Search results for ""Bodleian Library""
Bodleian Library Making Medieval Manuscripts
Many beautiful illuminated manuscripts survive from the Middle Ages and can be seen in libraries and museums throughout Europe. But who were the skilled craftsmen who made these exquisite books? What precisely is parchment? How were medieval manuscripts designed and executed? What were the inks and pigments, and how were they applied? This book looks at the work of scribes, illuminators and book binders. Based principally on examples in the Bodleian Library, this lavishly illustrated account tells the story of manuscript production from the early Middle Ages through to the high Renaissance. Each stage of production is described in detail, from the preparation of the parchment, pens, paints and inks to the writing of the scripts and the final decoration and illumination of the manuscript. This book also explains the role of the stationer or bookshop, often to be found near cathedral and market squares, in the commissioning of manuscripts, and it cites examples of specific scribes and illuminators who can be identified through their work as professional lay artisans. Christopher de Hamel’s engaging text is accompanied by a glossary of key technical terms relating to manuscripts and illumination, providing an invaluable introduction for anyone interested in studying medieval manuscripts today.
£14.99
Bodleian Library Botanical Art Notebook Set: 3 A5 ruled notebooks with stitched spines
Johann Wilhelm Weinmann was an apothecary who established a botanic garden in Regensburg and set about producing a highly detailed catalogue of plants and their uses, with illustrations commissioned from some of the finest engravers of the time. The resulting Phytanthoza Iconographia is an immense work, contained within several volumes published between 1737 and 1745. It features no fewer than 1,025 beautiful colour plates – including early examples of colour mezzotint – of all manner of fruit and vegetables. Three of the exquisite plates are reproduced in this lovely set of A5 softback notebooks: the perfect gift for gardeners and connoisseurs of botanical illustration.
£10.99
Bodleian Library Revolting Remedies from the Middle Ages
For a zitty face. Take urine eight days old and heat it over the fire; wash your face with it morning and night. In late medieval England, ordinary people, apothecaries and physicians gathered up practical medical tips for everyday use. While some were sensible herbal cures, many were weird and wonderful. This book selects some of the most revolting or remarkable remedies from medieval manuscripts in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. There are embarrassing ailments and painful procedures, icky ingredients and bizarre beliefs. The would-be doctors seem oblivious to pain, and any animal, vegetable or mineral, let alone bodily fluid, can be ground up, smeared on or inserted for medical benefit. Similar ingredients are used in ‘recipes’ for how to make yourself invisible, how to make a woman love you, how to stop dogs from barking at you and how to make freckles disappear. Written in the down-to-earth speech of the time, these remedies often blur the distinction between medicine and magic. They also give a humorous insight into the strange ideas, ingenuity and bravery of men and women in the Middle Ages, and a glimpse of the often gruesome history of medicine through time. The remedies have been collected and transcribed from fifteenth-century manuscripts by students at the University of Oxford. Modern English translations, for easier reading, are given alongside the original Middle English.
£9.99
Bodleian Library Revolution!: Sayings of Vladimir Lenin
‘Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.’ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and founder of the USSR, was profoundly aware of the power of words. As a zealous orator and prolific writer, he used his words to launch a soaring critique of imperialist society and to theorize the development of the world’s first socialist state. Much of his writing was translated into English in order to further the Socialist cause. This book is a compilation of some of Lenin’s most famous sayings, taken from speeches, tracts, letters and recorded conversations. They expose his views on topics ranging from democracy to terrorism, from religion to Stalin’s untrustworthiness and from education to music. Accompanied by a range of arresting images, including contemporary propaganda posters, photographs, portraits, illustrations and Soviet art, these aphoristic proclamations offer an insight into the atmosphere of pre- and post-Revolutionary Russia and the mind of one of the twentieth century’s most defining political figures.
£9.99
Bodleian Library Tolkien: Treasures
This lavishly illustrated book showcases the highlights of the Tolkien archives held at the Bodleian Library. From J.R.R. Tolkien’s childhood in the Midlands and his experience of the First World War to his studies at school and university; his exquisite illustrations for The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and his creation of intricate and beautiful maps showing the topography of Middle-earth – the land he invented – this stunning book is a perfect introduction to Tolkien’s creative imagination, giving a unique insight into the life of this extraordinary writer, artist and scholar.
£12.00
Bodleian Library The Odes of Horace: A Facsimile
William Morris had a lifelong fascination with illuminated books. He collected thirteenth- and fourteenth-century manuscripts and became one of the foremost experts on the art of bookmaking and calligraphy. Aiming to resurrect a tradition that had fallen into abeyance with the invention of printing, he made eighteen illuminated books, using a variety of texts, during the course of his life. One of these, now held in the Bodleian Library, is a handmade edition of the Odes of Horace. The pages of this book, reproduced here in high-quality facsimile, are among the most intricate and ambitious that Morris ever created. Using a Renaissance italic style of calligraphy, he illuminated letters with delicate shades of gold and silver, and adorned them with floral decoration and miniature faces and figures. The openings to each of the four books of the Odes are stunning display pages on which Morris collaborated with the artists Edward Burne-Jones and Charles Fairfax Murray. The Roman poet Horace (65–8 BCE) wrote four books of lyric poetry in Latin which have subsequently been translated many times and have had an ongoing influence on Western literature. He combined descriptions of the everyday with the poetry of politics, patriotism, love and friendship, producing lines of beauty and wisdom which were very popular in Morris’s day and continue to appeal in the twenty-first century. This facsimile edition is presented in a blind embossed slipcase featuring a detail from one of Burne-Jones' paintings in the book with a companion volume containing an introduction to William Morris’s manuscript and an English translation of the Odes.
£99.13
Bodleian Library Women & Hats: Vintage People of Photo Postcards
To celebrate the acquisition of the Tom Phillips archive, the Bodleian Library has asked the artist to assemble and design a series of books drawing on his themed collection of over 50,000 photographic postcards. These encompass the first half of the twentieth century, a period in which, thanks to the ever cheaper medium of photography, ‘ordinary’ people could afford to own their portraits. Women in Hats explores the remarkable range in the world of millinery from outrageous Edwardian creations to the inventive austerities of the Second World War. This book contains 200 images chosen with the eye of a leading artist from a visually rich vein of social history. Their covers will also feature a thematically linked painting, especially created for each title, from Tom Phillips’ signature work, A Humument.
£10.00
Bodleian Library North Sea Crossings: The Literary Heritage of Anglo-Dutch Relations, 1066 to 1688
This richly illustrated book tells the story of cultural exchange between the people of the Low Countries and England in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, and reveals how Anglo-Dutch connections changed the literary landscape on both sides of the North Sea. Ranging from the Norman Conquest of 1066 to the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, it examines how Dutch-speaking immigrants transformed English culture, and it uncovers the lasting impact of contacts and collaborations between Dutch and English speakers on historical writing, map-making, manuscript production and early printing. The literary heritage of Anglo-Dutch relations is explored and lavishly illustrated through the unique collection of manuscripts, early prints, maps and other treasures from the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The book sheds new light on the literature and art of a pivotal period in European history.
£40.00
Bodleian Library Now and Then: England 1970-2015
Daniel Meadows is a pioneer of contemporary British documentary practice. His photographs and audio recordings, made over forty-five years, capture the life of England's ‘great ordinary’. Challenging the status quo by working collaboratively, he has fashioned from his many encounters a nation's story both magical and familiar. This book includes important work from Meadows’ ground-breaking projects, drawing on the archives now held at the Bodleian Library. Fiercely independent, Meadows devised many of his creative processes: he ran a free portrait studio in Manchester's Moss Side in 1972, then travelled 10,000 miles making a national portrait from his converted double-decker the Free Photographic Omnibus, a project he revisited a quarter of a century later. At the turn of the millennium he adopted new ‘kitchen table’ technologies to make digital stories: ‘multimedia sonnets from the people’, as he called them. He sometimes returned to those he had photographed, listening for how things were and how they had changed. Through their unique voices he finds a moving and insightful commentary on life in Britain. Then and now. Now and then.
£25.00
Bodleian Library Historic Heart of Oxford University, The
Oxford’s university buildings are world-famous. Over eight centuries, starting in the twelfth century, the University – the third oldest in Europe – gradually occupied a substantial portion of the city, creating in the process a unique townscape containing the Bodleian Library, the Sheldonian Theatre and the Radcliffe Camera. This book tells the story of the growth of the forum universitatis – as the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor called it – and relates it to the broader history of the University and the city. Based on up-to-date scholarship, and drawing upon the author’s own research into Oxford’s architectural history and the work of Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor, James Gibbs and Giles Gilbert Scott, each of the eight chapters focuses on the gestation, creation and subsequent history of a single building, or pair of buildings, relating them to developments in the University’s intellectual and institutional life, and to broader themes in architectural and urban history. Accessible and well-illustrated with plans, archival prints and specially commissioned photography, this book will appeal to anyone who wishes to understand and enjoy Oxford’s matchless architectural heritage.
£31.50
Bodleian Library Jewish Treasures from Oxford Libraries
Representing four centuries of collecting and 1,000 years of Jewish history, this book brings together extraordinary Hebrew manuscripts and rare books from the Bodleian Library and Oxford colleges. Highlights of the collections include a fragment of Maimonides’ autograph draft of the 'Mishneh Torah'; the earliest dated fragment of the Talmud, exquisitely illuminated manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible; stunning festival prayerbooks and one of the oldest surviving Jewish seals in England. Lavishly illustrated essays by experts in the field bring to life the outstanding works contained in the collections, as well as the personalities and diverse motivations of their original collectors, who include Archbishop William Laud, John Selden, Edward Pococke, Robert Huntington, Matteo Canonici, Benjamin Kennicott and Rabbi David Oppenheim. Saved for posterity by religious scholarship, intellectual rivalry and political ambition, these extraordinary collections also bear witness to the consumption and circulation of knowledge across the centuries, forming a social and cultural history of objects moved across borders, from person to person. Together, they offer a fascinating journey through Jewish intellectual and social history from the tenth century onwards.
£35.00
Bodleian Library Vintage Advertising: An A to Z
How did the advertisers of the past sell magnetic corsets, carbolic smoke balls or even the first televisions? Which celebrities endorsed products? How did innovations in printing techniques and packaging design play a part in the evolution of advertising? And what can these items tell us about transport, war, politics and even the royal family? 'Vintage Advertising: An A to Z' takes a fresh look at historical advertising through a series of thematic and chronological juxtapositions. Richly illustrated from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera at the Bodleian Library, this book features a range of topics from Art to Zeitgeist, showcasing how nineteenth- and early twentieth-century advertisements often capture the spirit of their age and can be rich repositories of information about our past.
£15.00
Bodleian Library Bicycles: Vintage People on Photo Postcards
To celebrate the acquisition of the Tom Phillips archive, the Bodleian Library has asked the artist to assemble and design a series of books drawing on his themed collection of over 50,000 photographic postcards. These encompass the first half of the twentieth century, a period in which, thanks to the ever cheaper medium of photography, ‘ordinary’ people could afford to own their portraits. Bicycles documents the great age of the safety bicycle which was the instrument of emancipation for women and freedom for men. Also we see competitive racers and pedalling toddlers. Each book contains 200 images chosen with the eye of a leading artist from a visually rich vein of social history. Their covers will also feature a thematically linked painting, especially created for each title, from Tom Phillips’ signature work, A Humument.
£10.00
Bodleian Library Designing English: Early Literature on the Page
Early manuscripts in the English language include religious works, plays, romances, poetry and songs, as well as charms, notebooks, science and medieval medicine. How did scribes choose to arrange the words and images on the page in each manuscript? How did they preserve, clarify and illustrate writing in English? What visual guides were given to early readers of English in how to understand or use their books? 'Designing English' is an overview of eight centuries of graphic design in manuscripts and inscriptions from the Anglo-Saxon to the early Tudor periods. Working beyond the traditions established for Latin, scribes of English needed to be more inventive, so that each book was an opportunity for redesigning. 'Designing English' focuses on the craft, agency and intentions of scribes, painters and engravers in the practical processes of making pages and artefacts. It weighs up the balance of ingenuity and copying, practicality and imagination in their work. It surveys bilingual books, format, ordinatio, decoration and reading aloud, as well as inscriptions on objects, monuments and buildings. With over ninety illustrations, drawn especially from the holdings of the Bodleian Library in Old English and Middle English, 'Designing English' gives a comprehensive overview of English books and other material texts across the Middle Ages.
£30.00
Bodleian Library Einstein in Oxford
Albert Einstein visited Oxford in 1931, to receive an honorary degree and to lecture on relativity and the Universe. While lecturing, he naturally chalked equations and diagrams on several blackboards. One of these is today the most popular object in Oxford's History of Science Museum. Yet Einstein tried to prevent its preservation because he was modest about his legendary status. Having failed, he complained to his diary: Not even a cart-horse could endure so much!' Nevertheless, he came back to Oxford in 1932 and again in 1933 now as a refugee from Nazi Germany. In many ways, the city appealed deeply and revealed him at his most charismatic, as he participated in its science, music and politics, and wandered its streets alone. While staying in college rooms once occupied by the mathematician and writer Lewis Carroll, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, he wrote a rhymed German poem now kept in the Bodleian Library describing himself as an old hermit' and a roaming barbaria
£16.99
Bodleian Library The Original Laws of Cricket
Of all the rules governing sport, the laws of cricket are among the oldest. The first written rules of 1744 survive uniquely on the border of a piece of linen at the MCC Museum of Cricket. They were drawn up by certain ‘Noblemen and Gentlemen’ at a time when gambling on cricket matches was rife. The ‘laws’ were codified to ensure a fair outcome when so much was riding on the game. The story of the evolution of these laws and how they affected the game is a fascinating and seldom told chapter in the history of cricket. Following on from the success of The Rules of Association Football 1863 and The Original Rules of Rugby, this book reproduces the complete text of the original laws and is illustrated with images from the unique manuscript held at the MCC as well as images of the game from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also includes what is thought to be the first known image of cricket dating from a fourteenth-century manuscript now in the Bodleian Library.
£8.10
Bodleian Library Julia Margaret Cameron: A Poetry of Photography
Renowned photographer Julia Margaret Cameron is famous for her evocative portraits of eminent Victorians, including John Herschel, Alfred Tennyson, Henry Taylor, George Frederic Watts, Ellen Terry and Julia Stephen. This study of her work reveals how deeply she was convinced of the poetic possibilities of her medium, particularly its capacity for suggestive rather than literal meaning. She did not get it right on all counts, and her practice violated the aesthetic orthodoxy of the day. But the blurring of the ‘real’ subject before her lens created unparalleled possibilities for a broader pursuit of the sublime and beautiful. Drawing on over 100 items from the photographic collections at the Bodleian Library and Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, as well as comparative works of art, this book celebrates a collection that illustrates the aesthetic development of the photographer from her earliest pictures to her most poetic photographs. It also includes her own poetry and the key images she created for her extraordinary Illustrations to Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and Other Poems, demonstrating her fascination with the artistic connection between poetry and photography.
£45.00
Bodleian Library John Leland: De uiris illustribus / On Famous Men
Equipped with a commission from Henry VIII, John Leland began to record the contents of English monastic libraries in 1533 before they were dispersed. His booklists were compiled as the primary resources for his comprehensive dictionary of British writers in four books, entitled De uiris illustribus. This remarkable testament to medieval and early modern habits of book collecting, but also to history and national identity, lay incomplete at Leland’s death. The sole extant witness to the author’s ambitious task is the autograph manuscript, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. gen. c. 4. Although antiquaries made use of De uiris illustribus over the next generations it did not see its way into print until 1709 when Anthony Hall produced a careless edition, a significant number of passages omitted, under the title Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis. Hall’s text has formed the basis for subsequent scholarship. This new edition is based on a thorough examination of the autograph, supplemented with readings from John Bale’s epitome, now Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.7.15 (753). True to Leland’s original text, this new edition shows how unreliable and misleading Hall’s was in many respects. It includes a complete English translation, published on facing pages accompanying the Latin text. The translation seeks to capture Leland’s own excitement with his project and also to convey his shifts in interpretation during the process of revision: the text mirrors in miniature the stages of the English reformation under Henry VIII. The extensive introduction provides a full history of the manuscript, examines sources, and shows the relationship of the text to Leland’s booklists and other contemporary documents.
£134.85
Bodleian Library The First English Dictionary 1604: Robert Cawdrey's 'A Table Alphabeticall'
Here is a real treat for lovers of English – the very first dictionary in our language. Contrary to popular opinion, this honour goes not to Samuel Johnson, whose definitive tome appeared in 1755, but to Robert Cawdrey, who published his Table Alphabeticall in 1604. Written for the benefit of Ladies, Gentlewomen or any other unskilfull persons, this was not a book for scholars but was aimed squarely at the non-fiction best-seller list of its day. It is a treasure-house of meaning, bristling with arresting and eminently quotable definitions. For example geometrie is the ‘art of measuring the earth’, and hecticke is ‘inflaming the hart, and soundest parts of the bodie’, while barbarian is ‘a rude person’, and a concubine is a ‘harlot, or light huswife’. Cawdrey did set out to create an exhaustive catalogue of the language but rather a guide which would unlock the mystery of hard usual English wordes, borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine, or French for educated gentlefolk encountering new words which English was then absorbing at a phenomenal rate. Every entry in this list of 2,543 words sheds interesting light on early modern life and the development of the language. This edition, prepared from the sole surviving copy of the first edition, now in the Bodleian Library, also includes an extensive introduction setting the dictionary in its historical, social and literary context, and exploring the unusual and interesting career of its little-known author. Published eight years ahead of the first of the first Italian dictionary and 35 years ahead of the first French dictionary, this work shows Cawdrey as a man ahead of his time and foreshadows the phenomenal growth of English and its eventual triumph as the new global lingua franca.
£10.99
Bodleian Library How We Fell in Love with Italian Food
Pizza, pasta, pesto and olive oil: today, it’s hard to imagine any supermarket without these items. But how did these foods – and many more Italian ingredients – become so widespread and popular? This book maps the extraordinary progress of Italian food, from the legacy of the Roman invasion to its current, ever-increasing popularity. Using medieval manuscripts it traces Italian recipes in Britain back as early as the thirteenth century, and through travel diaries it explores encounters with Italian food and its influence back home. The book also shows how Italian immigrants – from ice-cream sellers and grocers to chefs and restaurateurs – had a transformative influence on our cuisine, and how Italian food was championed at pivotal moments by pioneering cooks such as Elizabeth David, Anna Del Conte, Rose Gray, Ruth Rogers and Jamie Oliver. With mouth-watering illustrations from the archives of the Bodleian Library and elsewhere, this book also includes Italian regional recipes that have come down to us through the centuries. It celebrates the enduring international appeal of Italian restaurants and the increasingly popular British take on Italian cooking and the Mediterranean diet.
£25.00
Bodleian Library Titanic Calling: Wireless Communications during the Great Disaster
Published to mark the centenary of the sinking, this book tells the story of the Titanic from a new angle: the role of wireless in the disaster. Drawing on the Marconi Archives in the Bodleian Library, the most extensive record of wireless communications, the book recounts the fateful events of April 1912 using complete transcripts of the messages to re-tell this well-known story from a different perspective. The narrative begins with warnings of ice, including one sent from the S.S. Californian, the closest ship to the Titanic, just hours before the fatal collision. It follows Jack Phillips, the senior operator on board the R.M.S. Titanic, as he begins sending the ‘CQD’ Marconi distress signals late on the night of April 14th. We see how these urgent calls were received by nearby ships and how news was passed rapidly across the Atlantic, in a desperate attempt to save the lives of the passengers and crew. The story ends with messages from the few lucky survivors safely on their way to New York. The directness and brevity of the messages gives the narrative a compelling impact and immediacy. Titanic Calling brings to life the voices of the individuals in this drama, retelling this legendary story as it was first heard.
£14.99
Bodleian Library Treasures from the Map Room: A Journey through the Bodleian Collections
This book explores the stories behind seventy-five extraordinary maps. It includes unique treasures such as the fourteenth-century Gough Map of Great Britain, exquisite portolan charts made in the fifteenth century, the Selden Map of China – the earliest example of Chinese merchant cartography – and an early world map from the medieval Islamic Book of Curiosities, together with more recent examples of fictional places drawn in the twentieth century, such as C.S. Lewis’s own map of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien’s map of Middle Earth. As well as the works of famous mapmakers Mercator, Ortelius, Blaeu, Saxton and Speed, the book also includes lesser known but historically significant works: early maps of the Moon, of the transit of Venus, hand-drawn estate plans and early European maps of the New World. There are also some surprising examples: escape maps printed on silk and carried by pilots in the Second World War in case of capture on enemy territory; the first geological survey of the British Isles showing what lies beneath our feet; a sixteenth-century woven tapestry map of Worcestershire; a map plotting outbreaks of cholera and a jigsaw map of India from the 1850s. Behind each of these lies a story, of intrepid surveyors, ambitious navigators, chance finds or military victories. Drawing on the unique collection in the Bodleian Library, these stunning maps range from single cities to the solar system, span the thirteenth to the twenty-first century and cover most of the world.
£35.00
Bodleian Library Qur'ans: Books of Divine Encounter
This book provides a unique visual history of the Qur'ān using fifty-five rare, beautiful and significant Qur'an manuscripts. A general introduction guides the reader through the Qur'ān's entry into the world of late near eastern antiquity, a world where books of scripture were inextricably bound to the political and religious identities of empires. Books of scripture, as well as being visible statements of divine majesty, personal piety and religious identity, were viewed as providing a point of contact with the divine. In this setting the Qur'ān came to be viewed by Muslims as the point of divine contact without peer, and the calligraphy of its text became the foundation of Islamic visual culture for centuries to come. From this beginning, the development of the Qur'ān in book form is followed chronologically and geographically, and the themes of textual development, art, identity and divine presence are highlighted in each chapter. This book draws mainly from the collection of Qur'āns in the Bodleian Library, one of the oldest collections in the English-speaking world and one of the finest collections internationally. Manuscripts are featured from every major chronological period of the Qur'ān's history, and most of the Qur'āns pictured have never appeared in print before. 'Qur'āns: Books of Divine Encounter' brings together in one volume a magnificent range of Qur'ānic manuscripts, providing a lavishly illustrated historical overview of one of the most influential, most memorized and enduring sacred books in our world.
£14.99
Bodleian Library The Potato Book
A charming guide to the potato, first published in 1918, covering everything from practical advice on how to grow potatoes to their origins and history.
£12.99
Bodleian Library Wisdom from the Ancients
Words of wisdom and advice for leading a good life have long been part of society, handed down from one generation to the next. Plenty of these wise observations originated from the philosophers of Ancient Greece and Rome, and went on to circulate widely among the Arabic-speaking communities of the middle ages, who added new sayings of their own. This collection features over 400 sayings, riddles and aphorisms from the ancient and medieval world in English translation. Grouped by themes including medicine, food, politics and nature, they derive from a range of philosophers and physicians, from Aristotle, Socrates and Plato to al-Kindī, Ibn Hindū and al-Rāzī. Packed with timeless advice to contemplate, share and enjoy, this entertaining book offers readers a gateway to ancient and medieval cultures whose musings on philosophy, health and life are as authoritative and relevant now as they were then.
£14.99
Bodleian Library Tolkien Raft-elves Journal
'Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-elves' is an illustration made for The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1937. In it you can see Bilbo sitting on top of a barrel as it floats down the forest river. He and the Dwarves (who are hidden inside the barrels) have just escaped from the Elvenking. This was Tolkien's favourite watercolour for the book and he was disappointed to find that it had been omitted from the first American edition. Designed to be easily portable or to fit in a small bag, with ruled pages and handy ribbon marker, this stunning journal uniquely features Tolkien's exquisite illustration on both front and back covers. A must for all Tolkien enthusiasts.
£12.98
Bodleian Library The Making of Shakespeare's First Folio
In late November 1623, Edward Blount finally took delivery to his bookshop at the sign of the Black Bear near St Paul’s a book that had been long in the making. Master William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies was the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, appearing some seven years after their author’s death in 1616. There was no fanfare at the book’s arrival. There was nothing of the marketing that marks an important new publication in our own period: no advertising campaign, no reviews, interviews, endorsements or literary prizes. Nevertheless, it is hard to overstate the importance of this literary, cultural and commercial moment. Generously illustrated in colour with key pages from the publication and comparative works, this new edition combines the recent discovery of a hitherto unknown edition of the First Folio at Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute with the human, artistic, economic and technical stories of the birth of this landmark publication – and the birth of Shakespeare’s towering reputation.
£27.00
Bodleian Library A Splendour of Succulents & Cacti
Succulents, especially cacti, are the current focus of serious ecological studies but also the darlings of designers and style influencers. Their endearing, characterful looks have given them the status of trendy ‘plant pets’. But succulentomania is not new. While these plants have always been part of the landscape in the dry vastnesses of the Americas, Australia and Africa, curiosities such as furry-flowered stapeliads and euphorbias like snakes were a source of fascination for early European plant collectors – and in eighteenth-century Bavaria a prosperous apothecary grew an ‘American aloe’ that astounded all who saw it. This apothecary, Johann Wilhelm Weinmann, was the mastermind behind a groundbreaking book in which he aimed to include thousands of plants from all over the world, describing their individual characteristics and commissioning magnificent colour illustrations of each specimen. The succulents he featured are reproduced here in all their splendour. We may no longer look to them to treat gangrene, manufacture glass or disperse kidney stones, but succulents are proving of great interest to modern medicine and agriculture, and we can marvel at them afresh not only as wonders of nature but also as works of art.
£16.99
Bodleian Library Fox for All Seasons Journal, A: With new Reynard the Fox mini stories
This handsome hardback journal features ten new mini stories about everyone’s favourite fox, reimagined by 'Reynard the Fox' author Anne Louise Avery. Told by Reynard to his three little cubs on a moonlit spring night in the east of Flanders, each of the two-page stories is based on old medieval French vulpine tales, drawn from Marie de France’s version of Aesop, 'Ysopet', Guillaume Tardif’s 'Les Apologues et Fables de Laurens Valle' and 'Le Roman de Renart'. Some tell of Reynard’s antics, others of the exploits of his noble and mythic ancestors. Foxes tumble into dyer’s vats, steal twists of eels from unsuspecting fisherman, lounge around Black Sea ports and are transformed into eternal and glittering stars. With a stylish ribbon marker, foiled spine and high-quality ruled pages, this notebook is a stationery-lover’s delight as well as the perfect gift for fans of Avery’s captivating story-telling and all those entranced by this enduring animal fable.
£11.98
Bodleian Library Butterfly Notebook Set: 3 A5 lined notebooks with stitched spines
'Jones’ Icones' is a stunning six-volume manuscript containing paintings of some of the most important butterfly and moth collections at the end of the eighteenth century. It is the work of William Jones (1745-1818), a wealthy wine merchant from Chelsea who, on retirement, devoted the rest of his life to studying and painting butterflies and moths. Held in the archives of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, the volumes contain over 1,500 ink and gouache paintings representing 760 species from around the world. Work continues to this day to determine whether all the original specimens depicted still survive. This set of three A5, softback notebooks with high quality ruled paper makes an exquisite gift for nature-lovers and writers alike.
£10.99
Bodleian Library Aesop's Fables
For 25 centuries, the animal stories which go by the name of Aesop’s Fables have amused and instructed generations of children and adults alike. They are still as fresh and poignant today as they were to the ancient Greeks who composed them. This beautifully illustrated edition contains some of the best-loved fables, including the Boy who cried Wolf, the Lion and the Mouse, the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg, the Hare and the Tortoise, and The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse alongside many of the lesser-known tales. These timeless stories are illustrated with 35 wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker (1895–1980), one of the greatest British wood engraving artists of the twentieth century. Parker was influenced by the art of Wyndham Lewis and the Cubist and Vorticist movements which flourished in the period between the wars. Her distinctive work is strikingly stylised and deceptively simple. Commissioned in the 1930s by the fine press publisher, Gregynog Press, for their edition of the work, these exquisite wood engravings inspired by the fables are among Parker's finest.
£30.00
Bodleian Library Curious Creatures on our Shores
This veritable marine treasure trove of a book is richly illustrated by the author, with fifty of the most beautiful, easily encountered, and sometimes astonishing marine organisms found on British coasts, from seemingly exotic seahorses and starfish, to peculiar sea-potatoes and sea lemons. Together, these characterful critters paint a colourful picture of life between the tides: starfish that, upon losing an arm, can grow a new one; baby sharks hatching from their fancifully named ‘mermaid’ purses’; ethereal moon jellyfish pulsating in the current and, on some seabeds, even coral. Beachcombing, overturning a boulder or simply parting the strands of seaweed in a rock pool offer a glimpse into a thriving underwater world of curious creatures. Inspired by the Oxford University of Natural History’s exceptionally rich zoology collections, which contain millions of specimens amassed from centuries of expeditions, this book tells the story of life on the seashore.
£15.00
Bodleian Library Making of Lewis Carroll’s Alice and the Invention of Wonderland, The
'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking-Glass' are two of the most famous, translated and quoted books in the world. But how did a casual tale told by Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), an eccentric Oxford mathematician, to Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, grow into such a phenomenon? Peter Hunt cuts away the psychological speculation that has grown up around the ‘Alice’ books and traces the sources of their multi-layered in-jokes and political, literary and philosophical satire. He first places the books in the history of children’s literature – how they relate to the other giants of the period, such as Charles Kingsley – and explores the local and personal references that the real Alice would have understood. Equally fascinating is the rich texture of fragments of everything from the ‘sensation’ novel to Darwinian theory – not to mention Dodgson’s personal feelings – that he wove into the books as they developed. Richly illustrated with manuscripts, portraits, Sir John Tenniel’s original line drawings and contemporary photographs, this is a fresh look at two remarkable stories, which takes us on a guided tour from the treacle wells of Victorian Oxford through an astonishing world of politics, philosophy, humour – and nightmare.
£15.00
Bodleian Library Birds: An Anthology
Thomas Hardy notes the thrush’s ‘full-hearted evensong of joy illimited’, Gilbert White observes how swallows sweep through the air but swifts ‘dash round in circles’ and Rachel Carson watches sanderlings at the ocean’s edge, scurrying ‘across the beach like little ghosts’. From early times, we have been entranced by the bird life around us. This anthology brings together poetry and prose in celebration of birds, records their behaviour, flight, song and migration, the changes across the seasons and in different habitats – in woodland and pasture, on river, shoreline and at sea – and our own interaction with them. From India to America, from China to Rwanda, writers marvel at birds – the building of a long-tailed tit’s nest, the soaring eagle, the extraordinary feats of migration and the pleasures to be found in our own gardens. Including extracts by Geoffrey Chaucer, Dorothy Wordsworth, Richard Jefferies, Charles Darwin, James Joyce, John Keats, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Anton Chekhov, Kathleen Jamie, Jonathan Franzen and Barbara Kingsolver among many others, this rich anthology will be welcomed by bird-lovers, country ramblers and anyone who has taken comfort or joy in a bird in flight.
£16.99
Bodleian Library The Selden Map of China: A New Understanding of the Ming Dynasty
Dating from the seventeenth century at the height of the Ming Dynasty, the Selden Map of China reveals a country very different from popular conceptions of the time, looking not inward to the Asian landmass but outward to the sea. Painted in multiple colours on three pieces of Mitsumata paper, this beautifully decorative map of China was discovered to be a seafaring chart showing Ming Dynasty trade routes. It is the earliest surviving example of Chinese merchant cartography and is evidence that Ming China was outward-looking, capitalistic and vibrant. Exploring the commercial aims of the Ming Dynasty, the port city of Quanzhou and its connections with the voyages of the early traveller Zheng He, this book describes the historical background of the era in which the map was used. It also includes an analysis of the skills and techniques involved in Chinese map-making and the significance of the compass bearings, scale and ratios found on the map, all of which combine to represent a breakthrough in cartographic techniques. The enthralling story revealed by this extraordinary artefact is central to an understanding of the long history of China’s relationship with the sea and with the wider world.
£20.00
Bodleian Library The Princess who Hid in a Tree: An Anglo-Saxon Story
This story is about a brave and kind Anglo-Saxon princess called Frideswide who lived in Oxford a long time ago and just happened to be brilliant at climbing very tall trees. Her talent came in useful one day when a wicked king tried to kidnap her. How did she and her friends escape, and what happened to the king and his soldiers? With stunning illustrations by award-winning artist Alan Marks, Saint Frideswide’s legend is retold for young children as a tale of adventure, courage in the face of danger, friendship, and kindness, with a few surprises along the way. The church Frideswide founded in Oxford was on the site of what is now Christ Church, and her medieval shrine can still be seen inside the Cathedral. This beautiful picture book is sure to be treasured by any child who loves tales of adventure. It will appeal to children learning about the Anglo-Saxons, to readers who like feisty heroines and to visitors to Oxford, as a meaningful souvenir of their visit.
£12.99
Bodleian Library Lighted Window, The: Evening Walks Remembered
Homecoming, haunting, nostalgia, desire: these are some of the themes evoked by the beguiling motif of the lighted window in literature and art. In this innovative combination of place-writing, memoir and cultural study, Peter Davidson takes us on atmospheric walks through nocturnal cities in Britain, Europe and North America, and revisits the field paths of rural England. Surveying a wide range of material, the book extends, chronologically, from early romantic painting to contemporary fiction, and geographically, from the Low Countries to Japan. It features familiar lighted windows in English literature (in the works of poets such as Thomas Hardy and Matthew Arnold and in the novels of Virginia Woolf, Arthur Conan Doyle and Kenneth Grahame) and examines the painted nocturnes of James Whistler, John Atkinson Grimshaw and the ruralist Samuel Palmer. It also considers Japanese prints of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; German romanticism in painting, poetry and music; Proust and the painters of the French belle époque; René Magritte’s 'L’Empire des Lumières'; and North American painters such as Edward Hopper and Linden Frederick. By interpreting the interactions of art, literature and geography around this evocative motif, Peter Davidson shows how it has inspired an extraordinary variety of moods and ideas, from the romantic period to the present day.
£22.50
Bodleian Library Babel: Adventures in Translation
This innovative collection of essays shows how linguistic diversity has inspired people across time and cultures to embark on adventurous journeys through the translation of texts. It tells the story of how ideas have travelled via the medium of translation into different languages and cultures, focusing on illustrated examples ranging from Greek papyri through illuminated manuscripts and fine early books to fantasy languages (such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Elvish), the search for a universal language and the challenges of translation in multicultural Britain. Starting with the concept of Babel itself, which illustrates the early cultural prominence of multilingualism, and with an illustration of a Mediterranean language of four millennia ago (Linear A) which still resists deciphering, it goes on to examine how languages have interacted with each other in different contexts. The book also explores the multilingual transmission of key texts in religion, science (the history of Euclid), animal fable (from Aesop in Greek to Beatrix Potter via La Fontaine, with some fascinating Southeast Asian books), fairy-tale, fantasy and translations of the great Greek epics of Homer. It is lavishly illustrated with a diverse range of material, from papyrus fragments found at Oxyrhynchus to Esperanto handbooks to Asterix cartoons, each offering its own particular adventure into translation.
£20.00
Bodleian Library N is for Nursery
A is for all of us – everyone, Playing, learning, having fun. This beautifully illustrated alphabet book is perfect for children starting at nursery for the first time. Bright, animated pictures designed around each letter show children happily playing: building with bricks, sifting sand, listening to stories, singing, dancing and riding on the rocking horse. The accompanying rhyming text is ideal for reading out loud. Gentle guidance is combined with a number of fun and imaginative words for each letter: g is for giggling, p is for please, s is for sharing, t is for tickling and y, of course, is for yippee.
£12.99
Bodleian Library Sleepy Book
All creatures sleep in their own way, from bears hibernating in caves, to horses standing in fields and seals stretched out on their flippers. This charming bedtime book explores the different ways animals slumber, from familiar pets like cats and dogs, cosy in their baskets, to the less well-known cricket and moth. Charlotte Zolotow’s gentle and timeless language combines with exquisite illustrations by Vladimir Bobri to create a calm, comforting text that is the perfect precursor to nodding off.
£12.99
Bodleian Library Secret History of English Spas, The
English spas have a long and steamy history, from the thermal baths of Aquae Sulis in Bath to the stews of Southwark, the elegant pump rooms of Cheltenham and Buxton to the Victorian mania for hydrotherapy and Turkish hammams. 'The Secret History of English Spas' is an informative but light-hearted social and cultural history of our obsession with drinking and bathing in spa waters. It tells the stories of the rich, the famous, the poor and the sick, all of whom visited spas in hopes of curing everything from infertility to leprosy and gonorrhoea. It depicts the entrepreneurs who promoted these resorts – often on the basis of the most dubious scientific evidence – and the riotous and salacious social life enjoyed in spa towns, where moral health might suffer even as bodies were cleansed and purged. And yet English spas also offered an ideal of civility and politeness, providing a place where social classes and sexes could mingle and enjoy refined entertainments such as music and dance – all part of the fashionable pastime referred to as ‘taking the waters’.
£22.50
Bodleian Library Heath Robinson: How to be a Motorist
W. Heath Robinson is best known for his hilarious drawings of zany contraptions, though his work ranged across a wide variety of topics covering many aspects of British life in the decades following the First World War. Starting out as a watercolour artist, he quickly turned to the more lucrative field of book illustration and developed his forte in satirical drawings and cartoons. He was regularly commissioned by the editors of Tatler and The Sketch and in great demand from advertising companies. Collections of his drawings were subsequently published in many different editions and became so successful as to transform Heath Robinson into a household name, celebrated for his eccentric brand of British humour. Presenting such innovations as the ‘Zip-Opening Bonnet’, the ‘Duo-car for the Incompatible’ and the handy ‘New Rear Wheel Gear for Turning the Car in One Movement’, this volume of Heath Robinson illustrations with commentary by K.R.G. Browne will appeal to ‘everybody who is ever likely to drive, be driven in, or get run over by a mechanically propelled vehicle’.
£9.99
Bodleian Library Latin Inscriptions in Oxford
For the first six centuries from the institution’s foundation, Latin was the language spoken and written at the University of Oxford. It’s no surprise, then, to find that the inscriptions carved into the monuments, colleges and municipal buildings of the city are for the most part also in Latin. It is also a language which lends itself to compression, so an inscription in Latin uses fewer characters than English, for example, saving space and money. But what do they all mean? For this book Reginald Adams has assembled, translated and explained a wide selection of Oxford’s Latin inscriptions (and a few Greek ones). These can be found in many accessible places in both city and university, dating from the medieval period to the present day. Their purposes range from tributes and memorials to decorations and witty commentaries on the edifice that they adorn. The figures commemorated include Queen Anne, Roger Bacon, Cardinal Wolsey, Cecil Rhodes, T. E. Lawrence and a kind landlady who provided ‘enormous breakfasts’, as well as other eminent scholars and generous benefactors. These evocative mementos of the past bring insight to the informed observer of their surroundings and also vividly illustrate the history of Oxford.
£11.24
Bodleian Library Dr Radcliffe's Library: The Story of the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford
The Radcliffe Camera is one of the most celebrated buildings in Oxford. Instantly recognizable, its great dome rises amid the Gothic spires of the University. Through early maps, plans and drawings, portraits, engravings and photographs this book tells the fascinating story of its creation, which took more than thirty years, and describes its subsequent place within Oxford University. Dr John Radcliffe was the most successful physician of his day. On his death in 1713 he directed that part of his large fortune should be used to build a library on a site at the heart of Oxford, between the University Church of St Mary’s and the Bodleian. Early designs were made by the brilliant architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, who outlined the shape so familiar today: a great rotunda surmounted by Oxford’s only dome. It would take decades to acquire and clear the site, and after Hawksmoor’s death in 1736 the project was taken over by the Scottish architect James Gibbs, who refined the designs and supervised the construction of ‘Dr Radcliffe’s Library’, creating, in the process, an architectural masterpiece and Britain’s first circular library.
£13.60
Bodleian Library Scholars, Poets and Radicals: Discovering Forgotten Lives in the Blackwell Collections
Exploring the Blackwell Collections (publishing and bookselling archives), Rita Ricketts discovered diverse characters associated with this world-famous company, between 1830 and 1940. There is a tailor’s son saving souls, a reluctant radical, a hammerman poet, a spellbound princess, pauper apprentices, pioneering women, profligate printers and patriots publishing in protest against the authorities who sent so many to ‘certain death’ in the First World War. Some became famous: J.R.R. Tolkien, Wilfred Owen, John Betjeman, Dorothy L. Sayers, Vera Brittain, Edith Sitwell and Laurence Binyon, whose name is recollected wherever For the Fallen is read. Most were obscure, yet their memoirs, letters and journals, often disregarded in recorded history, are preserved here. This is what makes the collections a rarity and so appealing. Family memories of the first B.H. Blackwell and the diaries of his son and first apprentices document everyday life against the backdrop of the book trade, and also present a tableau of nineteenth and twentieth-century history ranging far beyond Oxford. The third B.H. Blackwell (Sir Basil) collected their stories, singling out Rex King whose diaries, 1918–1940, contain an astonishing reading list and a mordant dissection of the texts amounting to a critique of early twentieth-century English culture; rich fodder for any book or cultural historian. Rex King, like all the characters in this book, wrote for posterity. And Rita Ricketts, a consummate storyteller, has ensured that they will be read by a new generation.
£30.00
Bodleian Library From Downing Street to the Trenches: First-hand Accounts from the Great War, 1914-1916
Why did Asquith take Britain to war in 1914? What did educated young men believe their role should be? What was it like to fly over the Somme battlefield? How could a trench on the front line be ‘the safest place’? These compelling eye-witness accounts convey what it was really like to experience the first two years of the war up until the fall of Asquith’s government, without the benefit of hindsight or the accumulated wisdom of a hundred years of discussion and writing. Using the rich manuscript resources of the Bodleian Libraries, the book features key extracts from letters and diaries of members of the Cabinet, academic and literary figures, student soldiers and a village rector. The letters of politicians reveal the strain of war leadership and throw light on the downfall of Asquith in 1916, while the experiences of the young Harold Macmillan in the trenches, vividly described in letters home, marked the beginning of his road to Downing Street. It was forbidden to record Cabinet discussions, but Lewis Harcourt’s unauthorised diary provides a window on Asquith’s government, complete with character sketches of some of the leading players, including Winston Churchill. Meanwhile, in one Essex village, the local rector compiled a diary to record the impact of war on his community. These fascinating contemporary papers paint a highly personal and immediate picture of the war as it happened. Fear, anger, death and sorrow are always present, but so too are idealism, excitement, humour, boredom and even beauty.
£11.25
Bodleian Library Anglicanus ortus: A Verse Herbal of the Twelfth Century
Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon, England (c 1088–c 1154) has been admired for centuries as the author of the monumental Historia Anglorum. The recent discovery of the Anglicanus ortus opens a new window onto this important English author as well as onto the uses of poetry and the knowledge of medicine in medieval England. Written entirely in Latin verse, the Anglicanus ortus describes the medicinal uses of 160 different herbs, spices and vegetables. Henry drew on centuries of learned medicine to compose this work, employing the medical knowledge of ancient authors like Pliny the Elder and Dioscorides and of medieval scholars like Walahfrid Strabo, Macer Floridus and Constantine the African. This critical edition is based on the five extant manuscripts and includes a complete English translation on facing pages and a commentary on every poem. An extensive introduction describes the manuscript witnesses in detail, examines Henry’s poetic skill and use of sources, and establishes the place of the Anglicanus ortus in a pivotal era in the history of medicine and natural philosophy.
£150.26
Bodleian Library Shakespeare's Dead
Pyramus: ‘Now die, die, die, die, die.’ [Dies] A Midsummer Night’s Dream 'Shakespeare’s Dead' reveals the unique ways in which Shakespeare brings dying, death, and the dead to life. It establishes the cultural, religious and social contexts for thinking about early modern death, with particular reference to the plague which ravaged Britain during his lifetime, and against the divisive background of the Reformation. But it also shows how death on stage is different from death in real life. The dead come to life, ghosts haunt the living, and scenes of mourning are subverted by the fact that the supposed corpse still breathes. Shakespeare scripts his scenes of dying with extraordinary care. Famous final speeches – like Hamlet’s ‘The rest is silence’, Mercutio’s ‘A plague o’ both your houses’, or Richard III’s ‘My kingdom for a horse’ – are also giving crucial choices to the actors as to exactly how and when to die. Instead of the blank finality of death, we get a unique entrance into the loneliness or confusion of dying. 'Shakespeare’s Dead' tells of death-haunted heroes such as Macbeth and Hamlet, and death-teasing heroines like Juliet, Ophelia, and Cleopatra. It explores the fear of ‘something after death’, and characters’ terrifying visions of being dead. But it also uncovers the constant presence of death in Shakespeare’s comedies, and how the grinning jester might be a leering skull in disguise. This book celebrates the paradox: the life in death in Shakespeare.
£19.99