Enquiries are very much central to what we do.  As well as helping others with their own research, enquiries are often the means by which we learn something new about our own collections. Recently we received one about a (potential) former student, John Macleod Durward, who was recorded in the 1861 as being a Queen’s Scholar. […]

100 years ago this week, one of Scotland’s best-loved poets became a student of Edinburgh University. On 13 October 1919, the 21-year-old William Soutar added his name to the university’s Matriculation Album as a first-year student of English Literature. Like many young men of his generation, Soutar’s student years were delayed by war service. On […]

We recently became aware of a single letter from James Miranda Barry, written just before departure for Sebastopol shortly after its capture by the ‘allies’ in 1855. We acquired it in 1977. Margaret Bulkley was born in Ireland: a bright, precocious child, she moved to London, with her mother in 1805 and there had access […]

A few days ago I gave a talk to the Friends of William Soutar in Perth on the friendship between Soutar and his fellow Scots poet Hugh MacDiarmid, as illustrated by letters in Edinburgh University Library’s C. M. Grieve Archive (MS 2960.18). Soutar, confined to bed with a debilitating disease for the last 13 years […]

One of our earliest group photographs of female medical graduates depicts the MBChB class of 1906.  It shows 13 women and bears their signatures. Alice Meredith BURN, New Zealand Agnes Marshall COWAN, Scotland Jessie Handyside GELLATLY, Scotland M Deborah HANCOCK / Marjorie DUAKE-COHEN * Olive TREDWAY-LEONARD, India Meher Ardeshir Dadabhai NAHOROJI, India Agnes Ellen PORTER, […]