Search results for ""The Bodleian Library""

The first-ever print edition of a play by one of the first women playwrights in England. E. Polwhele (c. 1651-c. 1691) was one of the first women to write for the stage in Restoration London. This book presents the first printed edition of Polwhele’s first play, The Faithful Virgins, which until now has existed only in an unsigned manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. A tragicomedy apparently performed in London by the Duke's Company ca. 1669–1671, The Faithful Virgins is altogether different in tone from Polwhele's later, better-known prose comedy, The Frolicks; or, The Lawyer Cheated (1671). The introduction to this modern-spelling edition of The Faithful Virgins discusses the play in terms of radical changes in English stage practices following the restoration of the monarchy after England’s civil war and situates Polwhele’s play within the social and political life of seventeenth-century London.

Read more less

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. Weddings captures all the stages of the ceremony, with preparations, wedding vehicles and their various casts of people in lively scenes at church and home. 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.

Read more less

Part of an exciting series of sturdy, square-box 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles from Flame Tree, featuring powerful and popular works of art. This new jigsaw will satisfy your need for a challenge, with the beautiful Bodleian Library: High Jinks Bookshelves. This 1000 piece jigsaw is intended for adults and children over13 years. Not suitable for children under 3 years due to small parts. Finished Jigsaw size 735 x 510mm/29 x 20 ins. Now includes an A4 poster for reference.Late 19th- and early 20th- century children's books are the subjects of this print from the Bodleian Libraries. Richly illustrated covers in bright reds, blues and greens adorn the rows of shelves, featuring titles such as Little Miss Sunshine, No Ordinary Girl and A Girl of High Adventure. They are all light-hearted tales with brave female characters that can be found within the Bodleian Library, which is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. During

Read more less

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.

Read more less

The newly revised Pevsner guide to the buildings of Oxford and South-East Oxfordshire This updated guide addresses half a century of change and development since the previous edition, including a wealth of ambitious new buildings for the University and its colleges. Familiar buildings such as the Bodleian Library and the Radcliffe Camera are reinterpreted, and the many renovations and extensions are described and assessed. Oxford’s commercial buildings, suburbs, and houses are also explored in depth, including much that is published here for the first time. The county area extends from the outskirts of Oxford to Henley-on-Thames, following the historic Thameside boundary of Oxfordshire and taking in the hills of the southern Chilterns. Here the new volume includes fresh accounts of major country houses such as Nuneham Courtenay and Thame Park, new assessments of church restorations, furnishings, and stained glass, more inclusive coverage of commercial buildings in the towns and a fuller selection of vernacular and rural buildings across the whole of this attractive and rewarding part of England.

Read more less

Provincial towns in Britain grew in size and importance in the eighteenth century. Ports such as Glasgow and Liverpool greatly expanded, while industrial centres such as Birmingham and Manchester flourished. Market towns outside London developed as commercial centres or as destinations offering spa treatments as in Bath, horse racing in Newmarket or naval services in Portsmouth. Containing over 100 images of towns in England, Wales and Scotland, this book draws on the extensive Gough collection in the Bodleian Library. Contemporary prints and drawings provide a powerful visual record of the development of the town in this period, and finely drawn prospects and maps – made with greater accuracy than ever before – reveal their early development. This book also includes perceptive observations from the journals and letters of collector Richard Gough (1735–1809), who travelled throughout the country on the cusp of the industrial age.

Read more less

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. Readers shows people reading (or pretending to read) a wide variety of material from the Bible to Film Fun, either in the photographer’s studio, in their own home or holidaying on the beach. 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.

Read more less

Discovered in the stacks of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, this authentic work of 17th-century English magic has been meticulously transcribed and translated by Daniel Harms and illustrated by James R. Clark, the team that created the bestselling Book of Oberon (9780738743349). With a comprehensive introduction, annotations, and more than 100 figures and illustrations, this beautifully reconstructed historical work is filled with never-before published rituals for calling forth demons, fairies, elementals, and other spiritual beings. This elegantly bound book provides new insights into a fascinating tradition, where a sorcerer or cunning-man was paid to perform magic for uncovering theft, healing, combating witchcraft, hunting for treasure, or for having a spirit fulfil one s commands. As an additional feature, this deluxe edition retains the red type found in the original manuscript to emphasise key words.

Read more less

Born in Qatar in the early seventh century AD, Isaac of Niniveh (also known as Isaac the Syrian) was the author of a number of very fine writings on the spiritual life which have proved very influential, especially in monastic circles, over the centuries. The first part of his writings was translated into Greek in the ninth century at the monastery of St Saba in Palestine, and thence it found its way into many other languages (including in the twentieth century, Japanese). In 1983 a complete manuscript of the second part, hitherto only partially known, was discovered in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and chapters IV-XLI of these new texts are edited and translated here for the first time. The remaining chapters I-III, which include four sets of Kephalaia on spiritual knowledge, will be published subsequently in CSCO by P. Bettiolo.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

The University Archives was established in 1634. Based in the Bodleian Library, it is the institutional archive of Oxford University, holding records which span just over 800 years, documenting the University’s activities and decisions throughout that time. Fifty-two documents and objects from the University Archives are showcased here, telling a wide range of intriguing stories about the University. Arranged chronologically, they deal with the University’s relations with governments and monarchs; the effects of war; teaching and student behaviour; the University’s buildings and institutions; widening access to university education; and the impact it has had on the city of Oxford and its people. Also documented here are fascinating insights into the University’s erstwhile police force, a hidden time capsule, brewing licences, brawls and illicit steeplechasing. The items – all illustrated – also often unlock human stories to which we can relate today, opening a window on the individuals (from University, city, or even further afield) whose lives the University has touched, including people who would perhaps not be expected to feature in a history of Oxford University, but whose stories are preserved forever in its magnificent archives.

Read more less

David Oppenheim (1664–1736), chief rabbi of Prague in the early eighteenth century, built an unparalleled collection of Jewish books and manuscripts, all of which have survived and are housed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. His remarkable collection testifies to the myriad connections Jews maintained with each other across political borders, and the contacts between Christians and Jews that books facilitated. From contact with the great courts of European nobility to the poor of Jerusalem, his family ties brought him into networks of power, prestige, and opportunity that extended across Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Containing works of law and literature alongside prayer and poetry, his library served rabbinic scholars and communal leaders, introduced old books to new readers, and functioned as a unique source of personal authority that gained him fame throughout Jewish society and beyond. The story of his life and library brings together culture, commerce, and politics, all filtered through this extraordinary collection. Based on the careful reconstruction of an archive that is still visited by scholars today, Joshua Teplitsky’s book offers a window into the social life of Jewish books in early modern Europe.

Read more less

Gregory Doran's account of his quest to re-discover Cardenio, the lost play written by Shakespeare and John Fletcher. A thrilling act of literary detection that takes him from the Bodleian Library in Oxford, via Cervantes' Spain to the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. Fully illustrated throughout, Shakespeare’s Lost Play tells a fascinating story, which, like the play itself, will engross Shakespeare buffs and theatregoers alike. Doran’s much-praised production of Cardenio for the Royal Shakespeare Company marked the culmination of years spent searching for a famously 'lost’ play co-authored by William Shakespeare. In this book, Doran takes us with him on his quest to unearth every extant clue and then into the rehearsal room as he pieces together a play unseen since its first performance in 1613. The result, as the Guardian attested, is ‘an extraordinary and theatrically powerful piece, one that should both please audiences and keep academic scholars in work for years’.

Read more less

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

Read more less

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.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

The Wind in the Willows has its origins in the bedtime stories that Kenneth Grahame told to his son Alastair and then continued in letters (now held in the Bodleian Library) while he was on holiday. But the book developed into something much more sophisticated than this, as Peter Hunt shows. He identifies the colleagues and friends on whom Grahame is thought to have based the characters of Mole, Rat, Badger and Toad, and explores the literary genres of boating, caravanning and motoring books on which the author drew. He also recounts the extraordinary correspondence surrounding the book’s first publication and the influence of two determined women – Elspeth Grahame and publisher’s agent Constance Smedley – who helped turn the book into the classic for children we know and love today, when it was almost entirely intended for adults. Generously illustrated with original drawings, fan letters (including one from President Roosevelt) and archival material, this book explores the mysteries surrounding one of the most successful works of children’s literature ever published.

Read more less

The less it is part of everyday life, the more the appeal of handwriting grows. This wonderful selection of treasures from the Bodleian Library introduces remarkable individuals through documents written by their own hands. From the second century BCE to the present, individual lives and relationships are illuminated through the writing that has been left behind. We see Elizabeth I attempting to win over her new stepmother, Alan Bennett working out the character of Mr Toad, Henry Moore advising soap and water for cleaning sculpture and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin balancing childcare with discovering the structure of penicillin. Here you will find letters, first drafts, autograph albums and hastily scribbled notes, fair copies, marked-up proofs and doodles. Divided into themed categories, the entries feature novelists Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Arthur Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler; scientists Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein; reformers Emmeline Pankhurst, Florence Nightingale and Mohandas Gandhi; and explorers Walter Ralegh, T.E. Lawrence and Patrick Leigh Fermor among many others. Each of these extraordinary people has passed on a manuscript or document with a fascinating story to tell.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

A delightful and often witty description of the Oxford colleges in the eighteenth century. Shepilinda's Memoirs of the City and University of Oxford is a light-hearted but valuable manuscript account of the Oxford colleges in 1738, written by a lively and engaging young woman who had a measure of social access to many of them. Elizabeth Sheppard (pen-name "Shepilinda") was accompanied on her visits by a friend and confidante with the nickname "Scrippy", for whom the resulting memoir and appended collection of poems are intended as a gift. Elizabeth clearly had a facility for getting people to talk to her quite freely, together with a quick grasp of the information she received; she also had a lively, sometimes mischievous, sense of humour. The work, frequently unflattering to the dons (the wife of one is described as "ever a Moving Dumpling"), is entertaining, informative, and also unusual, in that women's voices are rarely heard at that date. The Memoirs are presented here with anintroduction and notes, providing information on the people involved and setting them into context. Until his retirement GEOFFREY NEATE worked at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, with particular responsibility for computerising the catalogue entries for books published before 1920.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

When Marjory Wardrop joined her diplomat brother, Oliver, in Georgia in 1894, they found themselves witnessing the birth pangs of a modern nation. Recognising the significance of these transformative years, they actively participated in the work of Ilia Chavchavadze and other leaders of the independence movement, culminating in Georgia’s declaration of independence in 1918. Becoming increasingly fascinated by Georgian history and culture, the Wardrops gathered a significant collection of manuscripts dating from the eleventh to the twentieth century, including a seventeenth-century manuscript of Georgia’s national epic poem, ‘The Man in the Panther’s Skin’, which Marjory famously translated. A remarkable number of items in the collection, now housed at the Bodleian Library, illuminate an important aspect of medieval and modern Georgia. Through these items – manuscripts, royal charters, correspondence, notebooks and a draft of the 1918 declaration of Independence – Nikoloz Aleksidze narrates a history of Georgian literature and culture, from the importance of epic and folk tales, to the Georgian Church’s battle against persecution, to the political activism of women in Georgia at the end of the nineteenth century. Richly illustrated with rare and previously unpublished images from the collection, this book not only offers a unique insight into Georgian culture and political history and but also tells the remarkable story of an eccentric English diplomat and his talented sister, whose monument now stands outside the parliament building in Tbilisi

Read more less

A colourful showcase of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Inspired by Oxford’s unique architecture and historic university, over 50 artists have produced a unique collection of contemporary images illustrating all aspects of the city and surrounding area. Oxford is both a thriving city and a byword for one of the world’s best universities. Its ancient buildings are the wonder of the world, still used and inhabited by an energetic and passionate student community. From tightly-packed Cornmarket street catering for the shoppers of the busy city to Oxford’s lush riverside walks that provide an asylum from the bustle of everyday life, to traditional St Giles’s Fair and May Day that attract visitors from across Oxfordshire and beyond, this book represents them all, including: - Quirky hidden gems such as The Eagle and Child (the pub frequented by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis) and the many cafes of the Covered Market - Innovative representations of classic tourist sites: the Bodleian Library, the Radcliffe Camera, the Sheldonian Theatre, Christ Church College, Magdalen College and many more... - The Mini Car Plant and Cowley Road transformed into artworks There is so much to wonder at in this lovely book. Its enthusiasm reveals a passion for both contemporary art and the lovely city of Oxford. It will renew memories and inspire visits and revisits to all its haunts.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

Since its foundation in 1602, the Bodleian Library has acquired manuscripts, printed books, maps, music and ephemera in all languages, from all ages and from all corners of the globe. From this huge collection David Vaisey, former Bodley’s Librarian and Keeper of the University Archives, has selected over one hundred treasures that have a story to tell. Many of these treasures are well-loved around the world and include Jane Austen’s manuscript for The Watsons, Shelley’s notebooks, a map of Narnia illustrated by C.S. Lewis and the original Wind in the Willows manuscript. Others are known for their beauty and historical value, such as the thirteenth-century Douce Apocalypse, the Magna Carta and the Gutenberg Bible. Many items hold poignant stories, like the little book hand-written by the eleven-year-old girl who would later become Queen Elizabeth I, given as a New Year present in 1545 to the third of her stepmothers, Katherine Parr. Using a simple and accessible chronological structure, together with detailed illustrations, this bibliophile’s delight, now available in a stunning hardback edition, showcases the beauty and knowledge contained within the Bodleian Library’s renowned collections.

Read more less

Over the past 200 years, many thousands of undergraduates have been initiated into membership of Apollo – the Masonic lodge of the University of Oxford. These have included such diverse figures as Oscar Wilde, Osbert Lancaster, Samuel Reynolds Hole, Cecil Rhodes, Edward, Prince of Wales and his brother Leopold, Charles Canning, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Godfrey Elton and Roger Makins. Drawing on archives held in the Bodleian Library, this book is the first serious attempt to set the story of Apollo in the context of Oxford life and learning as well as its wider social and political diaspora. From the devastating numbers lost in the First and Second World Wars, as well as those decorated for bravery, to the significant number of Olympians who were members of the lodge, it also charts the lodge’s charitable work, its changes of location, social events and adaptation to twenty-first-century life in Oxford. Illustrated with archival material, portraits and Masonic treasures, this is history in a minor key, but a minor narrative with major implications, documenting the remarkable numbers of Oxford freemasons with distinguished careers in government, law, the army and the Church.

Read more less

This volume in the definitive edition of Thomas Traherne contains his best-known works, Centuries of Meditations and Select Meditations. Thomas Traherne (1637?-1674), a clergyman of the Church of England during the Restoration, was little known until the early twentieth century, when his poetry and Centuries of Meditations were first printed. There have beensince only miscellaneous publications of his poetry and devotional writings. The Works of Thomas Traherne brings together for the first time all Traherne's extant works, including his notebooks, in a definitive, printed edition. The six works in this volume are taken from two manuscripts. The first, held at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS Eng. th. e. 50), contains Centuries of Meditations; the other, held at the BeineckeRare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (Osborn MS b. 308), is comprised of three works by Traherne, Select Meditations and two brief untitled treatises, "Being a Lover of the world" and "The best principle whereby a man can Steer his course". It also includes two works by an unidentified writer, A Prayer for Ash Wednesday and A Meditation; neither work is of Traherne's making.

Read more less

Providing a sweeping millennium-plus history of the learned book in the West, John Willinsky puts current debates over intellectual property into context, asking what it is about learning that helped to create the concept even as it gave the products of knowledge a different legal and economic standing than other sorts of property. Willinsky begins with Saint Jerome in the fifth century, then traces the evolution of reading, writing, and editing practices in monasteries, schools, universities, and among independent scholars through the medieval period and into the Renaissance. He delves into the influx of Islamic learning and the rediscovery of classical texts, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the founding of the Bodleian Library before finally arriving at John Locke, whose influential lobbying helped bring about the first copyright law, the Statute of Anne of 1710. Willinsky's bravura tour through this history shows that learning gave rise to our idea of intellectual property while remaining distinct from, if not wholly uncompromised by, the commercial economy that this concept inspired, making it clear that today's push for marketable intellectual property threatens the very nature of the quest for learning on which it rests.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

This richly illustrated guide to the historical buildings of the Bodleian Library not only makes an attractive keepsake but is also packed with fascinating architectural details about one of the oldest libraries in Britain that has been in continuous use since the Middle Ages. Following a short introduction which tells the story of the founding of the Library by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1602, this book offers a succinct guide to the architectural styles, exquisite stone masonry and subsequent renovations of the renowned buildings of the Bodleian, situated in the heart of the University of Oxford. It also describes the involvement of famous architects such as Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor in designs and embellishments for these buildings. As well as giving the individual histories of Duke Humfrey’s Library, the Divinity School, Convocation House, the Schools Quadrangle, the Radcliffe Camera and the Clarendon Building, author Geoffrey Tyack also provides a guide to the intriguing statuary and carvings which adorn the buildings, and gives translations of the many Latin inscriptions which mark key moments in the library’s history. The 400-year narrative is brought up to date with a description of the development of the Weston Library, a state-of-the-art renovation of the New Bodleian Library, designed to house the Bodleian’s special collections in the twenty-first century.

Read more less

A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year. BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand, and look wonderful on a desk or table. PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list; robust ivory text paper, printed with lines; and when you need to collect other notes or scraps of paper the magnetic side flap keeps everything neat and tidy. ARTIST. The Bodleian Library is one of the oldest libraries in Europe and is the main research library of the University of Oxford. It holds over 13 million printed items and these book spines are just a few examples of the beautiful objects in the Library’s collection. THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Read more less

A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year. BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand and look wonderful on a desk or table. PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list; robust ivory text paper, printed with lines; and when you need to collect other notes or scraps of paper the magnetic side flap keeps everything neat and tidy. THE ARTIST. The Bodleian Library is one of the oldest libraries in Europe and is the main research library of the University of Oxford. It holds over 13 million printed items and these book spines are just a few examples of the beautiful objects in the Library’s collection. THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Read more less

A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year. BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand and look wonderful on a desk or table. PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list; robust ivory text paper, printed with lines; and when you need to collect other notes or scraps of paper the magnetic side flap keeps everything neat and tidy. THE ARTIST. The Bodleian Library is one of the oldest libraries in Europe and is the main research library of the University of Oxford. It holds over 13 million printed items and these book spines are just a few examples of the beautiful objects in the Library’s collection. THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Read more less

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.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

In the summer of 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, then eighteen years old, began to write the novel Frankenstein after she and her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley took part in a ghost-story competition at Lord Byron’s villa by Lake Geneva. Over the next nine months -- a period which saw their return to England in autumn 1816 and subsequent marriage -- she (with Percy) drafted the entire novel in a form materially different from the two standard editions of 1818 and 1831 which were based on a later fair copy. Until now, no one has been able to read what Mary Shelley herself initially wrote in this original draft of the novel. Going back to the unique draft manuscript of the text held in the Bodleian Library, Charles E. Robinson has teased out Percy Shelley’s amendments, isolating them from the story in Mary Shelley’s hand. Both texts – with and without Percy’s interventions – are presented in this edition, allowing us for the first time to read the story in Mary’s original hand and also to see how Percy edited his wife’s prose. The results are fascinating. We read a more rapidly paced novel that is arranged in different chapters. Above all, we hear Mary’s genuine voice which sounds to us more modern, more immediately colloquial than her husband’s learned, more polished style. To this day, Frankenstein remains the most popular work of science fiction. This edition promises to redefine the ways we read the story and perceive the act of its creation.

Read more less

A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the Slimline Journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year. BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand, and look wonderful on a desk or table. PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list and robust ivory text paper, printed with lines. THE ARTIST. The Bodleian Library, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. Since the doors first opened to scholars in 1602 many extensions and buildings have been added and together the Bodleian Libraries now house over 12 million printed items. THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Read more less

'The Bay Psalm Book' was the first book to be printed in North America, twenty years after the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers in Massachusetts. Now extremely rare – only eleven copies survive – it is also the most expensive book in the world, fetching over $14.2 million at auction. Worship in the ‘mother tongue’ and congregational hymns had become key tenets of Puritanism following the Reformation. New England Puritans were unhappy with contemporary translations of the Psalms and decided that they needed their own version, which would better represent their beliefs. A team of writers in the Massachusetts Bay settlement, including John Cotton and Richard Mather, set about translating the psalms into English from the original Hebrew, and setting the lyrics to a metre so that they could easily be sung in congregation. The resulting translation, 'The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre,' was published in 1640 on a printing press brought over from Surrey. It became known as the Bay Psalm Book after the name of the colony that was home to its translators. Every page of this extraordinarily influential book, including the translators’ preface, is faithfully reproduced here, complete with original printer’s errors and binding marks. An introduction by Diarmaid MacCulloch sets the book in context and explains how this unassuming Psalter came to have a profound effect on the course of the Protestant faith in America. This edition is made from the original held at the Bodleian Library, one of the best preserved of the surviving copies, despite its accidental submersion in the river Thames in 1731, when the barge carrying it to Oxford unexpectedly sank.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

The Savilian Professorships in Geometry and Astronomy at Oxford University were founded in 1619 by Sir Henry Savile, distinguished scholar and Warden of Merton College. The Geometry chair, in particular, is the earliest University-based mathematics professorship in England, predating the first Cambridge equivalent by about sixty years. To celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of the geometry chair, a meeting was held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the talks presented at this meeting have formed the basis for this fully edited and lavishly illustrated book, which outlines the first 400 years of Oxford's Savilian Professors of Geometry. Starting with Henry Briggs, the co-inventor of logarithms, this volume proceeds via such figures as John Wallis, a founder member of the Royal Society, and Edmond Halley, via the 19th-century figures of Stephen Rigaud, Baden Powell, Henry Smith, and James Joseph Sylvester, to the 20th century and the present day. Oxford's Savilian Professors of Geometry: The First 400 Years assumes no mathematical background, and should therefore appeal to the interested general reader with an interest in mathematics and the sciences. It should also be of interest to anyone interested in the history of mathematics or of the development of Oxford and its namesake university. To all of these audiences it offers portraits of mathematicians at work and an accessible exposition of historical mathematics in the context of its times.

Read more less

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.

Read more less

A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year. BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand and look wonderful on a desk or table. PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list; robust ivory text paper, printed with lines; and when you need to collect other notes or scraps of paper the magnetic side flap keeps everything neat and tidy. THE ARTIST. The Bodleian Library is one of the oldest libraries in Europe and is the main research library of the University of Oxford. It holds over 13 million printed items and these book spines are just a few examples of the beautiful objects in the Library’s collection. THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Read more less

A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year. BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand and look wonderful on a desk or table. PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list; robust ivory text paper, printed with lines; and when you need to collect other notes or scraps of paper the magnetic side flap keeps everything neat and tidy. THE ARTIST. The Bodleian Library is one of the oldest libraries in Europe and is the main research library of the University of Oxford. It holds over 13 million printed items and these book spines are just a few examples of the beautiful objects in the Library’s collection. THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Read more less

This book explores the stories behind seventy-five extraordinary maps. It includes unique treasures such as the fourteenth-century Gough Map of Great Britain, exquisite portolan charts made in the fifteenth century, the Selden Map of China – the earliest example of Chinese merchant cartography – and an early world map from the medieval Islamic Book of Curiosities, together with more recent examples of fictional places drawn in the twentieth century, such as C.S. Lewis’s own map of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien’s map of Middle Earth. As well as the works of famous mapmakers Mercator, Ortelius, Blaeu, Saxton and Speed, the book also includes lesser known but historically significant works: early maps of the Moon, of the transit of Venus, hand-drawn estate plans and early European maps of the New World. There are also some surprising examples: escape maps printed on silk and carried by pilots in the Second World War in case of capture on enemy territory; the first geological survey of the British Isles showing what lies beneath our feet; a sixteenth-century woven tapestry map of Worcestershire; a map plotting outbreaks of cholera and a jigsaw map of India from the 1850s. Behind each of these lies a story, of intrepid surveyors, ambitious navigators, chance finds or military victories. Drawing on the unique collection in the Bodleian Library, these stunning maps range from single cities to the solar system, span the thirteenth to the twenty-first century and cover most of the world.

Read more less