum Scotiae’ is a volume of detailed engravings by John Slezer, a military engineer . It gives a glimpse of what Scotland   looked like over 300 years ago. More than 70 of Slezer’s original engravings from the National Library of Scotland’s collections […]

To a Mouse ‘Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect’ Robert Burns. This is the first collection of Burns’s work to appear in print. Published in Kilmarnock by John Wilson in 1786, it is known as ‘the Kilmarnock edition’. It includes the poems ‘Scotch drink’, ‘The Cotter’s Saturday night’, ‘To a mouse’ and ‘To a louse’. By […]

The book of knots, being a complete treatise on the art of cordage. Illustrated by 172 diagrams showing the manner of making every knot and splice.

This book is found in The Stevenson Collection. Bell Rock lies off the coast of Angus Scotland and once apon a time it claimed the lives of many men. Between 1807 and 1810 it became the scene of a feat of engineering which has since been described as on of the seven wonders of the […]