The Bodleian Libraries (BODcasts): Recent Episodes
Oxford University
The Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford is the largest university library system in the United Kingdom. It includes the principal University library - the Bodleian Library - which has been a legal deposit library for 400 years; as well as 28 other libraries across Oxford including major research libraries and faculty, department and institute libraries. Together, the Libraries hold more than 12 million printed items, over 80,000 e-journals and outstanding special collections including rare books and manuscripts, classical papyri, maps, music, art and printed ephemera. Members of the public can explore the collections via the Bodleian’s online image portal at digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk or by visiting the exhibition galleries in the Bodleian's Weston Library. For more information, visit www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
Experts discuss how the latest 3D recording technology has supported their research by revealing near-invisible markings from originals held at Oxford University Institutions The very latest in 3D recording technology has revealed near-invisible markings from originals held at Oxford University institutions. Imagery captured with this technology shows what has never before been possible to record. These recordings have assisted researchers in making exciting discoveries which will be shared at this event. In this presentation, a panel of experts will discuss how recordings have supported their research. Incised text from second century wax tablets, newly discovered designs found on the reverse of copper printing plates and examples of preparatory stylus markings from High Renaissance drawings will all be explored through these incredible new images. Recordings of specimens from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History will demonstrate how this new method for 3D acquisition could have the potential to assist in the classification of species. The technology used to create these recordings will be described and explained by their designer, and the Bodleian’s imaging specialist. Members of Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Services will demonstrate online viewers to disseminate these 3D recordings, and newly developed tools which allow users to interact with them. ARCHiOx – Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage in Oxford – is a collaborative project bringing together the Bodleian Libraries and the Factum Foundation. Based in Madrid, the Factum Foundation specialises in high-resolution 3D imaging and has worked in cultural heritage institutions throughout the world, producing exceptional, three-dimensional facsimiles of artworks and artefacts.SpeakersAdam Lowe is the director of Factum Arte and founder of Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Preservation. Founded in 2001, Factum Arte is a multidisciplinary workshop dedicated to digital mediation for the production of works for contemporary artists.John Barrett is Senior Photographer for the Bodleian Libraries. Since 2005, John has provided photographs of Bodleian originals for numerous publications. His work involves the development of new methods of recording special collections material. John is technical lead at the Bodleian for ARCHiOx. Jorge Cano is Head of Technology at Factum Foundation. He has developed a multidisciplinary career working in the intersections of art and technology. Jorge is an expert in 3D recording, image filtering and Geographical Information Systems.Carlos Bayod is Project Director at the Factum Foundation. His work is dedicated to the development and application of digital technology to the recording, study and dissemination of cultural heritage.Richard Allen is a Software Engineer for Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Services where he works primarily supporting Digital Bodleian and the Imaging Studio DAMS. He is also CEO of an Oxford University spinout company called Palaeopi Limited that specialises in photogrammetry.Angelamaria Aceto is a Senior Research in Italian Drawings at Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.Dr. Mark Crosby, FSA is an associate Professor and Director of the K-State Digital Humanities Center at the Department of English, Kansas State University. With an introduction by Richard Ovenden OBE, Bodley's Librarian & Head of Gardens, Libraries and Museums (GLAM)The project has been generously funded by The Helen Hamlyn Trust.
Elizabeth Savage and Ed Potten. A conversation reflecting on the techniques for ascribing dates to woodblocks and prints.
Andrew Honey and Alexandra Franklin Discovering and re-discovering the uses of wooden printing blocks within a library.
Madeleine Katkov, Alex Walker and Nicole Gilroy Exploring the conservation of the fabric and content of Bodley’s Library.
Associate Professor Donna West Brett gives a lecture on the collection of photobooks donated to the Bodleian Library in 2020 by Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey. Conveying meaning through photos alone, the photobook is a radical format that enabled the widespread dissemination of modernist aesthetics. This lecture will take a closer look at the way photobooks portray the ‘everyday’ – the familiar, the practical, the ordinary – and its intersection with the visual languages of politics and propaganda.SpeakerDonna West Brett is Associate Professor and Chair of Art History at The University of Sydney. She is author of Photography and Place: Seeing and Not Seeing Germany After 1945 (Routledge, 2016); co-editor with Natalya Lusty, Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images (Routledge, 2019), and has published widely on photographic history. She is Research Leader for Photographic Cultures at Sydney, and Editorial Member for the Visual Culture and German Contexts Series, Bloomsbury. Brett is a recipient of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, Ernst and Rosemarie Keller Fund, and Sloan Fellow in Photography at the Bodleian Libraries for 2024.
In this webinar, Professor Marion Turner introduces some of the themes of Chaucer Here and Now, the exhibition currently on view at the Weston Library. Focusing on manuscripts and printed books from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first, Professor Marion Turner discusses some of the ways in which readers of Chaucer have responded to and reimagined Chaucer's works. From medieval scribes to Zadie Smith, via early printers, Victorian children's authors and William Morris, Professor Turner explores the afterlife of one of our greatest poets.
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales tell the story of pilgrims 'from every shires ende / Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende’. Experience these journeys, both real and imagined, through medieval manuscripts from the Bodleian collection live under the visualiser. Dr Alison Ray, archivist at St Peter’s College, and Dr Andrew Dunning, RW Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries, will explore the new iconography that developed after Thomas Becket’s murder, the impact of his death on Oxford’s religious houses and how Canterbury became a significant pilgrimage destination.
Tia Blassingame introduced her work leading the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective (aka Book/Print Collective) and shared methods for supporting and empowering BIPOC book and print artists In this lecture, Tia Blassingame introduced her work leading the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective (aka Book/Print Collective) and shared methods for supporting and empowering BIPOC book and print artists. She also discussed her educational work centred around Black American artists working in the book form and her curatorial work challenging the exclusion and erasure of Global Majority traditions and artistry in hand papermaking. Founded in 2019 by book artist and printmaker Tia Blassingame, the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective brings Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) book artists, papermakers, curators, letterpress printers, printmakers into conversation and collaboration with scholars of BIPOC Book History and Print Culture to build community, support systems. Biography: Tia Blassingame is an Associate Professor of Art at Scripps College, where she teaches Book Arts and Letterpress Printing, and serves as the Director of Scripps College Press. Her artist’s books and prints can be found in library and museum collections across the world. In 2019, Blassingame founded the Book/Print Artist/Scholar of Color Collective. Most recently, Blassingame has co-curated, with writer, book artist, publisher Stephanie Sauer, the NEA and Center for Craft grants-awarded exhibition, Paper Is People: Decolonizing Global Paper Cultures, held at Minnesota Center for Book Arts (14 April – 12 August 2023) and San Francisco Center for the Book (28 October -22 December, 2023). Tia Blassingame was the current Bodleian Printer in Residence, 2023. Book/Print Collective | Instagram: @bookprintcollectiveProgrammed by The Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Libraries.
In this session, we explore what Playford’s publishing activities can tell us about how music was incorporated into different social environments in seventeenth-century English society and the role music played in peoples lives. Although The Dancing Master was one of John Playford’s best-known and most widely distributed publications, it belonged within a music-publishing portfolio that provides something of a snapshot of the breadth of music-making activities in which people from different parts of society participated in the Commonwealth and Restoration periods. In this session, we explore what Playford’s publishing activities can tell us about how music was incorporated into different social environments in seventeenth-century English society, from the tavern to the concert room to the royal court, and what the writings of people known to have used his books, such as Samuel Pepys, tell us about the role music played in their lives.Rebecca Herissone is Professor of Musicology at the University of Manchester and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her research focuses on the musical cultures of early modern England, particularly issues of creativity, reception and manuscript and print cultures, which has led her to work extensively on the publishing activities of John and Henry Playford, Thomas Cross and John Walsh, and to consider the complex relationships between musical notation and performance in the period. She has written three monographs, most recently Musical Creativity in Restoration England (awarded the Diana McVeagh Prize by NABMSA in 2015), and has had articles published in journals including the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Musical Quarterly, Journal of Musicology, Music & Letters, and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. She co-edited Music & Letters from 2007–19 and is now a Vice-President of the Royal Musical Association, Chair of the Musica Britannica Editorial Committee, Series Co-Editor of Cambridge Elements in Music, 1600–1750, a General Editor of the Works of John Eccles, and a member of the Editorial Boards of the Purcell Society and Music & Letters. Her current research focuses on Purcell’s reception, particularly the material traces we can uncover of the small network of individuals who preserved, performed and transformed his music in the 18th and 19th centuries. Alice Little is a Research Fellow at the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments, part of the Music Faculty of the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on collectors and collecting, particularly eighteenth-century tunebooks and their compilers, looking at what sources the collections were gathered from and what the selection of music says about the people and cultures that collected and used them.
This talk will consider how and why the frontispiece to this edition was different from those in earlier editions and place the image in relation to other images of ballroom dance bands before and after 1728. The music publisher John Playford built his success on the publication in 1651 of the first book to give tunes and dance instructions for country dances. He named it The English Dancing Master and in subsequent editions The Dancing Master. The frontispiece to the eighteenth and final edition of vol. 1 (c.1728) shows a trio of musicians – violin, oboe, bassoon – accompanying a group of country dancers in a ballroom. This talk will consider how and why the frontispiece to this edition was different from those in earlier editions and place the image in relation to other images of ballroom dance bands before and after 1728. The speakers will also examine Hogarth’s print A Country Dance and what it tells us about decorum and licence in mid-18th century ballroom dancing.Jeremy Barlow specialises in English popular and dance music from 1550 to 1750, and also has a particular interest in the illustration of music and social dance over the centuries. He has lectured on a variety of subjects for organisations such as the The Arts Society, U3A, the Art Fund and National Trust. His books include The Enraged Musician: Hogarth’s Musical Imagery (Ashgate) and The Cat & the Fiddle: Images of Musical Humour from the Middle Ages to Modern Times (Bodleian Library). The Bodleian Library has also published A Dance Through Time: Images of Western Social Dancing from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. Jeremy is well known for his work on Playford and has published an edition of Playford's dance tunes, The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford’s Dancing Master (1651–ca.1728) (Faber Music).Alice Little is a Research Fellow at the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments, part of the Music Faculty of the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on collectors and collecting, particularly eighteenth-century tunebooks and their compilers, looking at what sources the collections were gathered from and what the selection of music says about the people and cultures that collected and used them.
Conservation Scientist Prof. Dr. Mandana Barkeshli looks at lacquered bookbindings made by Persian artisans in the 16th to 19th centuries. Persian artisans are known for their contributions to the field of bookbinding, with the lacquered bookbinding technique being one of their notable breakthroughs. This intricate technique involves multiple layers, each with their own materials, methods, and motifs that have been used from the Safavid to Qajar periods.
Professor Barkeshli delves into the details of each layer and explores the various treatments used during manufacture, as well as providing insight into the environmental enemies of the lacquered bookbinding.
Prof. Dr. Mandana Barkeshli is Head of Research and Post Graduate Studies of De’ Institute of Creative Arts and Design UCSI University in Malaysia and Principle Fellow at University of Melbourne. Her current research project is titled, 'Paper Dyes Used in Persian Medieval Manuscripts: Creating a Materials Construction Digital Database'.
An introduction to the analysis of painted Byzantine and Japanese manuscripts by the Bodleian Libraries' new Heritage Scientist. The post of Heritage Scientist at the Bodleian Libraries was re-instated at the beginning of 2023, enabling the analysis of manuscripts in the library’s collection. The focus so far has been on Byzantine manuscripts from the 10th to 13th centuries, and Japanese scrolls from the 17th century which contain painted pictures.
Daniel Meadows is a pioneer of contemporary British documentary practice. A photographer, documentarian and digital storyteller. He returns to the Bodleian library to muse on his life and archive and the power of photography. Photographer Daniel Meadows is a pioneer of contemporary British documentary practice. A photographer, documentarian and digital storyteller, he has spent his life recording British society, challenging the status quo by working in a collaborative way to capture extraordinary aspects of ordinary life through pictures, audio recordings and short movies. Fifty years ago, photographer Daniel Meadows set out in The Free Photographic Omnibus, a Leyland Titan double-decker remodelled as his mobile home, darkroom and gallery. He drove it around towns and villages and offered free portraits to the people he met on his travels. The photographs became a vast and beautiful archive, now safely deposited in the Bodleian Library.
In this talk, Daniel Meadows triumphantly returns to muse on his life and work and the power of photography. He shows examples of his archive and reflects on a lifetime of creative work. The Bodleian Library acquired the full Daniel Meadows Archive in 2018.
What is queer bibliography? How does it intersect with other critical bibliographies, (feminist, Black and liberation bibliography)? How does it relate to traditional bibliographic practice? What opportunities might queer methods and approaches provide? Following the inaugural Queer Bibliography symposium in early February 2023 at the Institute of English Studies, join Sarah Pyke and JD Sargan to find out more about this emerging subfield. Organised by Oxford Bibliographical Society. Speakers Sarah Pyke (Institute of English Studies, London), and James Sargan (University of Limerick). Chaired by Adam Smyth
Books are not dead as was once feared. But they are not the same either. In this lecture, Matthew’s Kirschenbaum considers textual stability, a concern of publishers and readers since before the advent of printing, in the post-digital era. Books are not dead as was once feared. But they are not the same either. With digital processes and workflows now thoroughly integrated into the art and industry of publishing and printing them, books are altered by the post-digital moment in which we have arrived. Matthew Kirschenbaum’s lecture will pay particular attention to questions of textual stability, a concern of publishers and readers since before the advent of printing. How stable are texts when the book is now manifest as a collection of digital assets, a network which only might, at times, assume the physical and tangible form of the familiar codex?
Social documentary photographer Jim Mortram and photographer and publisher Craig Atkinson ponder why should we care about photography? Why take photographs? Why preserve them. Why should we care about photography? Why take photographs? Why preserve them? Social documentary photographer Jim Mortram and photographer and publisher Craig Atkinson ponder these questions and more, using their own work as guides towards a photography that is humane and politically-engaged.
Jim Mortram is an award-winning social documentary photographer and the creator of Small Town Inertia. Craig Atkinson is an award-winning publisher, artist and lecturer. He runs Café Royal Books, an independent publisher of photography photobooks or zines based in Southport, England.
Thomas Gravemaker explores the history of wood type printing as well as his own recent manufacture using digital design and a CNC router. Wood type has a history as long as printing itself. Thomas Gravemaker, Printer in Residence at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press during March 2023, tells the story of the materials, manufacture and use of wood type since the nineteenth century and brings this up to date with an account of his own recent manufacture using digital design and a CNC router.
Geoffrey Batchen explores the first fifty years of photography in Britain. The announcement of photography’s invention in January 1839, first in Paris and then in London, introduced a new power into British life. This new power—derived from photography’s capacity to automatically capture the images created in a camera—was soon being used for every conceivable purpose. The two exhibitions curated by Geoffrey Batchen for the Bodleian Libraries focus on those uses by tracing the development and dissemination of photographic images within Britain during the medium’s first fifty years. By identifying the key themes addressed in the exhibitions, Batchen shows how photography intersected with all aspects of a nascent modernity, helping to make Britain the society it is today.
A research collaboration between the Bodleian Libraries and the Factum Foundation The Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation is a not-for-profit organisation, founded by Adam Lowe in 2009 in Madrid. The Foundation was established to demonstrate the importance of documenting, monitoring, studying, recreating and disseminating the world’s cultural heritage through the rigorous development of high-resolution recording and re-materialisation techniques.Using technology conceived and developed at Factum Arte, the ARCHiOx Project will use both a prototype photographic system (Selene Stereo Photometric Scanner, developed by Jorge Cano) and 3D scanning (Lucida 3D Scanner, developed by artist-engineer Manuel Franquelo and the team at Factum) to bring to life relief surfaces of some of the Bodleian’s most celebrated artefacts. This relatively unexplored path to mapping and digitisation should in turn present fascinating new avenues of exploration and research, as it reveals aspects of the item hitherto unrealised or recorded.ARCHiOx will provide a free exchange of knowledge and approaches between the academic and technical team at the Bodleian and Factum Foundation’s experts, as we explore and demonstrate the potential of applying non-contact digital technologies to the study of materials held by the Bodleian Libraries.This session demonstrates how the technology is used and the benefits it brings to researchers of manuscripts
Drawing on a detailed survey of shareholders of the Marconi in 1897 and 1900, this lecture will trace an overall profile of the diverse categories of investors who dared to back this venture through it's experimental phase to becoming commercially viable. What were the economics of radio’s invention? How did wireless communication manage to get through the costly experimental phase and develop into a commercially viable technology? How did the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company not only survive, but also raise the stakes by attempting to establish a transatlantic connection?
Drawing on a detailed survey of the shareholders of the company in 1897 and 1900, Dr Anna Guagnini will trace an overall profile of the diverse categories of investors who dared to partake in this adventure. This lecture will throw new light on how financial backing was obtained in the face new challenges and divergent perspectives and expectations about the commercial future of the company.
Dr. Anna Guagnini is a Byrne Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Libraries, and a former Research Fellow at Linacre College and at the University of Bologna.
The lecture is organised jointly by the Centre for the Study of the Book and the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology.
Join our experts in conversation as they consider the thinking of two great 19th century women writers exploring the boundary between human and machine Using the notebooks of Sir Humphry Davy, an influence on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the surviving manuscripts of the novel itself, Professor Sharon Ruston will consider Shelley’s thought-process in writing and how far the Creature might be thought of as crossing a boundary between automaton and man.
Professor Ursula Martin will reflect on Ada Lovelace’s work exploring algorithms finding patterns in nature and her conjecture on the capabilities ‘beyond number’ of Charles Babbage’s unbuilt Analytical Engine. She will discuss Lovelace’s letter speculating on how a ‘calculus of the nervous system’ would aid understanding of the human mind.
The event is part of ‘Imagining AI’, which celebrates objects in the Bodleian's collections that explore the boundary between human and machine.
Discover how cutting-edge scientific techniques are transforming our understanding of medieval manuscripts, and how book production began to recover under King Alfred and his successors
Discover the treasures that illustrate how exchanges between England and the Netherlands have shaped literature, book production and institutions such as the Bodleian itself, on either side of the North Sea.
Focusing on four very different maps of Oxford - each of the maps has its own tale to tell, some showing Oxford as it was; others showing Oxford as it might have been; and others how Oxford never was. This webinar will be focus on four very different maps of Oxford from the standpoint of why these maps were made. Each of the maps has its own tale to tell, some showing Oxford as it was; others showing Oxford as it might have been; and others how Oxford never was. Each has an agenda aiming to depict a city under the influence of the military, mass delinquency, motor vehicles or moles. Nick Millea, Map Curator, and Stuart Ackland, Principal Library Assistant, Map Room, will focus on each map’s aesthetic charms, their functionality, and how they have visualised such a well-known city in such unusual ways.
Join us to be surprised, alarmed and charmed in equal measure as we appreciate the purpose of these of maps but never lose sight of the powerful image they are able to convey.
Dating from around 1520 and probably conceived as a pattern book, this manuscript is best described as a 'herbal and bestiary' and contains images of flora and fauna together with stylised, floriated ornaments and coloured alphabets. MS Ashmole 1504, which can best be described as a 'herbal and bestiary', contains images of flora and fauna together with stylised, floriated ornaments and coloured alphabets. Dating from around 1520, the manuscript was probably conceived as a pattern book for a variety of decorative media, including wall painting, stained glass, painted cloths and embroidery.
Dr Martin Kauffmann, Head of Early and Rare Collections at the Bodleian Libraries, and Dr Lynn Hulse, Co-Founder of Ornamental Embroidery, explore MS Ashmole 1504 and the project inspired by it: The Needle's Art, an exhibition of contemporary stitch, on display at the Weston Library until 30 January 2022.
In the 3rd talk in our Meet the Manuscripts series, you will learn how singers lived with change in their favourite songs, and hear carols of the Middle Ages both familiar and new. Have you ever come close to fisticuffs with a friend over the tune to which ‘O little town of Bethlehem’ should be sung? You’re experiencing a very old problem. The Bodleian’s Selden Carol Book is a famous collection of Christmas songs that only barely made it into modern consciousness: many of them survive in no other books, but have been modified in the manuscript itself, meaning that we have more than one version to choose between. How do we deal with phenomena of scribal correction, error, and variation in late medieval carols? What can this tell us about performance and the oral culture of the late medieval period? Speakers: Micah Mackay, doctoral student in the Publication Before Print Doctoral Centre and Andrew Dunning, R. W. Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts
In this lecture, we look at some beautiful, austere, and distinctively uncomfortable manuscripts and learn how the Middle Ages shaped the way we read today both in print and on screen. Medieval manuscripts written in early English are familiar and yet foreign to us, not only for their language but also for their style. Like their cathedral counterparts, Gothic script and page design come across to us as beautiful, austere, and distinctively uncomfortable. But is this how their designers intended them – and can we indeed speak of these books as designed?
Exploring their physical function in manuscripts – and the bad things that can happen when they are removed for study – as well as showing what they can contribute to book history. Leafing through a manuscript, it’s easy to ignore the fragments of other books that were often used to strengthen its binding or as endleaves to protect the beginning and end of the text. In this session the fragments are the focus.
Manuscripts: MS. Lat. th. c. 10 – Guardbook of fragments. (https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_6695) MS. Hamilton 13 – Summa theologiae, Secunda Secundae, by Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) originating in Erfurt, Germany. With fragments of Dante, Monarchia, with the commentary attributed to Cola di Rienzo. (https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/641872ca-263b-41f6-b844-69ff6281bdf8/) MS. Laud Misc. 306 – Homiliary and sermons, 12th century, originating in Germany. (https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/b2fb86ae-c8cd-4738-aa37-0a7d3e3ab0cc/surfaces/a86e86c7-e22b-4010-97a1-f7ab105e5abf/) MS. Douce 55 – cookery book in English, 15th century (https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_4726)
Join Professor Stephen Harris (Curator of Roots to Seeds at the Bodleian Library) and Dr Chris Thorogood, (Oxford Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum) as they discuss the past, present and future of botanical research and teaching. Discover how the herbarium of Bobart the Elder, John Sibthorp's 'Flora Graeca' expedition and the Amazonian waterlily have contributed to four centuries of Oxford botany and current research.
In this online event, Ana Paula Cordeiro, the creator of Body of Evidence, speaks from the workshop in New York City where she produced it. She will be joined in conversation by Merve Emre, Associate Professor of American Literature. Body of Evidence (2020) is an artist's book that examines the role of documentary evidence in defining national and individual identity. The red, white, and blue of the printing and binding echo a national story, viewed from the perspective of an immigrant, with quotations from Rebecca Solnit, Emily Dickinson, William James, Agnes Martin, and Fernando Pessoa.
We open the conversation by examining the book’s unique structure, moving on to consider the questions posed by the book’s theme. What qualifies as a document? When does a document become evidence? And what does this evidence prove about an individual or a nation? How can an individual's narrative assert their integrity in face of dehumanization? The conversation will be launched after a live presentation of the copy of this book now in the Bodleian.
Originally from Brazil, Cordeiro is based in New York and composes her book works at The Center for Book Arts in New York City, from where she will speak. In 2020 she was awarded a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Her artist books are collected privately and institutionally.
Book Arts programme from the Bodleian Libraries Centre for the Study of the Book.
Supported by a generous donation to the Bodleian Bibliographical Press.
As both audience members and actors, you will learn to sing the classic Easter sequence hymn 'Victimae paschali laudes' ('Praises to the paschal victim') and see how it formed part of a medieval play. Gregorian chant is an ancient communal song tradition, much loved for its calming, meditative feel – but we are increasingly appreciating its dramatic and even emotional aspects. This workshop will showcase a play performed in medieval Wienhausen (the Wienhäuser Osterspiel), a Middle Low German drama focusing on Mary Magdalene. As both audience members and actors, you will learn to sing the classic Easter sequence hymn 'Victimae paschali laudes' ('Praises to the paschal victim') and see how it formed part of a medieval play. No experience of singing, music reading, or ancient languages required - and from the comfort of your own home, no strangers can hear you!
Matthew Holford, Tolkien Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, and Martin Kauffmann, Head of Early and Rare Collections, in conversation about the artists, patrons and significance of three extraordinary manuscripts. Some of the greatest treasures of medieval painting are not displayed on museum walls but lie hidden – relatively speaking – in manuscript books. Our experts at our introduce some of the lesser-known treasures of the Bodleian and leaf through the pages during the live event recorded on Zoom. Sessions will include manuscripts from German-speaking lands which are being shared online for the first time as part of a Polonsky Foundation digitization project.
The covers can tell us as much about a book as its contents. This workshop explores the secrets which bookbindings reveal about the uses and histories of medieval manuscripts.
In this online choir workshop you will learn to sing along with a simple voice part from the Candlemas Nunc Dimittis and see the 15th-century manuscript from the Cistercian nunnery of Medingen where the music is preserved in the Bodleian Libraries A Gregorian chant workshop based on the 15th-century Manual for the Provost of Medingen (Bodleian Libraries MS. Lat liturg. e. 18.) This event is part of the Manuscripts from German-Speaking Lands Project, funded by The Polonsky Foundation. The Project is a three-year collaboration between the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford and the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel to digitize nearly 600 medieval manuscripts. Thanks to St Edmund Hall for their talented singers and the use of the Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East.
In this BodCast from the Friends of the Bodleian, Professor Dame Marina Warner interviews Anne Louise Avery, writer and art historian, on the subject of Avery's recent book, Reynard the Fox https://bodleianshop.co.uk/products/reynard-the-fox Based on William Caxton's bestselling 1481 English translation of the Middle Dutch, but expanded with new interpretations, innovative language and characterisation, this edition is an imaginative retelling of the Reynard story. With its themes of protest, resistance and duplicity fronted by a personable, anti-heroic Fox making his way in a dangerous and cruel world, this gripping tale is as relevant and controversial today as it was in the fifteenth century.
Reynard the Fox is available to purchase at [http://www.bodleianshop.co.uk
Join Rebecca Abrams in conversation with Samuel Fanous to discuss her riveting and beautiful new book, edited with César Merchan-Hamann, Jewish Treasures from Oxford Libraries. You can purchase the book https://bodleianshop.co.uk/products/jewish-treasures
Join Rebecca Abrams in conversation with Samuel Fanous to discuss her riveting and beautiful new book, edited with César Merchan-Hamann, Jewish Treasures from Oxford Libraries. You can purchase the book https://bodleianshop.co.uk/products/jewish-treasures
Frank Close tells the story of Klaus Fuchs and the Bodleian Library. Trinity was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. In this talk, Frank Close tells the story of the bomb's metaphorical father, Rudolf Peierls (Prof Close's one time mentor in Oxford); his intellectual son, the atomic spy Klaus Fuchs; and the ghosts of the security services in Britain, the USA and USSR. Close's meticulously researched book, Trinity, reveals new insights into Fuchs' espionage from MI5 files in the National Archives, documents of the FBI and KGB, and – this talk’s focus – from the Bodleian Library. This includes correspondence between Fuchs and Peierls, which, with other letters in the Bodleian's Peierls Collection, strongly suggests that Fuchs passed more to the Russians than has been previously realised.
The Bodleian possesses the original letter from Fuchs, written in Brixton Prison in 1950 to Peierls' wife, Genia, in which Fuchs' resistance to preserving the spying code of secrecy finally broke.
A new Bodleian collection of photographs, previously unseen and still being catalogued, gives a profound glimpse of the intimate relationship between Fuchs and the Peierls family, for whom Fuchs was "like a son" and the discovery that he had betrayed their trust, along with the country that had adopted him, was devastating.
This lecture was hosted by the Friends of the Bodleian. For almost a century, the financial support, advice and expertise of the Friends of the Bodleian have helped ensure we remain one of the world’s premier libraries.
Friends enjoy a range of benefits, including exclusive events, member-only discounts and the chance to see all our exhibitions before the open to the general public.
Become a Friend today and enjoy closer access to the Bodleian inspiring collections and beautiful libraries. To join, renew and find out more, go to https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/friends-of-the-bodleian
Shiva Mihan, Harvard Art Museums and Bahari Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Libraries, gives a talk on her work in Persian arts. Manuscripts produced in the 15th century under Timurid patrons are among the most exquisite examples of Persian arts of the book. Codices containing sumptuous illuminations and lavish illustrations attracted the mutilating attention of album-makers and art dealers in the 19th and early 20th century. This paper provides evidence of such practices in a unique treasure from Prince Baysunghur’s library: the Rasayil copied in Herat in 830/1427.
This presentation will share the result of an in-depth codicological analysis of the manuscript (known as the Berenson Anthology) and the textual study of its rare and unique treatises, along with research into other collections and archives, and finally bring together some of the missing pieces and provide a digital reconstruction of the original manuscript.
This talk will be followed by a drinks reception in Blackwell Hall.
Presented by the Oxford Bibliographical Society and The Bodleian Library Centre for the Study of the Book.
David Armes (Red Plate Press), the Bodleian’s Printer in Residence 2019-20, describes artists and ideas that influence his work, asking how meaning can mutate through the process of production. And, what impact the physicality of materials has, and how we can read narratives created through improvisational production techniques.
The making, use and trade of manuscripts was an important part of Islamic culture, the technical developments influenced the making of books in the west from the later medieval period onward. When dominance of powers shifted, the perception of the Islamic manuscript tradition also changed. While intricately embellished bindings continued to receive attention, the majority of manuscripts were usually not studied as artefacts. Yet there is much to be learned from the methods and materials used to make these objects, and the traces of use that history left in them.
Professor Larry Schaaf delivers the 2020 Colin Ford Lecture, providing a fascinating insight into his work on The William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonne. There are approximately 25,000 Fox Talbot prints known worldwide, these range from crude experiments through to highly accomplished works of art. For more than four decades Professor Schaaf has been examining and compiling information on Talbot images worldwide. Beginning in 2014, with the backing of the William T Hillman Foundation, the Bodleian Libraries began converting these private databases into a public resource. So far, images and data of more than 16,000 images and data have been freely made available online, allowing researchers to pursue their own questions and draw their own conclusions.
Dr Alexandra Lloyd, Lecturer in German, Magdalen College and St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, gives a talk on the White Rose Resistance Group. In 1943 five students and a professor at the University of Munich were arrested, tried, and executed. They were members of The White Rose (Die Weiße Rose), a clandestine group that wrote and distributed pamphlets calling on the Germans to resist Hitler. The pamphlets are fascinating texts, drawing on a range of philosophical ideas and influences. They urge readers to open their eyes to the atrocities being committed in the name of the regime, denounce the persecution of European Jews, and call for an end to the war. This talk introduces the White Rose group and examines the way they used the written word to inspire resistance.
For 21 centuries, mathematicians worried about a fundamental assumption made by Euclid of Alexandria: that parallel lines must meet at infinity. Could geometry ‘work’ without this assumption? The answer caused mathematicians to reassess the nature of mathematics itself.
Professor Richard Sharpe, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2018-2019 gives the sixth and final lecture in the 2019 Lyell series. Part of the series; Libraries and books in medieval England: the role of libraries in a changing book economy. The histories of libraries in medieval England offer an insight into the intellectual and cultural life of the period. This should not obscure the fact that books made for individual use were more common than books for communal use. In these lectures, Professor Sharpe explains what evidence we have from medieval libraries; how our views of these may alter in the light of recent research; and the changing nature of libraries in medieval England.
Professor Richard Sharpe, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2018-2019 gives the fifth lecture inthe 2019 Lyell series. Part of the lecture series; Libraries and books in medieval England: the role of libraries in a changing book economy. The histories of libraries in medieval England offer an insight into the intellectual and cultural life of the period. This should not obscure the fact that books made for individual use were more common than books for communal use. In these lectures, Professor Sharpe explains what evidence we have from medieval libraries; how our views of these may alter in the light of recent research; and the changing nature of libraries in medieval England.
Professor Richard Sharpe, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2018-2019 gives the fourth lecture in the 2019 Lyell series. Part of the series; Libraries and books in medieval England: the role of libraries in a changing book economy The histories of libraries in medieval England offer an insight into the intellectual and cultural life of the period. This should not obscure the fact that books made for individual use were more common than books for communal use. In these lectures, Professor Sharpe explains what evidence we have from medieval libraries; how our views of these may alter in the light of recent research; and the changing nature of libraries in medieval England.
Professor Richard Sharpe, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2018-2019, gives the third lecture in the 2019 Lyell series. Part of the lecture series; Libraries and books in medieval England: the role of libraries in a changing book economy. The histories of libraries in medieval England offer an insight into the intellectual and cultural life of the period. This should not obscure the fact that books made for individual use were more common than books for communal use. In these lectures, Professor Sharpe explains what evidence we have from medieval libraries; how our views of these may alter in the light of recent research; and the changing nature of libraries in medieval England.
Professor Richard Sharpe, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2018-2019 gives the second lecture in the 2019 Lyell series. Part of the series; Libraries and books in medieval England: the role of libraries in a changing book economy. The histories of libraries in medieval England offer an insight into the intellectual and cultural life of the period. This should not obscure the fact that books made for individual use were more common than books for communal use. In these lectures, Professor Sharpe explains what evidence we have from medieval libraries; how our views of these may alter in the light of recent research; and the changing nature of libraries in medieval England.
Professor Richard Sharpe, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2018-2019, gives the first of the 2019 Lyell lecture series. Part of the lecture series; Libraries and books in medieval England: the role of libraries in a changing book economy. The histories of libraries in medieval England offer an insight into the intellectual and cultural life of the period. This should not obscure the fact that books made for individual use were more common than books for communal use. In these lectures, Professor Sharpe explains what evidence we have from medieval libraries; how our views of these may alter in the light of recent research; and the changing nature of libraries in medieval England.
Learn about the conservation of unique Japanese items such as Naraehon, a Japanese genre of lavishly-illustrated literature from the fifteenth-eighteenth centuries.
Thinking 3D is an interdisciplinary exploration of the concept of three-dimensionality and its impact on the arts and sciences, co-investigated by Dr Laura Moretti and Daryl Green. This talk presents an overview of the entire project, offering a comprehensive understanding of the development of communicating three-dimensional concepts via two-dimensional media.
This Byrne-Bussey Marconi Lecture will tell the story of the inception of Thinking 3D via a number of landmark texts which are shaping the narrative and informing the curatorial work on the main exhibition.
A lecture for the Oxford Bibliographical Society and the Bodleian Centre for the Study of the Book, by Bodleian Printer in Residence, 2018, Emily Martin. Emily describes her artists' books using movable devices, and demonstrating the way these add to the meaning of the text.
An examination of the notebooks in which Mary Shelley drafted Frankenstein. These two notebooks, one purchased probably in Geneva, the second in England, are now kept in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. With: Miranda Seymour, biographer of Mary Shelley, Richard Ovenden, Bodley's Librarian, Stephen Hebron, curator and author of Shelley's Ghost Recorded on Saturday, 24 March, 2018, for Frankenreads 2018
A celebration of Tolkien and his creations, with special guests Dame Marina Warner, Prof Verlyn Flieger and Dr Dimitra Fimi. The panel of guests will consider the origins and the uses of myth-making as a literary genre, the motivation which lay behind Tolkien's own myth creation, and the rise in fantasy literature during his lifetime.
Dr Medha Saxena (Delhi, and Byrne Bussey Marconi Fellow), gives the 2018 annual Marconi lecture.
Panel Discussion to debate the proposed changes to the policy on Open Access for monographs in the next REF after REF 2021 which will have profound implications for researchers in the humanities and social sciences. Panellists: Richard Ovenden, Bodley's Librarian, Professor Julia Smith, Chichele Professor of Medieval History, Research Director, Faculty of History, Helen Snaith, Senior Policy Advisor, Research England, David Clark, Head of Academic Division, OUP
This lecture is on Tolkien and middle english. Professor Carolyne Larrington, Tutorial Fellow in English Literature, St John's College, Oxford gives the first talk in the Tolkien: The Maker of Middle Earth lecture series. This lecture is on Tolkien and middle english. This series, convened by Dr Stuart Lee, presents five Oxford academics who examine the medieval languages that J.R.R. Tolkien studied and taught. Each lecture will present a short introduction to a language and its literature. The lectures will show how Tolkien's linguistic and philological scholarship inspired him to create names for characters and places in his literary works, and to invent the languages of Middle-earth.
Two hundred years after it was first published, Nick Groom explains the abiding appeal and extraordinary contemporary relevance of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. Far from being a supernatural Gothic fiction, he will show how deeply concerned the novel is with the most pressing scientific issues of its time, and how these continue to challenge us today in fields from artificial intelligence to medical ethics, challenging the very definition of what it is to be human.
Tom Shippey's lecture will move from the detail to the (eventual) design of Tolkien's languages, and even the philosophical issues embedded in Tolkien's fiction. Professionally speaking, Tolkien was a philologist, interested above all in the history and relationships of languages. Personally speaking, he was a self-declared 'niggler', who took immense pains over details. It was a vital moment when he solved a problem, which would have bothered few authors of fantasy, to do with the history and relationship of the languages of Middle-earth. It was this which opened up The Lord of the Rings to its full scale and sweep.
David Pearson, Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2017-18 and Research Fellow, Institute of English Studies, University of London gives the fifth and final Lyell lecture on 8th May 2018.
Jacob Ward, Bodleian Libraries Byrne-Bussey Marconi Fellow, Department of Science and Technology Studies, UCL, gives the 2018 Marconi lecture. The term 'wireless' has very different meanings today to what it meant in the early twentieth century. Today, it connotes mobility, flexibility, instantaneity, whereas previously it has connoted fixity - 'the' wireless - and spirituality, with transmitting invisible signals through the ether. In this lecture, Jacob Ward explores what happened to 'wireless' in between these two meanings, from after World War II to the birth of the new wireless in the 1980s and 1990s, by exploring the imagination and imagery associated with wireless communications by its biggest proponents: the Marconi Companies.
This one-off print comprised text and drawing by artist and writer Tamarin Norwood, concluding her year-long residency at Spike Island Bristol, The Bodleian Libraries helped artist Tamarin Norwood to create an artwork 38 feet long, with text printed in a single continuous line using the replica 17th-century hand-press at the Weston Library for Special Collections.
Russell Maret talks about the development of the primary themes of his artist's books - alphabet design, colour printing, and geometric form, also the influences of history and technology on his methods and subject matter.
Visiting fellow, Dr Robin Eagles of the History of Parliament Trust discusses his research into Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford
Visiting researcher Dr Rachel Wamsley discusses the renowned Oppenheimer Collection, whose holdings shed light on the printing house as a site of cultural and literary encounter between Jews and Christians in early modern Europe. Close examination of early printed Yiddish books reveals how the same text could assume radically different material forms depending on whether it was marketed to a Jewish or non-Jewish audience. Setting two editions of an early Yiddish biblical epic side-by-side, Dr. Wamsley notes differences in typography and page-layout, editing and paratext, demonstrating how textual migration, from one cultural context to another, in turn engendered a transformation in the materiality of the book itself. At the same time, this very migration testifies to the surprising porosity of literary boundaries dividing Jewish and Christian communities in early modernity.
Dr Noah Arceneaux, Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Media Studies, San Diego State University, Byrne-Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellow 2016-17, Bodleian Library, talks about the history of wireless broadcasting and the Bodleian Marconi Archive.
Michael Heseltine discusses his political career with Peter Hennessy. The Rt Hon Lord Michael Heseltine CH, one of the most influential politicians of recent times, discusses his distinguished political career with historian Lord Peter Hennessy.
Dr Zahra Taheri, Bahari Visiting Fellow in the Persian Arts of the Book, speaks about Rumi's life, mystical teaching, doctrine, and poetry. With Music by Dr Peyman Heydarian. With a recitation of poetry by Rumi. Maulana Jalal Al-Din Muhammad, known as RUMI (1207-1273) is the most prominent mystic poet in Persian literature. When he was a child, his family fled Mongol invaders and settled in Konya. He left behind a vast body of lyric poetry, metaphysical writings, and mystical didactic teachings, which have influenced Persian, Urdu, and Turkish literature across the centuries. Rumi is one of the most widely read poets in translation today. His teachings are universal in nature, because he believes that religion is a personal experience which cannot be limited to logical arguments.
Giovanni Paoloni discusses the influence of the development of the shortwave beam technology on Marconi and the Marconi Company Marconi's wireless revolution, the Bodleian's Byrne-Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellows, Giovanni Paoloni and Ines Queiroz, present findings from their research into Marconi and the early development of wireless technology. In the early development of wireless, short waves were considered of no technical and commercial consequence, and left behind as a research field. While working on the improvement of wireless for military communications, Marconi was once more first in understanding the existence of unexpected possibilities - starting a new 'wireless revolution'. Giovanni Paoloni discusses the influence of the development of the shortwave beam technology on Marconi and the Marconi Company.
Ines Queiroz explores how technical constraints have shaped strategies for wireless networks development Marconi's wireless revolution, the Bodleian's Byrne-Bussey Marconi Visiting Fellows, Giovanni Paoloni and Ines Queiroz, present findings from their research into Marconi and the early development of wireless technology. Ines Queiroz explores how technical constraints have shaped strategies for wireless networks development. Focusing on a South Atlantic case study which brings new perspectives on geographical implications of wireless communications networks at an early stage of development.
Jonathan Lloyd and Tiffany Stern, discuss performing Shakespeare in the past and now Accompanied by actors to help illustrate their points, Jonathan Lloyd, Artistic Director of Pegasus Theatre, and Tiffany Stern, Professor of Early Modern Drama, discuss performing Shakespeare in the past and now.
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Professor of English Literature, Oxford, gives a talk for Shakespeare Oxford 2016 series. When the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth was celebrated in 1864, Robert Browning observed that he and his contemporaries had Shakespeare 'in our very bones and blood, our very selves'. In this talk, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst explores some of the ways in which the Victorians tried to keep Shakespeare alive in the nineteenth century: through theatrical revivals and literary allusions; through paintings and photographs; and especially through their fascination with the idea that, as Tennyson put it in his poem Vastness, 'the dead are not dead but alive'.
Carmen del Camino (Seville), gives a talk The unskilled scribe: Elementary hands and their place in the history of handwriting, a seminar held on 30th September 2016.
Teresa De Robertis (Florence), gives a talk for The unskilled scribe: Elementary hands and their place in the history of handwriting, a seminar held on 30th September 2016.
Marc Smith (Paris), gives a talk for The unskilled scribe: Elementary hands and their place in the history of handwriting, a seminar held on 30th September 2016.
Irene Ceccherini (Oxford) gives a talk for the unskilled scribe: Elementary hands and their place in the history of handwriting, a seminar held on 30th September 2016.
Teresa Webber (Cambridge), gives a talk in the the unskilled scribe: Elementary hands and their place in the history of handwriting, held on September 30th 2016.
A conversation with Dr Nasrin Askari, Bahari Visiting Fellow in the Persian Arts of the Book 2016 and Alasdair Watson, Bahari Curator of Persian Collections, Bodleian Library
Join the head gardeners of Stowe and Compton Verney to explore the challenges, changes and rewards of protecting and preserving Capability Brown's landscapes in his tercentenary year.
Lauren Kassell (Reader in the History of Science and Medicine, Cambridge) gives a talk for the Bodleian libraries. If the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet had lived in London, they might have consulted the astrologer-physician Simon Forman, whose casebook is shown in the exhibition Shakespeare's Dead. Lauren Kassell looks into the working life of a medical practitioner in Shakespeare's England.
Emma Smith (Professor of English Literature, Oxford), gives a talk on Shakespeare memorials. Ben Jonson wrote in 1623 that Shakespeare 'art a Moniment, without a tombe/ And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live'. Centuries later Jorge Luis Borges observed that 'when writers die, they become books', adding, 'which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation'. This lecture considers Shakespeare's First Folio as a literary memorial to Shakespeare, alongside other elegies, epitaphs and responses to the playwright's death.
Professor Katherine Duncan Jones, Senior Research Fellow, Somerville College, gives a talk on Shakespeare's poem, Venus and Adonis. In 1592-93, with London playhouses closed because of plague, Shakespeare wrote his most technically perfect work. Venus and Adonis (1593) is a highly original 'take' on the ancient Greek myth of the doomed Adonis - presented here as a pubertal boy incapable of responding to the goddess's amorous advances. It was a tearaway success with Elizabethan readers.
Peter McCullough, Professor of English, University of Oxford, gives a talk on John Donne. John Donne's sermon, Death's duell, was part of an early Stuart vogue for funeral sermons. Professor McCullough discusses Donne's contribution to this genre, and looks at how this tradition is connected to the poetic and dramatic representations of death on display in the exhibition, Shakespeare's Dead.
This podcast talks about accidental deaths and the hazards of everyday life in Shakespeare's day Coroners' inquest reports into accidental deaths tell us about the hazards of everyday life in Shakespeare's day. There were dangerous jobs, not just building, mining and farming, but also fetching water, and travel was perilous whether by cart, horse or boat. Even relaxation had its risks, from football and wrestling to maypole-dancing or a game of bowls on the frozen River Cherwell.
This lecture will celebrate Shakespeare's immortality on the exact 400th anniversary of his burial. It will begin from Theseus' famous speech in A Midsummer Night's Dream about the magical, transformative power of poetry. It will argue that Shakespeare inherited from antiquity a fascination with the intimate association between erotic love, magic and the creative imagination, and that this is one of the keys to the enduring power of his plays.
Sir Jonathan Bate, Provost of Worcester College and Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, is one of the world's most renowned Shakespeare scholars, the author of, among many other works, Shakespeare and Ovid, The Genius of Shakespeare, Soul of the Age and (as co-editor) The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works. He co-curated Shakespeare Staging the World, the British Museum's exhibition for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, and he is the author of Being Shakespeare: A One-Man Play for Simon Callow, which has toured nationally and internationally and had three runs in the West End.
In this talk Andrew Dunning (Royal Bank of Canada Foundation Fellow) traces the development of the work of Alexander Neckam, one of the earliest known lecturers in Oxford, through manuscripts housed at the Bodleian. Leading up to the creation of the University, the priories of the Augustinian canons were among the most prominent intellectual foundations in twelfth-century Oxford. One of the earliest known lecturers in the town was Alexander Neckam, working at St Frideswide (now Christ Church) from around 1190, who practised a brand of education that promoted the development of individuals and the health of communities. Through manuscripts housed at the Bodleian, it is possible to trace the development of his work, and to uncover his peers at his later home in Cirencester. They emerge as precise scholars who produced books collaboratively, and later created a monument to his writings in an exchange with Malmesbury Abbey.
In the summer of 1594 William Shakespeare decided to invest around 50 Pounds to become a shareholder in a newly formed acting company: Lord Chamberlain's Men. This lecture examines the consequences of this decision, unique in English theatrical history. By examining the early modern theatrical marketplace and the artistic development of Shakespeare's writing before and after this moment, it is hoped that this talk shows why 1594 was, by some measure, Shakespeare's most important year.
Nigel F. Palmer, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford, delivers a talk for the Medingen Manuscripts Masterclass.
Introduction to the Masterclass by Professor Henrike Laehnemann, Chair of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics, University of Oxford. On the 22nd January 2016 the Bodleian hosted a masterclass from Professor Henrike Laehnemann, Chair of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics. The class examined manuscripts made in the Cistercian convent of Medingen during the late 15th century.
Richard Ballam talks about the rich collections of games and pastimes he has recently donated to the Bodleian, the subject of the display Playing with History. Playing with History celebrates Richard Ballam's donation to the Bodleian of his rich and varied collection of games and pastimes. This small selection of items from the wider collection gives us insights into the presentation of history to children, and the ways in which they were encouraged to engage with contemporary issues, such as War and Empire through game play.
A talk delivered by Paul Cavanagh and James Kay at the Anybook Oxford Libraries Conference 2015 - Adapting for the Future: Developing Our Professions and Services, 21st July 2015. Universities face the challenge of providing high quality services which meet the demands of users to provide access to more varied resources in a rapidly changing technological environment. This is balanced against the increasing costs of resources and a political and sector-wide institutional need to manage and better account for library budgets. This talk will focus on how the University of Derby is using statistical and decision-based tools to manage and plan library resources effectively; collaborating with publishers, academics, colleagues within the Library and across the library and information sector to develop continuing best practice through evidence-based decision making.
Keynote lecture by Margreta de Grazia, (Emerita Sheli Z. and Burton X. Rosenberg Professor of the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania) for the Marginal Malone conference held in Oxford on June 26th, 2015. Introduction by Tiffany Stern, Professor of Early Modern Drama, Faculty of English, University of Oxford
What do geniuses have in common, across the arts and sciences? And how do we distinguish genius from talent? Andrew Robinson, author of Genius: A Very Short Introduction, considers (a little of) the evidence.
A lunchtime lecture by Julie-Anne Lambert accompanying the exhibition Marks of Genius: Masterpieces from the Collections of the Bodleian Libraries. The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera is one of the lesser-known collections of the Bodleian. This talk discusses why and how was it formed, what ephemera are, and how can they contribute to our understanding of history.
Lunchtime lecture by Will Poole accompanying the exhibition Marks of Genius: Masterpieces from the Collections of the Bodleian Libraries. Henry Savile (1549-1622) founded at Oxford in 1619 the two Professorships that still bear his name, one in Astronomy, the other in Geometry. He equipped his professors with a library, which they in turn augmented down the centuries, and that library was transferred to the Bodleian itself in 1884. The Savilian books therefore comprise one of the most historically significant scientific libraries in the West.
Lunchtime lecture by Richard Mulholland accompanying the exhibition Marks of Genius: Masterpieces from the Collections of the Bodleian Libraries. Outside of the natural sciences, the work of Ferdinand Bauer (1760-1826), the pre-eminent eighteenth century natural history painter is little known. However, his botanical and zoological paintings on paper are considered to be among the finest in the world. Of particular interest is the unusual drawing and painting technique he used, recording colour information about specimens by annotating preliminary pencil sketches with numerical colour codes to be painted at a much later stage referring directly to a painted colour chart. This talk will discuss Bauer's botanical illustrations for the Flora Graeca (1806-1840), one of the most lavish Flora's ever published, the materials and techniques he used, and new research by the Bodleian's Conservation Research department to identify Bauer's 18th century palette, and recreate the lost colour chart that holds the key to fully understanding Bauer's considerable expertise as an artist.
A lunchtime lecture by Clive Hurst accompanying the exhibition Marks of Genius: Masterpieces from the Collections of the Bodleian Libraries. Some dozen items bequeathed to the Bodleian Library by Francis Douce in 1834 feature in Marks of Genius, ranging from medieval manuscripts to a panoramic print of Shakespeare's London, from Mughal paintings to a bible presented to Elizabeth I. Three works are known by his name: the Douce Apocalypse, the Douce Pliny, and the Douce Ivory. But Douce wasn't only interested in the spectacular and grand - he collected nursery chapbooks, and nursery rhymes, indeed, he edited a volume of the latter in 1810. It is this area of his collection that this talk investigates.
'Buying beauty in the Victorian period' Dr Jessica Clark looks at the Victorian beauty industry, and the transition from disapproval of artifice to a celebration of the wonders of cosmetics. Drawing on the John Johnson Collection of ephemera at the Bodleian Library, Dr Clark explains what Victorian Britons considered beautiful and considers some of the products and techniques that women, and men, used to achieve physical perfection.
Bibles and religious literature were an integral part of Canadian society and culture between 1830 and 1900. This period saw increased distribution of bibles and religious texts as part of a larger growth of distribution networks and a Canadian consumer culture. Religious organizations and benevolent societies played an especially important role in shaping the religious book trade in Canada, where copyright restrictions strengthened colonial print connections.
This lecture describes the methods and experiences of missionaries who sought to bring Christian scripture to Canadians in the 19th century, and draws on the Bodleian's archival holdings of diaries and letters of individuals, and records of missionary societies.
In this talk Stuart Lee will look at the various texts we may call The Hobbit. Starting with the 1937 edition (on display) he will look at the changes enforced on Tolkien after he had finished The Lord of the Rings and how he coped with these.
Fourth Lunchtime lecture accompanying the exhibition Marks of Genius: Masterpieces from the Collections of the Bodleian Libraries. With Dr Dirk Obbink.
Third Lunchtime lecture accompanying the exhibition Marks of Genius: Masterpieces from the Collections of the Bodleian Libraries. With Mr David Helliwell.
Professor Michael Suarez, in the Lyell Lectures 2015, urges scholars to remember the books that most readers encountered: the cheaper abridged versions of popular novels and accounts such as Cook's voyages.
Professor Michael Suarez, in the Lyell Lectures 2015, locates the visual sources of a famous illustrated edition of Caesar's works and comments on the social and political significance of the subscription plate book.
Professor Michael Suarez continues the Lyell Lectures 2015, showing that archival evidence is necessary to understand the history of newspapers
Professor Michael Suarez traces the transatlantic journey of a famous image deployed against the slave trade.
Professor Michael Suarez continues the Lyell Lectures 2015, asking what role colour plays in bibliographical description?
Professor Robin Wilson, author of Alice's Adventures in Numberland, gives a talk on the history of studying Mathematics at Oxford, which is as old as the University itself.
Political biographers D R Thorpe and John Campbell speak about their subjects' careers culminating in the role of Chancellor of the University of Oxford. The discussion was chaired by Lord Patten of Barnes.
In this short talk Professor Martin Ceadel, Fellow and Tutor in Politics, New College, Oxford discusses the issue of military conscription and conscientious objection during the first world war.
Dr Adrian Gregory, Fellow and Tutor in History, Pembroke College, Oxford discusses the use of propaganda by all sides during the first world war.
A conversation between Professor Sir Hew Strachan and Professor Margaret MacMillan, chaired by Professor Patricia Clavin.
Marie-Claude Felton, Royal Bank of Canada-Bodleian Visiting Scholar, gives a talk for the Bodleian Library BODcasts series
Dr Eric Sidebottom, Retired University Lecturer in Experimental Pathology, gives a lunch time talk to accompany the exhibition 'Great Medical Discoveries: 800 Years of Oxford Innovation'.
Conrad Keating, Writer-In-Residence, The Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford, gives a lecture about the remarkable contribution Oxford has made to the art and science of medicine. For more than 800 years Oxford has made a remarkable contribution to the art and science of medicine. Scientists, philosophers and physicians have made the city an outstanding scientific centre from the medieval period onwards. From Roger Bacon's conception of science as the experimental and inductive study of nature in the 13th century to Dorothy Hodgkin's discovery of the structure of penicillin during World War II, Oxford has been responsible for some of the world's most important medical discoveries. Conrad Keating, Writer-In-Residence, The Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford, gives a lecture about the remarkable contribution Oxford has made to the art and science of medicine.
Katherine Larson (University of Toronto) gives a talk on music in Early Modern England accompanied by Lutenist Matthew Faulk Katherine Larson (University of Toronto) describes the ephemeral soundscapes of early modern England. She considers how literary critics and musicologists can recapture the physical and social experience of singing and hearing songs, through traces in musical songbooks, literary texts, manuscripts, singing handbooks and printed song collections.
Dr Carolyne Larrington, Supernumerary Fellow and Tutor in English, St John's College, gives a talk to accompany the exhibition 'Magical Books: From The Middle Ages to Middle Earth'.
A lecture given by Dr John Sellars, lecturer in Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London, about Stoicism to accompany the display at the Bodleian Library.
Anna Caughey gives a lecture at the Bodleian Library looking at the varying spectrum of literature about King Arthur written for children.
Lecturer and conductor Dr Paul Coones delivers a lecture celebrating the 200th birthday of Richard Wagner. The talk is preceded by Siegried's Horn Call played by Sophie Dillon and includes the rarely performed Kinder-Katechismus zu Kosel's Geburtstag.
Judith Priestman, curator of literary manuscripts at the Bodleian library, discusses the World Book Day 2010 Tolkien exhibition, at which a selection of J.R.R. Tolkien's original artwork for The Hobbit, was on display to the public.
Dr Lawrence Goldman, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, introduces and chairs the seminar to commemorate the centenary of Jim Callaghan's birth.
Jim Callaghan's son Michael gives a talk about his memories of his fathers political life.
Historian and author Lord Morgan speaks about the Jim Callaghan papers deposited in the Bodleian.
British politician, businessman and author Baron Donoughue of Ashton speaks about his view as special advisor to Jim Callaghan.
Chinese Artist Xu Bing gives a talk on the subject of his art and the kind of artist he is.
Held on Marconi day, 20th April, Gabriele Balbi (University of Lugano) gives a talk about Marconi, co-inventor of the radio.
Art critic Brian Sewell talks to Sir Roy Strong as part of the Times Literary Festival 2013. Art historian, writer and broadcaster Sir Roy Strong has enjoyed half a century as one of the leading figures in Britain's art world. The former director of the National Portrait Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum talks to art critic Brian Sewell about his early years before he rose to fame, which he describes in his new book, Self-Portrait as a Young Man. Strong tells of his social origins in suburban North London, his grammar school and university education, and of the development of his lifelong passion for the culture and history of England. The world he describes is one dominated by hierarchy and class up which the new 'meritocrats' like himself and Alan Bennett began to climb. It is also a time of big change as the drab London of the 1950s turns into the swinging sixties.
Giles Bergel and Andrew Zisserman from the Broadside Ballad Connections project demonstrate new image matching software that allows researchers to track images across early forms of printed literature. Visit http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/.
Professor Stphen Gill, Lincoln College, gives a talk about the influence the Railways had on Charles Dickens' literature.
Professor Kathyrn Sutherland from the University of Oxford talks around the manuscripts of Jane Austen, what we can learn from them about her family life but also her writing style and techniques.
Professor Kathryn Sutherland from the University of Oxford talks about some of Jane Austen's manuscripts from the novel 'The Watsons' and what we can learn about her from these.
Michael Hughes (Bodleian Libraries) gives a talk about the final wireless communications from the Titanic.
Dr Poole presents the Bodleian and the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution in terms of its contributions to Oxford and to British science in the period. He discusses the Bodleian as its repository of other Oxford institutional libraries central to this movement, namely the Savile and Ashmole collections.
Professor Helen Cooper, University of Cambridge, speaks about the continuities between the Romance of the middle ages and Shakespeare's plays. She looks at textual features from his plays (including King Lear) which may indicate his influences.
Dr Laura Ashe delivers a lecture on the birth of romance in England in the 12th Century, part of a series of lectures to accompany The Romance of the Middle Ages exhibition at the Bodleian Library.
Sir Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, gives a lecture on scholarship, publishing and the dissemination of research designed to stimulate debate in Oxford on the issues surrounding changes in scholarly communications.
Professor Paul Eggert, University of New South Wales, gives the 17th Annual D.F. McKenzie lecture on the subject of books and gives a case study of Henry Lawson, Australian author of Where the Billy Boils.
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. In the months immediately following Shelley's death Mary lived at Albaro on the outskirts of Genoa. Her only regular companions were her young son, Percy Florence, and the journal she began on 2 October 1822. To this 'Journal of Sorrow' she confided her innermost thoughts: 'White paper - wilt thou be my confident? I will trust thee fully, for none shall see what I write.' To be sure, Mary would not have shared the entries she wrote immediately after Shelley's death, in which her remorse and despair sometimes approached hysteria. But she left no instructions for the 'Journal of Sorrow' to be destroyed after her death, and was perhaps reconciled to the idea that this, and her other journals, would eventually be seen by other eyes.
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. This is the letter Godwin wrote to Mary after hearing of Shelley's death. Initially he seems more sorry for himself than for his daughter, complaining of her failure to write to him, but he then talks hopefully of their reconciliation. He and Mary had not seen each other for nearly four years, and for some time Shelley had intercepted Godwin's letters to Mary because, he said, their dismal contents distressed her. Now Godwin anticipates the removal of the obstacles between himself and Mary: she was no longer married to a member of the landed gentry, 'one of the daughters of prosperity', and was back on the same social level as himself, 'an unfortunate old man and a beggar'; he will be able to help with her affairs, and perhaps act as her lawyer; and she will, he assumes, leave Italy and return to England. Mary's reply has not survived (none of her letters to her father have), but on her return to England she would indeed re-establish her relationship with Godwin, to whom she had always been devoted.
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. 'Everybody is in despair and every thing in confusion' writes Shelley in his last letter to Mary. He was in Pisa to discuss a new journal, The Liberal, with Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron. Shelley had been delayed there by Hunt's personal situation (his wife Marianne had been told she did not have long to live) and by Byron's complicated affairs. He hints that Edward Williams might sail back to the Villa Magni ahead of him. Hurriedly concluding the letter, Shelley hopes that Mary was reconciled to staying at the Villa Magni, where he had never been happier, but where she had been ill and wretchedly depressed. In a PS he tells her that he has found the manuscript of his translation
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. This great elegy was prompted by the news of the death of John Keats in Rome, and by Shelley's belief that Keats's illness was caused by the hostile notices his work had been given in the Quarterly Review. Shelley had the poem printed in Pisa under his own supervision, thereby ensuring its speedy appearance and its textual accuracy.
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Shelley worked on 'The Triumph of Life', a dark and visionary poem, while living at the Villa Magni. At the time of his death it was still in a very incomplete state but despite this it is generally considered one of his major poetic achievements. Life is envisioned as a remorseless triumphal procession: a chariot is driven blindly through a madly dancing crowd, taking with it 'a captive multitude ... all those who had grown old in power, Or misery'. 'The Triumph of Life' caused Shelley considerable trouble. Most of the manuscript is heavily revised, and the page shown here is his fourth attempt at the opening lines. He wrote in terza rima, an Italian verse form used by Dante in the Divine Comedy, and by Petrarch in his Trionfi (Triumphs). Both these poems were sources for 'The Triumph of Life', but the triple rhyme scheme of terza rima is exceedingly difficult to sustain in English.
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Shelley presented this light-hearted poem, copied out in his best hand, with the guitar he gave to Jane Williams in 1822. Taking his cue, perhaps, from the Shakespearean Christian name of the guitar's maker, Ferdinando, he casts himself and the Williamses as characters from The Tempest: they are the lovers Miranda and Ferdinand, he is Ariel, the spirit of fire and air. The wood of the guitar is from a tree that 'Died in sleep, and felt no pain, To live in happier form again'. Only the most skilful hands can release the harmonies of nature preserved in the instrument, and 'It keeps its highest holiest tone / For our beloved Jane alone'.
Part of the Shelly's Ghost Exhibition. Shelley's best-known poem was written in Florence in late 1819. Technically it is a series of four sonnets written in 'terza rima', the verse-form Shelley would use again, with similar fluency, in his final poem, The Triumph of Life. The west wind is an agent of change: with seasonal rejuvenation comes a personal rebirth which will, in turn, inspire the 'unawakened Earth'.
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. 'Ozymandias' is the Greek name for Ramses II, who ruled Egypt for sixty-seven years from 1279 to 1213 BC. Ramses II was a military conqueror and a great builder, but Shelley's sonnet describes how the achievements of even the mightiest tyrants are obliterated by time. Only the Pharaoh's arrogant passions, as expressed in the ruined statue, have survived, outliving both the sculptor ('The hand that mocked them') and Ramses himself ('the heart that fed'). His many monuments have reverted to 'The lone and level sands'.
Mary Shelley drafted Frankenstein in two tall notebooks. The first notebook was probably purchased in Geneva, the second several months later in England. They were later disbound, and now exist as single sheets. Shown here is an original opening from the Geneva notebook, containing Mary's draft of the turning-point in the novel: the moment when Frankenstein's Creature comes to life.
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Harriet Shelley drowned herself in December 1816, aged twenty-one. Her body was recovered from the Serpentine on 10 December, and an inquest into the death of one 'Harriet Smith' was held the following day. Although her precise movements in the months leading up to her death are uncertain, it is clear that she was living away from home, that she had taken a lover, and that she was pregnant. This is Harriet's last letter. Muddled and full of self-recrimination, it reveals the nervous exhaustion and profound depression of her final days.
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Shelley and Mary arrived back in London to face the almost universal disapproval of family and friends, and severe money problems. Shelley was now financially responsible for Mary and Claire as well as Harriet, who was heavily pregnant with their second child. Godwin refused to see him, but drew on his resources. Mary wrote this impassioned letter to Shelley when he was in hiding from his numerous creditors. They could meet only on Sundays, when it was illegal to make arrests for debt.
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Shelley and Mary eloped at 4.15 am on 28 July 1814, accompanied by Mary's step-sister Jane Clairmont. They were pursued by Mrs Godwin (Claire's mother), who caught up with them the following day at Calais, but failed to persuade them to return. On 2 August Shelley, Mary and Claire reached Paris, where they purchased this notebook. Shelley wrote up their dramatic flight from England, the stormy crossing (during which he began 'to reason upon death') and their arrival in France. Mary makes her first contribution to the journal by lightly completing a sentence: 'Mary was there. Shelley was also with me.'
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Using false names, Shelley sent copies of The Necessity of the Atheism to 'men of thought and learning', including bishops and clergymen. Here, writing as 'Jennings Stukeley', he sends 'a tract' to William Godwin, expressing his hope that, if correct, it will 'festinate' the impact of Political Justice. This unusual word, meaning to hasten, is typical of the learned pose Shelley adopts. He makes no mention of his youth, and when sending a copy of The Necessity of Atheism to the Rector of Redmarshall he assumed the role of 'Charles Meyton', a well to do elderly clergyman.
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Godwin's memoir of Mary Wollstonecraft has been called the first modern biography. At the time, however, its frankness and emotional candour provoked general outrage. Godwin did not hesitate to include the most painful and scandalous episodes in Mary's life: her brutal, drunken father; her affair with Gilbert Imlay and the birth of their illegitimate daughter, Fanny; her two suicide attempts; her unconventional religious faith; the ghastly details of her death. The poet Robert Southey joined the chorus of disapproval and condemned Godwin for 'stripping his dead wife naked'.
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Even after their marriage Godwin and Wollstonecraft preferred to live independently during the day, and communicate by correspondence. They regularly exchanged anything from long, carefully composed letters to short notes dashed off on scraps of paper. Shown here are Mary's last three notes to Godwin, written while she was waiting impatiently for the delivery of her child ('the animal'), and seeking reassurance from the midwife, Mrs Blenkinsop. In her final note, Mary Wollstonecraft half-quotes her mother's last words; 'Have a little patience, and all will be over'. Her own daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Mary Shelley), was born a few hours afterwards. It was a straightforward birth, but Mary Wollstonecraft soon contracted an infection, and died eleven days later.
Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. In her most famous work Mary Wollstonecraft argued that if women were educated in the same way as men they would perform as well. And that society was wasting its assets by failing to educate them and to offer them the opportunity to work in the same areas as menMen are as much corrupted by being tyrants as women by being subject to them, she pointed out. Women should be trained for the professions and could run businesses and farms.
Alan Garner, Mark Edmonds and Robert Powell take part in a discussion on the subject of pieces of places, objects and artefacts found and what they mean for writing fiction and for archeology in general.
The 50th anniversary of the publication of Alan Garner's first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. A talk examining the importance of place in Alan Garner's work. Robert Powell gives a reading of The Stone Book, from The Stone Book Quartet.
Alan Garner gives an illustrated lecture on the Legend of Alderley. This version of the myth of the Sleeping Hero is rooted to places on Alderley Edge in Cheshire, where Alan Garner grew up.
The earliest printers spread from Mainz in Germany where Gutenberg first had his printing house to Venice, Rome, Paris, and the Netherlands. Examples from all of these centres of 15th-century printing are found in Bodleian collections.
Special footage celebrating the launch of Talking about Detective Fiction by PD James, the latest Bodleian Library publication. PD James is donating all royalties from the hardback edition to the Bodleian and hopes it will encourage further philanthropy.
Special footage celebrating the launch of Talking about Detective Fiction by PD James, the latest Bodleian Library publication. PD James is donating all royalties from the hardback edition to the Bodleian and hopes it will encourage further philanthropy.
A short history of how the Bodleian library stores original copies of the Magna Carta and the original Wind in the Willows letters.
Richard Sharpe explains that the seventeen surviving manuscripts on the Magna Carta are engrossments, not copies: official documents from Royal Chancery bearing the ruler's seal. Prof. Sharpe also reveals why so many examples of the Magna Carta survive.