Blog

Every month, the Lit & Phil buys new books - we're a library after all! Here are just four that have come in recently

Newcastle has a long history of families whose members have contributed enormously to the world of learning and discovery. The Rotherams are a fine such example.

The term 'Rosetta Stone' is now used to refer to the essential clue to a new field of knowledge. Read about its connection to the Newcastle mummy, Bakt-en-Hor, and how its inscriptions were amongst the earliest hieroglyphic texts to be read by French scholar and Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion.

Perhaps not surprisingly for a Literary Society, there are quite a few authors among our members. Although he now lives in London, Peter Chapman was born in the North East, still maintains strong links here and is still a member of the Lit & Phil. His new book, is ‘A Tyneside Heritage’ a fascinating story interweaving 150 years of local and family history is now published and available from Waterstones and Blackwells.

Writer Horace Walpole is credited with the first English use of conversazione in a 1739 letter in which he writes, "After the play we were introduced to the assembly, which they call the conversazione." As this Italian borrowing was used through the years, it gained nuances of meaning and in England by the 19th century, conversazione also referred to assemblies and soirees of people connected with the arts or sciences. And at the Lit & Phil they lead they led to other things...

The Lit & Phil has had many remarkable members in its 200 year history. Some are well known, such as Stephenson and Swan; in a new blog Chris Jackson of Heaton History Group has written about Charles Hutton who deserves to be much better known. Born in Newcastle, briefly a miner then a teacher, he became a hugely important mathematician and surveyor. 

Coffee houses were hugely important meeting places in the 18th century, including here in Newcastle. One such was Katy's on Newcastle's Quayside. Lit&Phil volunteer Susan Lynn tells its fascinating story.

In its early days, the Lit&Phil held monthly meetings at which members delivered papers. Hand written transcripts of many of those papers are held in four large volumes at the library. The topics were very wide ranging from "common manure" to "iron in Sweden" to "hats". Many are too long to publish here, but over the coming months there will be a small selection, starting with making flour from crocus bulbs! 

2021 is an anniversary year for Dante, Keats and Baudelaire. Perhaps, therefore, 2021 is a good year to find connections, and it’s always good to connect everything to the North East, and in particular our Pre-Raphaelite heritage.