Beyond the Bookshelves

With Beyond the Bookshelves: Hidden Histories in the Morrab Library (2025), Penwith Local History Group follow up their popular Treasures of the Morrab, published in 2005 and long out of print. Twenty years on, a new generation of members have delved again into the archives and back rooms of the Morrab Library, Penzance – and found a whole array of new treasures to celebrate.

The book tells the stories of various West Cornwall people connected with Penzance and the Morrab Library, including a ground-breaking female librarian, an apprentice whose career at a Penzance foundry tracked major developments in technology, some rebellious Methodist ministers, a printmaker with interests in music and birdwatching, another who designed book plates, and members of the local natural history society. Other chapters introduce housewives’ tasks of the 19th century, and a remarkable autograph album, in which blindfold celebrities - including cricketer W G Grace and explorer Ernest Shackleton - have tried to draw pigs. You can also read about the wider world: Sir Humphry Davy as angler, poet and philosopher, and a magnificent collection of 19th-century maps and archaeological drawings from the Middle East.

 Prices

Price is:

£15.00

 Posting and packaging charges

Collected from the Morrab Library:	nil
1 book UK:	£5.00
1 book EU:	£10.00
1 book to the rest of the world:	£15.00

Contents of this publication:

Olive Symons, greatly esteemed and beloved by all.

Dawn to dusk: forgotten domestic skills.

Legally bound: master and apprentice.

Alfred Gee, expelled Methodist ministers and excitement in Penzance.

A collection of Ancient Christmas Carols, Edmund Sedding, 1860.

Reverend Prebendary Philip Hedgeland.

Hilda Quick: artist, musician, birdwatcher, author.

A collection of bookplates by Ernest W Oldham.

The Morrab pig book.

The Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society.

Davy in context: angler, poet and philosopher.

A range of recipes.