Search results for ""Bodleian Library""

About a millennium ago, in Cairo, someone completed a large and richly illustrated book. In the course of thirty-five chapters, our unknown author guided the reader on a journey from the outermost cosmos and planets to Earth and its lands, islands, features and inhabitants. This treatise, known as The Book of Curiosities, was unknown to modern scholars until a remarkable manuscript copy surfaced in 2000. Lost Maps of the Caliphs provides the first general overview of The Book of Curiosities and the unique insight it offers into medieval Islamic thought. Opening with an account of the remarkable discovery of the manuscript and its purchase by the Bodleian Library, the authors use The Book of Curiosities to re-evaluate the development of astrology, geography and cartography in the first four centuries of Islam. Early astronomical ‘maps’ and drawings demonstrate the medieval understanding of the structure of the cosmos and illustrate the pervasive assumption that almost any visible celestial event had an effect upon life on Earth. Lost Maps of the Caliphs also reconsiders the history of global communication networks at the turn of the previous millennium. Not only is The Book of Curiosities one of the greatest achievements of medieval map-making, it is also a remarkable contribution to the story of Islamic civilization.

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A unique blend of graphic design, bold art or photography and cunning psychology, election posters are an unsung art form, stretching back to the dawn of the twentieth century. Exploiting the Conservative Party Archive held at the Bodleian Library which contains over 700 posters, this book charts the evolution of the Conservatives’ election posters. Divided into chapters along political periods, the book highlights the changing fashions in and attitudes to advertising, political ideology, slogans, combativeness and above all, propriety. Each chapter includes a brief introduction discussing the major themes of the period as well as captions explaining specific issues related to the individual posters. Lavishly illustrated, 'Dole Queues to Demons' gives a fascinating insight into the issues and strategies of the Conservative Party throughout the twentieth century, and up to the present day. A foreword by advertising guru Maurice Saatchi discusses the posters from a communication and design perspective. This book will fascinate anyone interested in social and political history and modern communications. Published at a time when the advent of new media threatens to herald the end of traditional forms of mass communication, this book takes a timely retrospective look at this enduring feature of the British electoral landscape.

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Rachel Owen’s hauntingly beautiful illustrations for Dante’s Inferno take a radically new approach to representing the world of Dante’s famous poem. The images combine the artist’s deep cultural and historical understanding of 'The Divine Comedy' and its artistic legacy with her unique talent for collage and printmaking. These illustrations, casting the viewer as a first-person pilgrim through the underworld, prompt us to rethink Dante’s poem through their novel perspective and visual language. Owen’s work, held in the Bodleian Library and published here for the first time, illustrates the complete cycle of thirty-four cantos of the Inferno with one image per canto. The illustrations are accompanied by essays contextualising Owen’s work and supplemented by six illustrations intended for the unfinished Purgatorio series. Fiona Whitehouse provides details of the techniques employed by the artist, Peter Hainsworth situates Owen’s work in the field of modern Dante illustration and David Bowe offers a commentary on the illustrations as gateways to Dante’s poem. Jamie McKendrick and Bernard O’Donoghue’s translations of episodes from the 'Inferno' provide complementary artistic interpretations of Dante’s poem, while reflections from colleagues and friends commemorate Owen’s life and work as an artist, scholar and teacher. This stunning collection is an important contribution to both Dante scholarship and illustration.

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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.

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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.

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Set like a stronghold south-west of the Caucasus mountains, Armenia is caught between East and West. Briefly a great empire in the first century BCE under King Tigranes the Great, Armenia was later incorporated first by the Sasanian and then the Byzantine Empires. Armenian art, literature, religion and material culture have reinterpreted elements of a wide variety of cultures. Spanning over two and a half millennia, the history of Armenia and the Armenian people is a series of riveting tales, from its first mention under the Achaemenid King Darius I to the independence of the Republic of Armenia from the Soviet Union. With the help of the Bodleian Libraries' magnificent collection of Armenian manuscripts and early printed books, this volume tells the story of the region through the medium of its cultural output. Together with introductions written by experts in their fields, close to one hundred manuscripts, works of art and religious artefacts serve as a guide to Armenian culture and history. Gospel manuscripts splendidly illuminated by Armenian masters feature next to philosophical tractates and merchants' handbooks, affording us an insight into what makes the Armenian people truly unique, especially in the shadow of the genocide that threatened their annihilation a hundred years ago: namely their spirituality, language and perseverance in the face of adversity. VISIT THE EXHIBITION Armenia: Treasures from an Enduring Culture October 2015 – January 2016 Bodleian Library, Oxford

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Set like a stronghold south-west of the Caucasus mountains, Armenia is caught between East and West. Briefly a great empire in the first century BCE under King Tigranes the Great, Armenia was later incorporated first by the Sasanian and then the Byzantine Empires. Armenian art, literature, religion and material culture have reinterpreted elements of a wide variety of cultures. Spanning over two and a half millennia, the history of Armenia and the Armenian people is a series of riveting tales, from its first mention under the Achaemenid King Darius I to the independence of the Republic of Armenia from the Soviet Union. With the help of the Bodleian Libraries' magnificent collection of Armenian manuscripts and early printed books, this volume tells the story of the region through the medium of its cultural output. Together with introductions written by experts in their fields, close to one hundred manuscripts, works of art and religious artefacts serve as a guide to Armenian culture and history. Gospel manuscripts splendidly illuminated by Armenian masters feature next to philosophical tractates and merchants' handbooks, affording us an insight into what makes the Armenian people truly unique, especially in the shadow of the genocide that threatened their annihilation a hundred years ago: namely their spirituality, language and perseverance in the face of adversity. VISIT THE EXHIBITION Armenia: Treasures from an Enduring Culture October 2015 – January 2016 Bodleian Library, Oxford

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By the end of the eighteenth century London was the second largest city in the world, its relentless growth fuelled by Britain’s expanding empire. Before the age of photography, the most widely used means of creating a visual record of the changing capital was through engravings and drawings, and those that survive today are invaluable in showing us what the capital was like in the century leading up to the Industrial Revolution. This book contains over one hundred images of the Greater London area before 1800 from maps, drawings, manuscripts, printed books and engravings, all from the Gough Collection at the Bodleian Library. Examples are drawn from the present Greater London to contrast town and countryside at the time. Panoramas of the river Thames were popular illustrations of the day, and the extraordinarily detailed engravings made by the Buck brothers are reproduced here. The construction, and destruction, of landmark bridges across the river are also shown in contemporary engravings. Prints made of London before and after the Great Fire show how artists and engravers responded to contemporary events such as executions, riots, fires and even the effects of a tornado. They also recorded public spectacles, creating beautiful images of firework displays and frost fairs on the river Thames. This book presents rare material from the most extensive collection on British topography assembled in this period by a private collector, providing a fascinating insight into life in Georgian London.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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In this ingenious and diverse collection of 366 stories, events and facts about language, David Crystal presents a selection of insights from literary and linguistic writers, poets and global institutions, together with the weird and wonderful creations of language enthusiasts to enliven each day of the year. The day-by-day treatment illustrates the extraordinary breadth of the subject, from ‘Morse Code Day’ to ‘Talk Like William Shatner Day’, from forensic phonetics used to catch serial killers to heroines of speed reading, and covers writers from many different eras and cultures, including William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Toni Morrison, R. K. Narayan, Wole Soyinka and many more. Some days focus on pronunciation, orthography, grammar or vocabulary. Others focus on the way language is used in science, religion, politics, broadcasting, publishing, the Internet and the arts. There are days that acknowledge the achievements of language study, such as in language teaching, speech therapy, deaf education and forensic science, as well as technological progress, from the humble pencil to digital software. Several days celebrate individual languages, such as those recognised as ‘official’ by the United Nations, but not forgetting those spoken by small communities, along with their associated cultural identities. A celebration of the remarkable creativity of all who have illuminated our understanding of language, this book is ideal for anyone wanting to add an extra point of interest to their language day.

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William Henry Fox Talbot, the English inventor of photography, created around 15,000 photographs in the nineteenth century, most of them attempts to produce compelling scientific documents or pictorial records of the world around him. However, among those that have survived are also prints in which an image has been obscured, obliterated or simply failed to register. Borrowing its intriguing title from a poem written by Talbot, this book features twenty-four of these prints, his most experimental photographs. Originally intended as test prints or creative exercises, all that remains on these shaped pieces of photographic paper are chemical stains or imprinted patterns or shapes. Offered to the reader as enigmatic physical artefacts, these failed or ruined photographs are here reanimated as objects of beauty, mystery and promise, as artworks that speak of photography’s most fundamental attributes and potentials. An accompanying essay illustrated with comparative images places these photographs in a broad historical context leading up to the present, revealing what relevance Talbot’s experiments have to contemporary concepts of the art of photography.

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Close friendships are a heart-warming feature of many of our best-loved works of fiction. From Jane Eyre and Helen Burns’ poignant schoolgirl relationship to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn’s adventures on the Mississippi, fictional friends have supported, guided, comforted, nursed and at times betrayed the heroes and heroines of our popular and influential plays and novels. This book explores twenty-four literary friendships and, together with character studies and publication history, describes how each key relationship influences character, determines plot, promotes or disguises romance, preserves a reputation, sometimes results in betrayal, or underlines the theme of each literary work. It shows how authors from William Shakespeare to Elena Ferrante have by turns celebrated, lamented or transformed friendships throughout the ages, and how some friends – Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Holmes and Watson or even Bridget Jones and pals – have taken on creative lives beyond the bounds of their original narrative. Including a broad scope of literature spanning a period of 400 years from writers as diverse as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, John Steinbeck and Alice Walker, this book is the ideal gift for your literature-loving friend.

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‘High from the earth I heard a bird’ - Emily Dickinson Eric Fitch Daglish (1892-1966) was a wood engraver, writer and illustrator. His book 'Woodcuts of British Birds' was published in 1925. Daglish learnt the art of wood engraving from Paul Nash and became known for his illustrations of the natural world. He illustrated an edition of Gilbert White’s 'Natural History of Selborne' and he both wrote and illustrated several books on natural history, including 'Birds of the British Isles', 1948. Beautifully produced in hardback with lined paper and ribbon marker, this makes a perfect gift for bird watchers and nature lovers.

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What is life? This was a question of particular concern for Mary Shelley and her contemporaries. But how did she, and her fellow Romantic writers, incorporate this debate into their work, and how much were they influenced by contemporary science, medicine and personal loss? This book is the first to compile the many attempts in science and medicine to account for life and death in Mary Shelley’s time. It considers what her contemporaries thought of air, blood, sunlight, electricity and other elements believed to be most essential for living. Mary Shelley’s (and her circle’s) knowledge of science and medicine is carefully examined, alongside the work of key scientific and medical thinkers, including John Abernethy, James Curry, Humphry Davy, John Hunter, William Lawrence and Joseph Priestley. Frankenstein demonstrates what Mary Shelley knew of the advice given by medical practitioners for the recovery of persons drowned, hanged or strangled and explores the contemporary scientific basis behind Victor Frankenstein’s idea that life and death were merely ‘ideal bounds’ he could transgress in the making of the Creature. Interweaving images of the manuscript, portraits, medical instruments and contemporary diagrams into her narrative, Sharon Ruston shows how this extraordinary tale is steeped in historical scientific and medical thought exploring the fascinating boundary between life and death.

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Since 1621, and the foundation of the Oxford Botanic Garden, Oxford has built up an outstanding collection of plant specimens, botanical illustrations and rare books on plant classification, collecting and plant biology. These archives, and the living plants in the Garden, are integral to the study of botany in the University. This book profiles the botanists and collections which have helped to transform our understanding of the biology of plants over the past four centuries, focusing on plant classification, experimental botany, building botanical collections, agriculture and forestry and botanical education. Highlights include a selection of Ferdinand Bauer’s renowned illustrations for Flora Graeca – an extraordinarily lavish and detailed eighteenth-century botanical publication of plants found in the Eastern Mediterranean – and rare plant specimens from the herbaria, such as Fairchild’s Mule (the first artificially created hybrid plant). Together with seventeenth-century herbals, elegant garden plans, plant models and fossil slides, these items from the archives all help to tell the story of botanical science in Oxford and the intrepid botanists who devoted themselves to the essential study of plants.

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Many important and valuable rare books, manuscripts and artefacts related to Korea have been acquired by donations throughout the long history of the Bodleian Libraries and the museums of the University of Oxford. However, due to an early lack of specialist knowledge in this area, many of these Korean items were largely neglected. Following on from the publication of the first volume of these forgotten treasures, this book collects together further important and often unique objects. Notable items include the only surviving Korean example of an eighteenth-century world map, hand-drawn, with a set of twelve globe gores on a single sheet; rare Korean coins and charms including excellent examples of the 1423 Chosŏn t’ongbo 朝鲜通寶; official correspondence from the archives of the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, shining a light on the history of Christian missions from the opening of Korea in the 1880s until after the Korean War; photographs from the end of the nineteenth century up to the 1960s showing village and street scenes; a rare silk coat with inner armour plates of lacquered hide; a massive iron padlock inlaid with silver character inscriptions, bronze shoes and Nightingale robe; spectacles with dark crystal lenses and frames of horn; an elaborately decorated bow, arrows and quiver and many other rare artefacts.

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Oxford Botanic Garden has occupied its central Oxford site next to the river Cherwell continuously since its foundation in 1621 and is the UK’s oldest botanic garden. The birthplace of botanical science in the UK, it has been a leading centre for research since the 1600s. Today, the garden holds a collection of over 5,000 different types of plant, some of which exist nowhere else and are of international conservation importance. This guide explores Oxford Botanic Garden’s many historic and innovative features, from the walled garden to the waterlily pool, the glasshouses, the rock garden, the water garden and ‘Lyra’s bench’. It also gives a detailed explanation of the medicinal and taxonomic beds and special plant collections. Lavishly illustrated with photographs taken throughout the seasons, this book not only provides a fascinating historical overview but also offers a practical guide to the Oxford Botanic Garden and its work today. Featuring a map of the entire site and a historical timeline, it is guaranteed to enhance any visit, and is also a beautiful souvenir to take home.

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One day an old lady swallows a fly and the only way she can get rid of it is to swallow a wriggling, tickling spider… For over a century this subversive rhyme has delighted children and parents alike. Its galloping rhythm is perfect for reading out loud, becoming a memory game as the list of animals – bird, cat, dog, goat – grows. Graboff’s bright and startling illustrations combine beautifully with the traditional verse to bring this classic tale to life.

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There are many things cats can do which children can’t, such as lap up milk and use their tongues as combs. There are also a number of things that cats can’t do, like sing children to sleep, or get down from trees… Abner Graboff combines the voice of childhood innocence with a wonderful sense of fun in his quirky book about the mysteries of cats and their secret lives, told from the point of view of a young child. Playful and bold illustrations complement the simple text, inspired by a much-loved family feline.

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Spanning the Islamic world, from ninth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Iran, this book tells the story of the key Muslim map-makers and the art of Islamic cartography. Muslims were uniquely placed to explore the edges of the inhabited world and their maps stretched from Isfahan to Palermo, from Istanbul to Cairo and Aden. Over a similar period, Muslim artists developed distinctive styles, often based on geometrical patterns and calligraphy. Map-makers, including al-Khwārazmī and al-Idrīsī, combined novel cartographical techniques with art, science and geographical knowledge. The results could be aesthetically stunning and mathematically sophisticated, politically charged as well as a celebration of human diversity. 'Islamic Maps' examines Islamic visual interpretations of the world in their historical context, through the lives of the map-makers themselves. What was the purpose of their maps, what choices did they make and what was the argument they were trying to convey? Lavishly illustrated with stunning manuscripts, beautiful instruments and Qibla charts, this book shows how maps constructed by Muslim map-makers capture the many dimensions of Islamic civilisation, providing a window into the worldviews of Islamic societies.

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'Novel Houses' visits unforgettable dwellings in twenty legendary works of English and American fiction. Each chapter stars a famous novel in which a dwelling is pivotal to the plot, and reveals how personally significant that place was to the writer who created it. We discover Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s powerful influence on the American Civil War, how essential 221B Baker Street was to Sherlock Holmes and the importance of Bag End to the adventuring hobbits who called it home. It looks at why Bleak House is used as the name of a happy home and what was on Jane Austen’s mind when she worked out the plot of Mansfield Park. Little-known background on the dwellings at the heart of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast and Stella Gibbon’s Cold Comfort Farm emerges, and the real life settings of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and E.M. Forster’s Howards End, so fundamental to their stories, are shown to relate closely to their authors’ passions and preoccupations. A winning combination of literary criticism, geography and biography, this is an entertaining and insightful celebration of beloved novels and the extraordinary role that houses grand and small, imagined and real, or unique and ordinary, play in their continuing popularity.

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We’re all familiar with ‘a flock of sheep’ but what are the collective nouns for racehorses, pigs, zebras or giraffes? Drawing on a range of sources, from fifteenth-century hunting terms to more recent inventions that have now entered the language, this book collects over 100 examples of the most interesting collective nouns for animals, each illustrated with charming woodcuts by the renowned naturalist engraver of the eighteenth century, Thomas Bewick. Some describe a key characteristic of the animal in question: ‘a shrewdness of apes’, ‘a busyness of ferrets’. Others are delightfully humorous: ‘a piddle of puppies’, ‘a crash of rhinoceroses’. Featuring pets, farmyard animals, big cats and wild beasts, this beautifully presented book is the perfect gift for animal lovers and all those with an interest in this quirky linguistic tradition.

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The horror of the First World War brought out a characteristic response in a group of English artists, who resorted to black humour. Among these, John Hassall, a pioneering British illustrator and creator of the influential 'Skegness is so bracing' poster, holds a special place. Early in the war, he hit on the idea of drawing a parody of the Bayeux Tapestry to satirize German aggression and add to the growing genre of war propaganda. Taking the scheme of the famous tapestry which celebrates William the Conqueror’s invasion of England, Hassall uses thirty pictorial panels to tell the story of Kaiser Wilhem II’s invasion of Luxembourg and Belgium. In mock-archaic language he narrates the progress of the German army, never missing an opportunity to lampoon ‘bad’ behaviour: ‘Wilhelm giveth orders for frightfulness.’ The caricatured Germans loot homes, make gas from Limburg cheese and sauerkraut, drink copious amounts of wine and shamefully march through Luxembourg with ‘women and children in front.’ With comic inventiveness Hassall adapts the borders of the original to illustrate the stereotypical objects with which the English then associated their enemy: they are decorated with schnitzel, sausages, pilsner, wine corks and wild boar. Drawn with Hassall’s distinctive flat colour and striking outlines, Ye Berlyn Tapestrie is a fascinating historical example of war-induced farce, produced by a highly talented artist who could not then have known that the war was set to last for another two years. Together with an introduction which sets out the historical background of its creation, every page of this rarely seen publication is reproduced here in a fold-out concertina, just like the original, to resemble the style of the Bayeux Tapestry.

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Did you know that coffee was recommended as protection against the bubonic plague in the seventeenth century? Or that tea was believed to make men ‘unfit to do their business’ and blamed for women becoming unattractive? On the other hand, a cup of chocolate was supposed to have exactly the opposite effect on the drinker’s sex life and physical appearance. These three beverages arrived in England in the 1650s from faraway, exotic places: tea from China, coffee from the Middle East and chocolate from Mesoamerica. Physicians, diarists and politicians were quick to comment on their supposed benefits and alleged harmfulness, using newspapers, pamphlets and handbills both to promote and denounce their sudden popularity. Others seized the opportunity to serve the growing appetite for these newly discovered drinks by setting up coffee houses or encouraging one-upmanship in increasingly elaborate tea-drinking rituals. How did the rowdy and often comical initial reception of these drinks form the roots of today’s enduring caffeine culture? From the tale of the goatherd whose animals became frisky on coffee berries to a duchess with a goblet of poisoned chocolate, this book, illustrated with eighteenth-century satirical cartoons and early advertisements, tells the extraordinary story of our favourite hot drinks.

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Wilfred Owen is the poet of pity, the voice of the soldier maimed, blinded, traumatised and killed, not just in the Great War, but in all wars since, so resonant has his message become. Although he saw only five of his poems published in his lifetime, he left behind a portfolio of poetry and letters that created a powerful legacy. This generously illustrated book tells the story of Wilfred Owen’s life and work anew, from his birth in 1893 until his death one week before the Armistice on 4 November 1918. It chronicles Owen’s journey from a romantic youth, steeped in the poetry of Keats, to mature soldier awakened to the horrors of the Western Front. Drawing on rich archival material such as personal books, artefacts, family photographs and numerous manuscripts, the volume takes a fresh look at Owen’s apprenticeship and eventual mastery of poetry, giving a comprehensive view of the relationship between his lived experience and his writing. Those already familiar with or well-versed in Owen's work will find new material in this book, and those coming to Owen for the first time will enjoy a well researched, yet accessible, illustrated introduction to one of the twentieth century's greatest poets.

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The origins of the game of rugby and the codification of the rules which defined the game have been glorified in numerous legends, some of which are little more than sporting hagiography. Following on from the success of The Rules of Association Football 1863 and in time for the Rugby World Cup in September – October 2007, this book investigates the origins of the game of rugby and reproduces for the first time in a single book both the first rules of the game, drawn up at Rugby School in 1845 and the first rules of the Rugby Football Union, published in 1871. The introduction by Jed Smith, the curator of the Rugby Football Museum in Twickenham, will provide the first systematic exploration of the origin of the rules of the game and their development. Includes images from the unique manuscript held at the Rugby Football Union as well as nineteenth-century illustrations of the game as it was first played, capturing its early spirit and enthusiasm.

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Queen Elizabeth’s Book of Oxford was made in 1566 as a gift for Elizabeth I on the occasion of her first royal visit to Oxford. It was made, however, not just out of reverence for the Queen, but with the aim of getting her to endow the foundation of a new college. This sophisticated tour guide is presented as a dialogue between the Queen and her guide, in which the monarch asks questions which allow the guide to extol the generosity of the founders of each college they visit. The book failed. Queen Elizabeth founded no new institutions, but the exercise has left us with a fascinating insight into ideas of patronage and endowment in Elizabeth’s day. This unique manuscript contains a Latin verse account of the famous buildings of the University illustrated by a series of beautiful pen drawings, and conceived by its scholarly producers as an imaginary progress through these locations. The complete manuscript is now made available for the first time in actual-size facsimile with full-text translation, a commentary on the images, and an analytical essay which places the manuscript in its historical context.

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Shepherd Mead, bestselling author of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, came to live in England with his family in 1958. Six years later he published a satirical handbook for fellow Americans to guide them through the nuances of British culture and save them from blunders: ‘Write down now that pants always mean underpants’, he advises. ‘What you wear out in the open are trousers. Mistakes in this area can lead to nasty misunderstandings.’ Structured around the fictional experience of an American couple Peggy and Buckley Brash and their two children, the book covers such topics as ‘How to Dress in England’, ‘The Dream House and How to Rebuild it’, and ‘How to Live with the Upper Classes Without Having Any Money’. Through the Brash family’s encounters with the British and their bewildered conversations with each other as they attempt to interpret an alien way of life, Mead answers pertinent questions such as ‘Do English schools create sex madness?’ and ‘Is England really a pest hole?’ with quirky and affectionate humour. Written with the light touch and incisive wit which brought Mead such success with his earlier book, and deftly illustrated with dynamic cartoons, How to Live Like A Lord without Really Trying is packed with gems on Anglo-American differences and pithy advice which tells us as much about the British of the 1960s as it does about their visitors from across the Pond.

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The locations of Shakespeare’s plays range from Greece, Turkey and Syria to England, and they range in time from 1000 BC to the early Tudor age. He never set a play explicitly in Elizabethan London, which he and his audience inhabited, but always in places remote in space or time. How much did he – and his contemporaries – know about the foreign cities where the plays took place? What expectations did an audience have if the curtain rose on a drama which claimed to take place in Verona, Elsinore, Alexandria or ancient Troy? This fully illustrated book explores these questions, surveying Shakespeare’s world through contemporary maps, geographical texts, paintings and drawings. The results are intriguing and sometimes surprising. Why should Love’s Labour’s Lost be set in the Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre? Was the Forest of Arden really in Warwickshire? Why do two utterly different plays like The Comedy of Errors and Pericles focus strongly on ancient Ephesus? Where was Illyria? Did the Merry Wives have to live in Windsor? Why did Shakespeare sometimes shift the settings of the plays from those he found in his literary sources? It has always been easy to say that wherever the plays are set, Shakespeare was really writing about human psychology and human nature, and that the settings are irrelevant. This book takes a different view, showing that many of his locations may have had resonances which an Elizabethan audience would pick up and understand, and it shows how significant the geographical and historical background of the plays could be.

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Janet Stone’s photograph albums feature informal portraits from the mid-twentieth century of many of the leading cultural figures and personalities of the day. The wife of the distinguished engraver Reynolds Stone established a kind of literary salon in the idyllic setting of the Old Rectory at Litton Cheney in West Dorset. Here their wide circle of friends could visit, work and flourish as Janet photographed them. Included between these pages are portraits of Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, John Piper, Iris Murdoch, John Bayley, C. Day-Lewis, Jill Balcon, Kenneth Clark, Freya Stark, Siegfried Sassoon, Willa Muir, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Frances Partridge as well as Janet’s husband Reynolds and her family. Although not a technical photographer, Janet instinctively knew the best moment to click the shutter, thus often capturing her subjects off-guard and at their most informal. In this way we see picnics by the tennis court, John Bayley trying on a headscarf, or a young Daniel Day-Lewis dressed up as a knight. Others are portrayed reading or relaxing in the gardens, drink in hand. These unique portraits give a beguiling insight into a special set of circumstances: an idyllic place and time and a group of people drawn together by two contrasting but complimentary personalities, the shy genius of Reynolds and the outgoing style and glamour of Janet Stone.

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Ralph Ayres was head cook at New College in the 1770s. This book is a fascinating insight into the eighteenth-century kitchen, a period of great interest to social and culinary historians, and includes recipes for famous dishes such as Quaking Pudding, and Oxford Sausages.

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A richly illustrated volume, which reproduces one of the finest collections of eighteenth-century ornithological art in its entirety.

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A highly illustrated book, which reveals the mysteries of writing through examinations of words and ideas that were edited out of renowned novels, poems and plays.

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In 2017, the Government’s attempt to trigger Article 50 and so leave the European Union resulted in a judgement by the Supreme Court, which stated that the Government was unentitled to do so without the consent of Parliament, directly citing the Bill of Rights in its judgement. Ironically, the Bill of Rights, enacted in 1689 to address abuses by the Crown, was successfully invoked in the twenty-first century to curb a perceived abuse by Government, acting in the name of the Crown. Passed shortly after the Glorious Revolution, the Bill sets out the balance of power between Parliament and the Crown, prohibiting the sovereign from levying taxes, recruiting troops or suspending laws without Parliamentary consent. Establishing Parliament as the ultimate source of power in the land and enshrining basic civil rights first set out in Magna Carta but subsequently abridged, the Bill document can justly claim to serve as the origin of Britain’s democracy. Published here with an introduction by Jonathan Sumption providing the historical context of the document and its influence over the centuries – particularly on the United States Bill of Rights – this edition shows how a number of the original clauses find renewed relevance in contemporary events.

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Garry Fabian Miller’s Dark Room is a photography book unlike any other. At its heart is the artist’s description of a life lived making pictures between the dark and the light, a deeply personal account woven against the history of photography from the moment of its birth in the 1830s to its decline, and some would say death, in the digital age almost two hundred years later. It is a memoir that reads at times like a manifesto, at others like a confession; a last testament to the dark room as both a site for the imagination, and a physical space for the alchemy that William Henry Fox Talbot once described as ‘a little bit of magic realised’. Dark Room charts Miller’s work over five decades, shifting from a camera-based practice in early career to the abstract picture making for which he has become internationally recognised, working without a camera to experiment with the possibilities of light as both medium and subject. At its core is the relationship with nature and place that has so sustained his way of life, and specifically with his home on Dartmoor and the cycle of daily walks that have been at the core of his practice for thirty years. The book also features an essay on Miller’s work by his friend the potter and writer Edmund de Waal and technical notes by Martin Barnes, senior photography curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

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