by Lisa Di Tommaso | Aug 26, 2025 | Blog, Morrab Library
One of our Library volunteers, Michael Malone-Lee, recently happened upon an unusual, witty, anonymously published poem in an innocuous volume in the Theology Room, dating from 1811.
Enchanted and intrigued, Michael delved deeper to uncover its author, the Revd. C. Valentine Le Grice (1773-1858), and explores the background to his entertaining piece, The Petition of an Old Uninhabited House in Penzance to its Master in Town.
The poem is a lament for the past in which the poet contrasts the ancient, ruined house with the contemporary gentrification of Penzance, a subject perhaps still of relevance today.
A view of Penzance, printed and published by J.F. Vibert, 1833 (MOR/VIV/16)
by Lisa Di Tommaso | Jul 26, 2025 | Acquisitions, Blog
Click on these links to see the lists of books purchased by the library in 2025 to date.
Don’t forget you can make your own suggestions via the book at the front desk – or just get in touch with library staff. The Book Selection Committee meets three times a year and considers all suggestions.
If you’d like to read anything on the lists, just contact library staff and we’ll reserve it for you.
New Purchased Fiction – June 2025
New Non-Fiction purchased- June 2025
by Lisa Di Tommaso | Jul 14, 2025 | Acquisitions, Blog, Morrab Library
When former Morrab Library President and Patron John le Carré passed away in 2020, his extensive book collection was donated or sold across various locations. The library made the decision to acquire one of these volumes, which holds a particular special link to the library, through two people who played important roles in its history and collections.
Richard Carew (1555 – 1620) was a Cornish scholar of antiquities and his Survey of Cornwall, first published in 1602 , is an important title in its own right. The volume details the geography, history, and culture of Cornwall at the time, and offers insights and observations that reflect Carew’s own personal experiences and knowledge of the region. Carew aimed to document the distinctiveness of Cornwall, its natural resources, and its people. This particular volume is the 1811 edition (held at: SPC 942.37).
While we’re not certain of the circumstances that led Mr le Carré to purchase this title, it is not beyond the realms of belief that its previous owner proved a significant influence. The book carries the bookplate of Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944), or ‘Q’, a Cornish novelist, scholar and literary critic. The library holds many of Q’s works, and in a speech to the library in 1919, said of the Morrab:
“There are some things in this world which the traveller, if he has eyes to see, can’t help but find just right. [It is not] fanciful to suppose …a guest at closing time, resting his strained eyes on the view across Mount’s Bay, with a sense that here was the real world scarcely less enchanting than the visionary sea of marvels, a city of God behind him, upon which the caretaker was closing the shutters for another night…”
Arthur Quiller-Couch
John le Carré was was a passionate supporter and friend of The Morrab Library for many years. As well as holding the role of President from 1997-2002, he later continued for many years as our Patron. His relationship with the Library stretched even further back to the 1970’s, giving his time to many events and meetings to support the library over the years. Mr le Carré supported the library in many ways, including establishing the Morrab Fellowship, which for a number of years provided a bursary to local sixth-formers to purchase books for their studies. He also commissioned the construction of a number of the mahogany reading tables located in our rooms upstairs, and he paid the insurance premium on our book collection throughout his tenure as President. Mr le Carré will be remembered for his vision for the library’s future, and his aim of encouraging young people to join and be inspired by this special place.
John le Carré pictured with Morrab Library colleagues in 1975
So Richard Carew’s important tome provides a special link to two of the library’s most interesting and important supporters.
At the back of the volume, there is a page of unattributed handwritten annotations on the subject of Cornish etymology. Intrigued by this, one of our brilliant library volunteers, Jane Prince, delved into the background of the provenance of Carew’s volume, exploring the possibilities of how it may have come into the hands of Arthur Quiller-Couch, before passing to John le Carré, and uncovering who may very likely have been been responsible for the mysterious note. Her paper follows…
The mysterious, unattributed notes
“This volume, which contains Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s bookplate, was accompanied by a slip from the sales house mentioning the notes made by a former owner, suggesting that these may have been made by Q himself. However, a comparison with the facsimile of a letter in Q’s handwriting in Brittain’s biography shows that this is not the case. However, the cross-references in these notes to Halliwell (probably to his Rambles in Western Cornwall of 1861) indicate that the volume might, in fact, have been a survivor from the library of Q’s father, Dr Thomas Quiller Couch.[1] Most of his books were sold to pay debts on his death in 1884, when Q, still an undergraduate at Trinity, Oxford, was left the head of the family with a mother, two sisters and two much younger brothers to support. The reference in Q’s autobiography implies that he kept some of his father’s extensive library.[2]
Arthur Quiller-Couch’s bookplate in Carew’s 1811 volume
James Orchard Halliwell (later known as Halliwell-Phillips) was a contemporary of Thomas Couch and they had a common acquaintance in J. T. Blight, who was a friend of Thomas and who also illustrated Halliwell’s Life of Shakespeare (1848). A footnote referencing Halliwell’s Rambles accompanies the details of Chapel Uny Well taken from Thomas’s original notes for Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall, which was published, with additional research, by Q’s sisters Mabel and Lilian.[3] The entry for Scarlet’s Well, Bodmin, quotes Thomas Couch’s manuscript in full in which he in turn quotes from Carew’s Survey.[4] A footnote to St Nun’s Well, Alternon also refers to Carew’s Survey but citing the 1769 edition, although it could have been the case that Mabel and Lilian just looked up the reference in that particular edition. Ancient and Holy Wells was published in 1894 by which time Q was living and working in Fowey, so his sisters would no longer have had access to their father’s copy of Carew.[5]
The Morrab Library is fortunate in having an archive of J. T. Blight’s sketchbooks and diaries, including a letter to him from Thomas Couch. The annotations to Carew’s Survey are only rough notes and Thomas Couch’s letter is in formal handwriting but similarities between certain letters seem to support the proposal that the book originally belonged to Q’s father.[6]
The cross references to Halliwell are also of relevance to the Morrab Library in that Halliwell donated more than 2,000 volumes to the library after visiting it during his stay in Penzance. Halliwell lodged with Mrs Margery Cornish in Clarence Street and his explorations of the district resulted in Rambles in Western Cornwall By the Footsteps of the Giants published by John Russell Smith, London, in 1861. His obituary in the Cornishman of January 1889 described Halliwell’s donations of ‘rare and valuable books’ as making ‘one department richer than any other provincial library of its size in Elizabethan and Dramatic literature.’ [7] He was best known as a Shakespearian scholar. He was also educated at Jesus College, Cambridge where, co-incidentally, Q was granted a fellowship twenty years after Halliwell’s death.
Bookshelves in the Library honouring Halliwell
J.O. Halliwell-Phillips
If, however, Q did not inherit the volume of Carew from his father it is likely that he bought it from Gustave David, the antiquarian bookseller who kept a stall in the market in Cambridge and was much patronised by Q and his contemporaries. David attended book sales in London every week and his Cambridge stall (and later his shop) was well-known as a source of hidden treasures at reasonable prices. He used to put aside volumes which he thought would interest his regular customers. In 1925 Q and others gave a lunch at Cambridge in honour of David, and Q contributed to a small book produced as a memorial tribute in 1937, entitled David of Cambridge: Some Appreciations.[8]
- F. Brittain, Arthur Quiller-Couch: A biographical study of Q, (Cambridge, 1947), p. 117.
- Memories and opinions. An unfinished autobiography by Q, ed. S. C. Roberts, (Cambridge, 1944), p. 91.
- Mabel and Lilian Quiller-Couch, Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall, (London, 1894), p 28.
- Ibid pp. 211-212.
- Ibid p. 172
- Morrab Library Archive: MOR/BLI/1
- The Cornishman, Thursday, 10th January 1889, no. 549, p. 7.
- David’s son Hubert (1900-1990) continued the business and was also a designer of book-plates.
by Lisa Di Tommaso | Jun 11, 2025 | Blog
It is with enormous sadness that we let you know of the passing of Sheila Bradley.
Sheila was a loyal volunteer for the library for over 30 years, working on so many different projects it is impossible to mention them all. As a member of the Book Selection Committee, Sheila spent many hours sifting through reviews, possessing in depth subject knowledge right across the board… literature, poetry, sciences, politics, history, the arts, films, music and more. She also created the displays of books in the case in reception, preparing informative labels on each, and was also a welcome face at the front desk to our members and visitors.
Sheila had an unmatched thirst for knowledge, and her love and support for the Morrab Library was immense. She was remarkable, wise, funny, and devoted to family and friends. We all loved her very much and the library owes her a huge debt.
by Lisa Di Tommaso | Jun 15, 2024 | Blog, Exhibition
Artist Rebecca Harvey and poet Lucy Sparrow are joint Artists in Residence at The Morrab Library. Throughout the year, the pair are creating pieces in porcelain and poetry inspired by the library’s rooms, collections and atmosphere.
If you have visited the library recently, you may have paused on the staircase to read Lucy’s latest poem, ‘a living library’ which slinks along the stringer up to the top of the stairs. At each tread, a new line is added to the poem which grows as you climb, repeating itself in a calming refrain up to the landing, from which you can see the room where Lucy first drafted the piece.
Lucy says “‘a living library’ was written in the Poetry Room in The Morrab Library late one sunny afternoon in January 2024. In an armchair surrounded by shelves of books and art works, looking out through an enormous window into the surrounding garden, I felt an intense sense of serenity and connectedness.”
Through their residency Lucy and Rebecca seek to bring to life and shine attention on unexpected places around the building, illuminating quiet corners, treasured reading spots and places of contemplation.
Lucy adds, “The library, crammed with treasures and always welcoming, opens up as a safe yet stimulating space nurturing learning, creativity and reflection.” Through her poem she hopes to “convey the essence of the library, its energy and life revealed through presence and purpose, by the library staff, library members and visitors in this very special place.”
Lucy’s poem is depicted in another form by Rebecca Harvey’s work in the Rees Room, just off the landing. Rebecca works in porcelain and for this new piece she has painted with Cornish clay slip onto the glass panes and has written ‘a living library’ through the clay, letting the light stream through the words.
Sitting at the desk in the Rees Room, surrounded by French fiction, Pelican books and texts in a whole host of languages, you can look out of the window through the poem, or watch the afternoon light play through its letters.
Rebecca describes her process and the inspiration behind the piece below:
“At the top of the stairs I gravitate towards the intimate Rees room as it holds assorted memories of being the first that I spent time in with my young daughter after the first lockdown. The window invites a gaze towards the living life of Penzance, palm trees, close knit houses, sky and drifting interior thoughts.
The pane of glass echoes the page.
The materiality of locally dug kaolin references its granite source and traditional use in paper making.
Textures of brushstrokes soaked in clay, are drawn across the transparent glass and slightly conceal the exterior.
Energy held in the edges of the brushmarks are left, partly inspired by the slightly torn and ruffled edges of a WH Davies book. This book is so beautifully illustrated and belonged to a member of the The Penwith Local History Group who are researching a creative Hilda Quick collection held in the archives.
A sequential gesture of the handwritten words holds the fluid rhythm and pattern which are revealed through the transparency of glass.
Like the poem this understated composition has taken on many permeations before arriving with a somewhat simple interpretation of ‘A Living Library”.”
Lucy and Rebecca’s previous pieces were installed in the Reading Room and you can read about their work in our previous blog post. This summer, Lucy’s poem guides the library visitor gently up from the ground floor and Rebecca’s next porcelain installation can be found in the Rees Room window (upstairs). You can also pick up a copy of Lucy’s poem to take home from the table on the landing.
The installations are open for members and non-members alike to visit during Library opening hours (10-4, Tuesday-Saturday).
