Search results for ""Bodleian Library""

Which is the smallest book in the Bodleian Library? Who complained when their secret pen name was revealed in the library’s catalogue? How many miles of shelving are there in the Book Storage Facility? What is the story behind the library’s refusal to lend a book to King Charles I? And, what is fasciculing? The answers to these questions and many more can be found inside this intriguing miscellaneous collection of curious facts and stories about the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Home to more than 12 million books and a vast array of treasures including the Gutenberg bible, J.R.R. Tolkien’s hand-painted watercolours for 'The Hobbit', Shakespeare’s First Folio and four thirteenth-century copies of Magna Carta, the Bodleian Library is one of the most magnificent libraries in the world with a fascinating history. 'Bodleianalia' delights in uncovering some of the lesser known facts about Britain’s oldest university library. Through a combination of lists, statistics, and bitesize nuggets of information, it reveals many of the quirks of fate, eccentric characters, and remarkable events which have contributed to the making of this renowned institution. The perfect book for trivia-lovers and bibliophiles, it also offers readers a behind-the-scenes peek into the complex workings of a modern, world-class library in the twenty-first century.

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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.

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‘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.

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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.

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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. 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.

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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.

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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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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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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.

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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.

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'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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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'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.

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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.

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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.

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'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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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’.

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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’.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Veronica the hippopotamus lives with her large family on the cool muddy river bank, swimming in its clear waters. But she is not happy. She dreams of becoming a conspicuous hippopotamus, even perhaps, a famous one, noticed by everyone. So she sets off, looking for adventure. In the city she discovers that there are many confusing rules about how you can move around, where you can sleep and what you can eat, and that police stations are not made with hippopotamuses in mind. Will she find her way back to her safe, muddy home? And will her dream of becoming a conspicuous hippopotamus ever be realized?

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This beautiful book reproduces eighteenth-century naturalist and artist Mark Catesby's stunning illustrations of flora and fauna from North America and the Caribbean.

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A collection of essays examining the spread of books in Jewish vernacular languages and Hebrew characters, offering an extraordinary insight into the linguistic richness of Jewish life.

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Twenty historical journeys, routes and adventures followed through the maps that made them.

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The First Folio – the celebrated collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays – was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death. It was compiled by John Heminge and Henry Condell, both actors in Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, and originally titled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. Many of the plays – including Macbeth, The Tempest and Twelfth Night – do not survive in any earlier printed versions. To mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, this high-quality journal reproduces the title pages of a selection of plays, together with the famous frontispiece featuring Shakespeare’s portrait, an engraving by Martin Droeshout. Produced in hardback with ruled pages, foiled spine, gilt page edges and ribbon marker, this is an inspirational gift for Shakespeare fans and budding writers alike.

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Medieval England was full of books, many times the number that have survived. The great moment of loss was when the country’s religious houses were suppressed by King Henry VIII and their libraries scattered and destroyed. Twentieth-century scholarship has been enterprising in establishing what survives and in discovering what libraries once held. To understand that evidence, and to be able to reconstruct the transmission of culture in the Middle Ages, we need to employ with care the evidence of the surviving books and what medieval library catalogues can tell us about these lost collections. Libraries and Books in Medieval England paints a new picture of the circulation of books, from the totality of the available evidence. It seeks to move away from the modern conceptualization of the monastic library as the only venue for medieval book provision, and to broaden awareness of the wider book economy, including private ownership and the birth of the book trade. The result, by one of the country’s leading experts and based on his Lyell Lectures in the University of Oxford, is an unparalleled work offering a new view of the field.

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'Long Live Freedom!' — Hans Scholl's last words before his execution The White Rose (die Weiße Rose) resistance circle was a group of students and a professor at the University of Munich who in the early 1940s secretly wrote and distributed anti-Nazi pamphlets. At its heart were Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf and Professor Kurt Huber, all of whom were executed in 1943 by the Nazi regime. The youngest among them was just twenty-one years old. This book outlines the story of the group and sets their resistance texts in political and historical context, including archival photographs. A series of brief biographical sketches, along with excerpts from letters and diaries, trace each member’s journey towards action against the National Socialist state. The White Rose resistance pamphlets are included in full, translated by students at the University of Oxford. These translations are the result of work by undergraduates around the same age as the original student authors, working together on texts, ideas and issues. This project reflects a crucial aspect of the White Rose: its collaborative nature. The resistance pamphlets were written collaboratively, and they could not have had the reach they did without being distributed by multiple individuals, defying Hitler through words and ideas. Today, the bravery of the White Rose lives on in film and literature and is commemorated not just in Munich but throughout Germany and beyond.

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Close-up photos of plump apricots, juicy mangoes, crisp lettuce … these are familiar to us all through cookery books and garden guides. But seeing fruit and vegetables as detailed art, viewed through eighteenth-century eyes, is something very different – and more interesting. Thanks to intrepid explorers and plant-hunters, Britain and the rest of Europe have long enjoyed a wide and wonderful array of fruit and vegetables. Some wealthy households even created orangeries and glasshouses for tender exotics and special pits in which to raise pineapples, while tomatoes, sweetcorn and runner beans from the New World expanded the culinary repertoire. This wealth of choice attracted interest beyond the kitchen and garden. In the 1730s, a prosperous Bavarian apothecary produced the first volume of a comprehensive A to Z of all available plants, meticulously documented, and lavishly illustrated by botanical artists. 'A Cornucopia of Fruit & Vegetables' is a glimpse into his world. It features exquisite illustrations of the edible plants in his historic treasury, allowing us to enjoy the sight of swan-necked gourds and horned lemons, smile at silkworms hovering over mulberries and delight at the quirkiness of ‘strawberry spinach’ … a delicious medley of garden produce and exotics that will capture the imagination of gardeners and art-lovers alike.

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What can be found in the Vatican’s Secret Archive? How many books did Charles Darwin’s library aboard the Beagle hold? Which library is home to a colony of bats? Bursting with potted histories, quirky facts and enlightening lists, this book explores every aspect of the library, celebrating not only these remarkable institutions but also the individuals behind their awe-inspiring collections. From the ancient library at Alexandria to the Library of Congress in Washington DC, A Library Miscellany explores institutions both old and new, from the university library to that of the humble village. It opens the door to unusual collections such as herbaria, art libraries, magic libraries and even the library of smells, and charts the difficulties of cataloguing books deemed to be subversive, heretical, libellous or obscene. Packed with unusual facts and statistics, this is the perfect volume for library enthusiasts, bibliophiles and readers everywhere.

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Fountain-Pens - The Super-Pen for Our Super-Men Ladies! Learn To Drive! Your Country Needs Women Drivers! Do you drink German water? When Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, companies wasted no time in seizing the commercial opportunities presented by the conflict. There was no radio or television. The only way in which the British public could get war news was through newspapers and magazines, many of which recorded rising readerships. Advertising became a new science of sales, growing increasingly sophisticated both in visual terms and in its psychological approach. This collection of pictorial advertisements from the Great War reveals how advertisers were given the opportunity to create new markets for their products and how advertising reflected social change during the course of the conflict. It covers a wide range of products, including trench coats, motor-cycles, gramophones, cigarettes and invalid carriages, all bringing an insight into the preoccupations, aspirations and necessities of life between 1914 and 1918. Many advertisements were aimed at women, be it for guard-dogs to protect them while their husbands were away, or soap and skin cream for ‘beauty on duty’. At the same time, men’s tailoring evolved to suit new conditions. Aquascutum advertised ‘Officers’ Waterproof Trench Coats’ and one officer, writing in the Times in December 1914, advised others to leave their swords behind but to take their Burberry coat. Sandwiched between the formality of the Victorian era and the hedonism of the 1920s, these charged images provide unexpected sources of historical information, affording an intimate glimpse into the emotional life of the nation during the First World War.

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When American troops arrived in Paris to help maintain order at the end of the Second World War they were, at first, received by the local population with a sense of euphoria. However, the French soon began to resent the Americans for their display of wealth and brashness, while the US soldiers found the French and their habits irritating and incomprehensible. To bridge the cultural divide, the American generals came up with an innovative solution. They commissioned a surprisingly candid book which collated the GIs’ ‘gripes’ and reproduced them with answers aimed at promoting understanding of the French and their country. The ‘gripes’ reveal much about American preconceptions: ‘The French drink too much’, ‘French women are immoral’, ‘The French drive like lunatics!’, ‘The French don’t bathe’, ‘The French aren’t friendly’ are just some of the many complaints. Putting the record straight, the answers cover topics as diverse as night-clubs, fashion, agriculture and sanitation. They also offer an unusual insight into the reality of daily life immediately after the war, evoking the shortage of food and supplies, the acute poverty and the scale of the casualties and destruction suffered by France during six years of conflict. Illustrated with delightfully evocative cartoons and written in a direct, colloquial style, this gem from 1945 is by turns amusing, shocking and thought-provoking in its valiant stand against prejudice and stereotype.

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The First World War was unique in being fought largely in trenches. Men ate, slept, fought, played, sang, prayed, and died in the trenches. This book brings together a collection of postcards which portray this strange subterranean world in its various manifestations. The cards have been selected to show how life progressed from day to day in and out of the trenches. We see wounded men smiling obligingly for the camera; others appear to be suffering from the onslaught of boredom. Some take part in a mock party with very meagre provisions. One image shows a group of men kneeling to receive communion before going into battle. The tone of postcards encompasses the range of human experience, from sombre realism to light-hearted humour. There is also the soldier’s good-natured lightly smutty card. This is a fascinating insight into the everyday lives and behaviour of the men who fought one of the most gruesome wars in history.

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To judge by the worldwide success of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Poirot, it is not only the Anglo-Saxons who have an appetite for mystery and mayhem. Talking about the craft of detective writing and sharing her personal thoughts and observations on one of the most popular and enduring forms of literature, P.D. James examines the challenges, achievements and potential of a genre which has fascinated her for more than fifty years as a novelist. From the tenant of 221b Baker Street to the Village Priest from Cubhole in Essex, from the Golden Age of detective writing between the wars to the achievements of the present and a glimpse at the future, P.D. James explores the metamorphosis of a genre which has gripped and entertained the popular imagination like no other type of novel. Written by the author widely regarded as the queen of the detective novel, this book is sure to appeal to all aficionados of crime fiction.

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