Walter Crane (1845-1915) is today best known for his ornately illustrated 19th century children’s books. He designed artwork for the British master printer Edmund Evans in a variety of capacities for ten years, before Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway joined him as Evans’ triumvirate of children’s Toy Book illustrators.
To celebrate World Tourism Day (27 September), we’re taking a trip around the globe with some amazing photographs, photo albums, diaries and posters from our collection. Enjoy!
Our stories, Performing Arts, Rare Books & Arts:
Magician William Ellsworth Robinson left behind his plain name and New York background and reinvented himself as the Chung Ling Soo, the Marvellous Chinese Conjurer, complete with an imaginative and fictitious life story, In the great days of vaudeville he achieved world fame and in 1909 embarked on a wildly successful tour of Australia and New Zealand. A decade later, still at the height of his career, Chung Ling Soo was mortally wounded on stage undertaking his sensational bullet catch trick.
![Mother Goose: or old nursery rhymes, illustrated by Kate Greenaway, engraved and printed by Edmund Evans, Frederick Warne and Co., London, [190?].](https://blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Mother-Goose-title-page-1-120x120.jpg)
Kate Greenaway (1846–1901) was an English children’s book illustrator. She was a remarkable success during her lifetime, pleasing audiences with her form and originality.
Today, Indigenous Literacy Day, we celebrate Indigenous authored and illustrated children’s books on a range of topics.
From a first edition of Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1632) to the first Star Atlas ever produced (1729), the Library’s collection contains a number of early astronomical books.
Jane Austen transcends time. Her work critiques 18th century England but it remains compelling to contemporary readers. Her terrific characters, realism, and her sense of irony and humour have earned Austen critical acclaim and a wide audience, inspiring countless readers and writers. All that for a writer who spent her entire writing career anonymous.
Nikola Tesla was an electrical genius. He was a visionary who captured the imagination of engineers, entrepreneurs and the public with his futuristic concepts and vivid demonstrations of the power of electricity.
There’s more to books about food than just recipes. They can touch on the histories of culture, travel and more from around the world. Our collections reflect this diversity.
Australian history is rich with refugee stories. Our shores have long been a destination for those fleeing war and persecution: from Prussia, 179 years ago; from post-World War Two Europe; and from early 1980s Vietnam. Throughout it all, we’ve seen policies that encourage and restrict immigration.
