Thursday, November 29, 2012

Special Event: Samuel Butler in Italy (1/12/2013)



Samuel Butler in Italy - a special event at St John's College, Cambridge
Saturday 12th January 2013 at St John's College, Cambridge

Adventures in Italy is a celebration of the fascinating collection relating to the Victorian polymath Samuel Butler which is held in the Library at St John's College, Cambridge and is currently the subject of a Heritage Lottery Funded cataloguing project. All these events are free, and everyone is welcome. The programme is as follows:

10.00-16.00: 'Butler's Adventures in Italy' - a new exhibition of photographs, artworks, maps and books from the Samuel Butler Collection, displayed in the beautiful C17th Library at St John's
College.

12.00: 'Samuel Butler, un Amico dell'Italia: The History of a Cultural Partnership' - Cristiano Turbil (University of Kent)

14.00: 'Consigning the Old Masters to Limbo: Samuel Butler's Influence on How I Teach Art and Art History' - Clarice Zdanski (Franklin College, Switzerland)

15.30: 'Over the Range with Samuel Butler (and Some Remarkably Persistent Gnats)' - Julia Powles (St John's College, Cambridge)

Full outlines of the talks and details of the booking arrangements can be found on our website at http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/butler-day-adventures-italy. Please feel free to forward this information to any interested parties, or to contact the Library for more information.

A note on Samuel Butler: As well as being a writer, painter, photographer and evolutionist, Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was a great traveller, who in the latter part of his life adopted Italy as his second country. From the Alpine ranges bordering Switzerland in the north to Trapani on the west coast of Sicily, Butler covered hundreds of miles (many of which were off the standard tourist track), carrying out hugely original literary-historical research and befriending the locals wherever he stopped to rest. The places and scenes that caught Butler's imagination in the 1880s and 1890s are beautifully documented in the Library's collection, which includes almost 2000 original photographic prints and several hundred artworks created by Butler as he went, as well as the maps he used and the souvenirs he collected on his travels.

Anyone with an interest in Italy, the Alps, nineteenth-century travel and culture, walking, photography, art, art history, classical literature (particularly the 'Odyssey') or Samuel Butler generally is sure to find something to interest them at these events. We hope to see you there!

www.joh.cam.ac.uk/samuel-butler-project