The Guernsey workman, by Charles Hugo
The decoration of the salle à manger, or dining room, at Hauteville-House, Victor Hugo's residence in Guernsey, was finished in May 1857. Charles Hugo wrote of it:
Social History
Victor Hugo in Guernsey, by Henri Boland
From Boland's Les Iles de la Manche, 1904, pp. 145-6, including a note attached to the pages by Edith Carey. [By Dinah Bott]
Thomas Andros' Commonplace Book
Thomas Andros' Commonplace Book, by the Seigneur of Saumarez Manor, from a family 'whose penmanship was far from good;' a handwritten pamphlet of herbal medicine and fruit-growing, dated 1589, Guernsey, and an exploration of other texts quoted in it.
A Farmer's Vacation, 1873
Guernsey, from an article in the influential American publication, Scribner's Monthly Magazine, September 1873; the article is one of a series eventually brought together as a book, A Farmer's Vacation, by George Wearing, published in the same year. Interest in the exportation of Guernsey cattle to North America and their management was bringing significant numbers of US farmers or their agents to Guernsey in this period. Wearing had first visited Jersey, to compare their agricultural procedures. Below is the Couture Water Lane in St Peter Port, admired by the author.
Elie Brevint on witchcraft
Elie Brevint (1587-1674) was minister of Sark from 1612. His father Cosmé, also a minister, was a Huguenot refugee from Angoulême who had accompanied Helier De Carteret from Jersey in his colonisation of Sark. Transcriptions and microfilm of Elie's 14 Notebooks, which were found in a loft in Sark in the 19th century, are held in the Priaulx Library. Elie appears to be a sensible and rational man with a curious and detached mind, until he turns to these sorts of subject: the Pousseresse, perturbateurs, and salamanders. The illustration is of the Tormento do Tacto, or Torture, from Alexander Périer's O Desengano dos Pecadores of 1724, in the Library.
The Season in Alderney
From The Ladies' Companion and Monthly Magazine, 1868. Old-fashioned and full of Latin tags but more fun that you might think. 'For be it remarked here, that the Alderney girls age remarkably fast, and very probably the charmer who is carrying on a conversation with you, and parrying all your flirting and causerie, with all the nerve and steadiness of five-and-twenty, is, after all, only adorned by the petitionary grace of sweet seventeen.'
Times Past, by Carel Toms
'In Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, and Herm.' A list of the chapters and personalities in this book, published in 1985; taken from his 'journalistic and photographic efforts of the last 30 years.' Many of these photographs are in the Library's Carel Toms Collection; please inquire for further information.
A Library Christmas selection box
Guernsey Christmas—published and unpublished excerpts from the Library's collection. The illustration is Victor Hugo's own frontispiece to his Guernsey novel, Toilers of the Sea, the story of which begins at Christmas; like much of Hugo's artistic output, the picture is somewhat gloomy, but the rocks, so important in the book, are nevertheless covered with holly. The print is from a rare edition of the illustrations in the Library's collection.
Guernsey people
By Frank Feather Dally. Guernsey folk love a good funeral.
Eels
'Longevity of freshwater eels' from The Guernsey Press, 20 January 1912.