The Margarita Philosophica (Pearl of Philosophy) (1517) of German Carthusian monk and prior Gregor Reisch (c. 1467-1525).

Celebrate William Shakespeare's birthday with Shakespearean gems from the National Library's rare books collections.

Explore dictionaries of various shapes, sizes, languages and subjects from the Library's collection.

How is a rare book about swimming connected to an important early European map of Australia and American Founding Father Benjamin Franklin? Find out in this blog.

Learn about the treatment work our conservators have recently done on thepattern plates for the supplement to The Birds of Australia by John Gould.

The Library’s medieval manuscripts comprise more than 6000 individual folios in 250 items and 12 bound volumes, dispersed across several collections.

Lavishly illustrated travel books had long been popular in Europe and North America when the same American team that produced Picturesque Canada established the Picturesque Atlas Publishing Company in Wynyard Square, Sydney, on Gadigal Country, in 1885.

Books on music and printed music published in Britain from the mid-17th century to the 20th century.

Over 10,000 volumes and 1500 pamphlets in English, Latin, French, Italian, German and Spanish, with particular strength in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

About 300 books including incunabula and early editions of classical texts, plus limited edition reprints of celebrated English writers, mostly published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Around 6,000 books, mostly in Portuguese, mostly relating to literature, history and religion among many other topics.

1011 plays and libretti published in Italy between about 1720 and 1900 including a number of Italian translations of plays written by French, German and other European dramatists.