Sunday Openings of College Museums and Verey Gallery: 2:30-5pm.
The Museum of Eton Life, the Museum of Antiquities, the Natural History Museum and the Verey Gallery will be open to the public on Sunday afternoons on Sundays between 2:30-5pm for drop-in visits. Do bring friends and family if you are in Eton over the summer. See Museum and Gallery Openings | Eton College Collections for further information.
New Online Exhibition: Eton’s Bard, Thomas Gray and his Elegy
2021 marks the 250th anniversary of the death of Thomas Gray. College Library’s latest online exhibition: Eton’s Bard, Thomas Gray and his Elegy is now accessible on the collections website:collections.etoncollege.com/thomas-gray
Thomas Gray is buried in the Stoke Poges parish churchyard, and in June 2021, St Giles Church and the Stoke Poges Society put together a public exhibition of original oil paintings from local artists as well as loans from other institutions, photographs and prints illustrating Gray’s poetry and the different places in which he lived, studied and worked.
The College Library team put together a panel about Gray’s time at Eton. The Collections also gifted a reproduction of Hendrick Frans de Cort (1742-1810) The Tomb of Gray, Stoke Poges, c.1797, as well as photographs of Gray’s portraits from the Collections and a set of William Blake’s illustrations of Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard from Trianon Press, University of California in Santa Cruz.
Contributing to the Shakespeare Census
College Library has recently contributed to the international project ‘Shakespeare Census’, which attempts to locate and describe all extant copies of all editions of Shakespeare’s works from 1700. The census currently includes 2950 copies and 371 fragments, among these 27 extant copies and one fragment from Eton College Library. Each item has been described in detail and has been given a unique identification number that can be used in references and citations. The Shakespeare Census is freely available here https://shakespearecensus.org/.
New Podcast Episode: Within the Archives
We are also excited to announce that a new ‘Within the Archives’ podcast has been posted on the Eton College Collections Blog. Beck Price, Archives Assistant, introduces us to the history of Sport at Eton College. Follow the link to hear about the history of the Wall and Field game, a challenge sent by the boys of E.L. Churchill’s Library and a look into one of the earliest cricket matches played between Eton and Harrow. https://etoncollegecollections.wpcomstaging.com/2021/05/07/within-the-archives-podcast-sports/
