Search results for ""bodleian library""

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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This is the first facsimile publication of 'Martha Lloyd’s Household Book', the manuscript cookbook of Jane Austen’s closest friend. Martha’s notebook is reproduced in a colour facsimile section with complete transcription and detailed annotation. Introductory chapters discuss its place among other household books of the eighteenth century. Martha Lloyd befriended a young Jane Austen and later lived with Jane, her sister Cassandra and their mother at the cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, where Jane wrote or revised her novels. Martha later married into the Austen family. Her collection features recipes and remedies handwritten during a period of over thirty years and includes the only surviving recipes from Mrs Austen and Captain Francis Austen, Jane’s mother and brother. There are many connections between Martha’s book and Jane Austen’s writing, including white soup from 'Pride and Prejudice' and the author’s favourites – toasted cheese and mead. The family, culinary and literary connections detailed in the introductory chapters of this work give a fascinating perspective on the time and manner in which both women lived, thanks to this extraordinary artefact passed down through the Austen family.

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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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The art of being a good husband is not an easy one. This little guide was written for the middle classes of the 1930s who were reading one of the first modern self-help books. Illustrated with contemporary line-drawings, it contains advice by turns delightfully arcane and timelessly true, for example: Don’t squeeze the tube of toothpaste from the top instead of from the bottom. This is one of the small things of life that always irritates a careful wife. Don’t think that your wife has placed waste-paper baskets in the rooms as ornaments. Don’t tell your wife terminological inexactitudes, which are, in plain English, lies. A woman has wonderful intuition for spotting even minor departures from the truth. Do cultivate the habit of coming down to breakfast with a smile. Remember that as the head of the house, it is your duty to see that everyone starts the day in an atmosphere of happiness. Don’t criticise the food at your own table when you are entertaining and especially refrain from doing so before the servants.

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‘Here I am once more in this Scene of Dissipation and vice, and I begin to find already my Morals corrupted.’ Much loved for the romantic plot lines of her novels and witty observations on relationships, Jane Austen was also a prolific letter writer and penned many acerbic, ironic and poignant commentaries on a range of subjects. To her sister Cassandra she wrote with candid humour about the effects of the Peninsular War, on her dislike of parties and social obligations, and about her impressions of London. Her characters speak often, sometimes with bitter sarcasm, of women’s inequality, ageing and the disappointments of marriage. Drawing together fifty quotations from Jane Austen’s letters and novels with vibrant illustrations which illuminate everyday aspects of life in the Georgian era, this beautifully produced volume is the perfect gift for Janeites everywhere.

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Featuring some of the most ferocious and humorous book curses ever inscribed, this is a lively and engaging introduction to the history and development of bookish maledictions.

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A beautiful cloth-bound edition of William Blake's Songs of Innocence, delicately illustrated with his exquisite designs, and accompanied by an introduction to his life and work.

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Introduced by bestselling author Nick Hornby, this hilarious anthology of the funniest bits' from Dickens' novels is illustrated throughout with humorous line drawings from early editions.

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The Geoffrey Chaucer of this book is not the Father of English Literature that you think you know. In this wide-ranging collection of essays you will find wartime Chaucer, postcolonial Chaucer, feminist Chaucer, misogynist Chaucer, radical Chaucer and conservative Chaucer, among many other interpretations. Featuring beautiful illustrations of early manuscripts and rare editions, Chaucer Here and Now gives a picture of how varied adaptations of and responses to his work have been, from fifteenth- century scribes who finished off incomplete tales, through early printers who constructed Chaucer as the Father of the Nation, to contemporary postcolonial writers such as Zadie Smith. The book moves through years of censorship, the creation of children’s Chaucer, Protestant Chaucer and imperial Chaucer – and the travels of Chaucer all around the world. It also explores Chaucer on film and Chaucer in the present moment. Today’s creative responses follow in a line of irreverent, partial responses that we can trace back to Chaucer’s very first readers and editors, showing that Chaucer is available for every here and now to remake, rework and reinvent.

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The Kennicott Bible is among the most celebrated Hebrew Bibles that survive from the Middle Ages. Originating from La Coruña in northern Spain, it features lavish carpet pages, gold leaf silhouettes and abundant marginal decorations. This extraordinary manuscript is a treasure chest of history, culture, devotion, art and cross- cultural collaboration. The story of its survival is a remarkable one and its sumptuous images have delighted readers since its creation in 1476. This book features a collection of all of the decorated pages from this stunning manuscript – accompanied by four chapters authored by experts in the fields of Bible study, book history and medieval Jewish art. They discuss the main themes from several perspectives, including the Hebrew text of the Bible, the scribe who created the pages, the layout and palaeography, and the illuminator who produced the decoration and its imagery. There is also an analysis of the early medieval commentary on the Old Testament, the Masorah. Richly illustrated throughout, this beautiful book makes available the key pages from a treasure of Jewish book art together with the latest scholarship on its origins, provenance and creation.

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In 1922, as Egypt became an independent nation, the tomb of the young king Tutankhamun was discovered at Luxor, the first known intact royal burial from ancient Egypt. The excavation of the small but crowded tomb by Howard Carter and his team generated enormous media interest and was famously photographed by Harry Burton. These photographs, along with letters, plans, drawings and diaries, are part of an archive created by the excavators and presented to the Griffith Institute, University of Oxford after Carter’s death. These historic images and records present a vivid and first-hand account of the discovery, of the spectacular variety of the king’s burial goods and of the remarkable work that went into documenting and conserving them. The archive enables a nuanced and inclusive view of the complexities of both the ancient burial and the excavation, including often overlooked Egyptian members of the archaeological team. This selection of fifty key items by the staff of the Griffith Institute provides an accessible and authoritative overview of the archive, drawing on new research on the collection and giving an intimate insight into the records of one of the world’s most famous archaeological discoveries.

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Translation is at the centre of Christianity, scripturally, as reflected in the biblical stories of the tower of Babel, or of the apostles’ speaking in tongues after the Ascension, and historically, where arguments about it were dominant in Councils, such as those of Trent or the Second Vatican Council of 1962–64, which, it should be recalled, privileged the use of the vernacular in liturgy. The four texts edited here discuss the legitimacy of using the vernacular language for scriptural citation. This question in England became central to the perception of the followers of John Wyclif (sometimes known as Lollards): between 1409 and 1530 the use of English scriptures was severely impeded by the established church, and an episcopal licence was required for its possession or dissemination. The issue evidently aroused academic interest, especially in Oxford, where the first complete English translation seems to have originated. The three Latin works here survive complete each in a single manuscript: of these texts two, written by a Franciscan, William Butler, and by a Dominican, Thomas Palmer, are wholly hostile to translation. The third, the longest and most perceptive, edited here for the first time, emerges as written by a secular priest of impressive learning, Richard Ullerston; his other writings display his radical, but not unorthodox opinions. The only English work here is a Wycliffite adaptation of Ullerston’s Latin. The volume provides editions and modern translations of these four texts, together with a substantial introduction explaining their context and the implications of their arguments, and encouraging further exploration of the perceptions of the nature of language that are displayed there, many of which, and notably of Ullerston, are in advance of those of his contemporaries.

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Dressy men as a type of celebrity have played a distinctive part in the cultural – and even in the political – life of Britain over several centuries. But unlike the twenty-first-century hipster, the dandies of the British past provoked intense degrees of fascination and horror in their homeland and played an important role in British society from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. This book – illustrated with contemporary prints, portraits and caricatures – explores that social and cultural history through a focus on the macaroni, the dandy and the aesthete. The first was noted for his flamboyance, the second for his austere perfectionism and the third for his sexual perversity. All were highly controversial in their time, pioneering new ways of displaying and performing gender, as demonstrated by the impact of key figures such as Lord Hervey, George ‘Beau’ Brummell and Oscar Wilde. This groundbreaking study tells the scandalous story of fashionable men and their clothes as a reflection of changing attitudes not only to style but also to gender and sexuality.

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From its roots in ancient Greek herbal medicine, the popular spirit we now know as gin was established by the Dutch in the sixteenth century as a juniper-infused tincture to cure fevers. It gained notoriety during the London ‘gin craze’ in the eighteenth century before enjoying a recent resurgence and a profusion of new botanical flavourings. Garnished with sumptuous illustrations depicting the plants that tell the story of this complex and iconic drink, this enticing book delves into the botany of gin from root to branch. A diverse assortment of aromatic plants from around the world have been used in the production of gin over the course of several centuries. Each combination of botanicals yields a unique flavour profile that equates to more than the sum of its parts. Understanding the different types of formulation, and the main groups of plants used therein, is central to appreciating the drink’s complexities and subtleties. As this book’s extraordinary range of featured ingredients shows, gin is a quintessentially botanical beverage with a rich history like no other.

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The punctuation marks, mathematical symbols and glyphs which haunt the edges of our keyboards have evolved over many hundreds of years. They shape our understanding of texts, calculations and online interactions. Without these symbols all texts would run in endless unbroken lines of letters and numbers. Many hands and minds have created, refined and promulgated the symbols which give form to our written communication. Through individual entries discussing the story behind each example, 'Hyphens & Hashtags' reveals the long road many of these special characters have taken on their way into general use. In the digital age of communication, some symbols have gained an additional meaning or a new lease of life – the colon now doubles up as the eyes of a smiling face emoticon and the hashtag has travelled from obscurity to an essential component of social media. Alongside historical roots, this book also considers ever-evolving modern usage and uncovers those symbols which have now fallen out of fashion. 'Hyphens & Hashtags' casts a well-deserved spot-light on these stalwarts of typography whose handy knack for summing up a command or concept in simple shorthand marshals our sentences, clarifies a calculation or adds some much-needed emotion to our online interactions.

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Before the advent of commercial transatlantic flights in the early 1950s, the only way to travel between continents was by sea. In the golden age of ocean liners, between the late nineteenth century and the Second World War, shipping companies ensured their vessels were a home away from home, providing entertainment, dining, sleeping quarters and smoking lounges to accommodate passengers of all ages and budgets, for voyages that could last as long as three months. Secrets of the Great Ocean Liners leads the reader through each of the stages – and secrets – of ocean liner travel, from booking a ticket and choosing a cabin to shore excursions, dining, on-board games, social events, romances, and disembarking on arrival. Additional chapters disclose wartime voyages and disasters at sea. The shipping companies produced glamorous brochures, sailing schedules, voyage logs, passenger lists, postcards and menus, all of which help us to savour the challenges, etiquette and luxury of ocean liner travel. Diaries, letters and journals written on board also reveal a host of behind-the-scenes secrets and fascinating insights into the experience of travelling by sea. This book dives into a vast, unique collection to reveal the scandals, glamour, challenges and tragedies of ocean liner travel.

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In the seventeenth century, even the most elaborate and fashionable gardens had areas set aside for growing herbs, fruit, vegetables and flowers for domestic use, while those of more modest establishments were vital to the survival of the household. This was also a period of exciting introductions of plants from overseas. Using manuscript household manuals, recipe books and printed herbals, this book takes the reader on a tour of the productive garden and of the various parts of the house – kitchens and service rooms, living rooms and bedrooms – to show how these plants were used for cooking and brewing, medicines and cosmetics, in the making and care of clothes, and finally to keep rooms fresh, fragrant and decorated. Recipes used by seventeenth-century households for preparations such as flower syrups, snail water and wormwood ale are also included. A brief herbal gives descriptions of plants that are familiar today, others not so well known, such as the herbs used for dyeing and brewing, and those that held a particular cultural importance in the seventeenth century. Featuring exquisite coloured illustrations from John Gerard’s herbal of 1597 as well as prints, archival material and manuscripts, this book provides an intriguing and original focus on the domestic history of Stuart England.

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Every map tells a story. Some provide a narrative for travellers, explorers and surveyors or offer a visual account of changes to people’s lives, places and spaces, while others tell imaginary tales, transporting us to fictional worlds created by writers and artists. In turn, maps generate more stories, taking users on new journeys in search of knowledge and adventure. Drawing on the Bodleian Library’s outstanding map collection and covering almost a thousand years, 'Talking Maps' takes a new approach to map-making by showing how maps and stories have always been intimately entwined. Including such rare treasures as a unique map of the Mediterranean from the eleventh-century Arabic 'Book of Curiosities', al-Sharīf al-Idrīsī’s twelfth-century world map, C.S. Lewis’s map of Narnia, J.R.R. Tolkien’s cosmology of Middle-earth and Grayson Perry’s twenty-first-century tapestry map, this fascinating book analyses maps as objects that enable us to cross sea and land; as windows into alternative and imaginary worlds; as guides to reaching the afterlife; as tools to manage cities, nations, even empires; as images of environmental change; and as digitized visions of the global future. By telling the stories behind the artefacts and those generated by them, 'Talking Maps' reveals how each map is not just a tool for navigation but also a worldly proposal that helps us to understand who we are by describing where we are.

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Since this handbook was first published in 1994, interest in the book as a material object, and in the ways in which books have been owned, read and used, has burgeoned. Now established as a standard reference work, this book has been revised and expanded with a new set of over 200 colour illustrations, updated bibliographies and extended international coverage of libraries and online resources. It covers the history and understanding of inscriptions, bookplates, ink and binding stamps, mottoes and heraldry, and describes how to identify owners and track down books from particular collections via library and sale catalogues. Each section features an evaluated bibliography listing further sources, both online and in print. Illustrated examples of the many kinds of ownership evidence which can be found in books are also shown throughout. Relevant to anyone seeking to identify previous owners of books, or trace private libraries, this title will also support the work of all book historians interested in the history of reading or the use of books and in the book as a material object. An essential handbook for anyone working in provenance research.

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The (very) hungry goat has a big appetite which gets him into all kinds of adventures. He’ll eat anything, from pigs swill to frying pans and even barbed wire. As a result he grows fatter and fatter until one day he gobbles up something that sends him on the biggest adventure of all. Abner Graboff’s timeless illustrations bring this greedy animal to life in a comic rhyming tale for younger children.

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Martin Lister, royal physician and fellow of the Royal Society, was an extraordinarily prolific natural historian with an expertise in shells and molluscs. Disappointed with the work of established artists, Lister decided to teach his daughters, Susanna and Anna, how to illustrate the specimens he studied. The sisters became so skilled at this that Lister entrusted them with his great work, 'Historiæ Conchyliorum', assembled between 1685 and 1692. This first comprehensive study of conchology consisted of over 1,000 copperplates of shells and molluscs collected from around the world. 'Martin Lister and his Remarkable Daughters' reconstructs the creation of this masterwork, from the identification of the original shells to the drawings themselves, and from the engraved copperplates to the draft prints and final books. Susanna and Anna portrayed the shells not only as curious and beautiful objects, but also as specimens of natural history rendered with sensitivity and keen scientific empiricism. Beautiful in their own right, these illustrations and engravings reveal the early techniques behind scientific illustration together with the often unnoticed role of women in the scientific revolution.

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‘Invention … does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos’ – Mary Shelley In the 200 years since its first publication, the story of Frankenstein’s creation during stormy days and nights at Byron’s Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva has become literary legend. In this book, Daisy Hay returns to the objects and manuscripts of the novel’s genesis in order to assemble its story anew. Frankenstein was inspired by the extraordinary people surrounding the eighteen-year-old author and by the places and historical dramas that formed the backdrop of her youth. Featuring manuscripts, portraits, illustrations and artefacts, The Making of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein explores the novel’s time and place, its people, the relics of its long afterlife and the notebooks in which it was created. Hay strips Frankenstein back to its constituent parts revealing an uneven novel written by a young woman deeply engaged in the process of working out what she thought about the pressing issues of her time: science, politics, religion, slavery, maternity, the imagination, creativity and community. This is a compelling and innovative biography of the novel for all those fascinated by its essential, brilliant chaos.

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Pronunciation governs our regional and social identity more powerfully than any other aspect of spoken language. No wonder, then, that it has attracted most attention from satirists. In this intriguing book, David Crystal shows how our feelings about pronunciation today have their origins in the way our Victorian predecessors thought about the subject, as revealed in the pages of the satirical magazine, Punch. In the sixty years between its first issue in 1841 and the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, jokes about the fashions affecting English usage provide one of Punch's most fruitful veins of humour, from the dropped aitches of the Cockney accent to the upper-class habit of dropping the final ‘g’ (huntin’ and fishin’). For 'We Are Not Amused', David Crystal has examined all the issues during the reign of Queen Victoria and brought together the cartoons and articles that poked fun at the subject of pronunciation, adding a commentary on the context of the times, explaining why people felt so strongly about accents, and identifying which accents were the main source of jokes. The collection brings to light a society where class distinction ruled, and where the way you pronounced a word was seen as a sometimes damning index of who you were and how you should be treated. It is a fascinating, provocative and highly entertaining insight into our on-going amusement at the subject of how we speak.

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Who has fallen into the rain puddle? Is it plump hen, turkey gobbler, curly sheep or beautiful fat pig? When all the animals peer into the puddle at the same time, they see the entire farmyard underwater. Off they run to get help. Meanwhile, the hot sun shines down and wise owl chuckles to himself. This charming tale – ideal for reading out loud – captures perfectly the wonder of discovering the outside world for the first time.

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Little Jonny ponders the meaning of colours as he explores the landscape. He dips his toes in a blue brook, picks purple flowers, digs brown earth and finds an enormous orange pumpkin. Finally yellow sunlight and the black night show him when it is time to get up and when it is time to go to sleep. The vibrant primary colours of Vladimir Bobri’s illustrations, together with a simple narrative, which follows the natural rhythm of the seasons, make this a stunning and enduring colours book for young children.

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For centuries, volcanic eruptions have captured our imaginations. Whether as signposts to an underworld, beacons to ancient mariners, or as an extraordinary manifestation of the natural world, volcanoes have intrigued many people, who have left records of their encounters in letters, reports and diaries and through sketches and illustrations. This book tells the stories of volcanic eruptions around the world, using original illustrations and first-hand accounts to explore how our understanding of volcanoes has evolved through time. Written accounts include Pliny’s description of the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius, stories recounted by seventeenth-century sea-farers, and reports of expeditions made by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century natural historians, including Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin. Illustrations range from fragments of scrolls, buried in the great eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii, to Athanasius Kircher’s extraordinarily detailed sketches, made in the seventeenth century, to the spectacular London sunsets caused by Krakatoa’s eruption in 1883. They also include the first photograph of a volcanic eruption and twenty-first-century imaging of Santorini. These varied and compelling accounts enrich our perspective on current studies of volcanoes and challenge us to think about how we might use our contemporary understanding of volcanology to prepare for the next big eruption.

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In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, historical subjects became some of the most popular topics for stage dramas of all kinds on both sides of the Atlantic. This collection of essays examines a number of extraordinary theatrical works in order to cast light on their role in shaping a popular interpretation of historical events. The medium of drama ensured that the telling of these histories – the French Revolution and the American War of Independence, for example, or the travels of Captain Cook and Christopher Columbus – were brought to life through words, music and spectacle. The scale of the productions was often ambitious: a water tank with model floating ships was deployed at Sadler’s Wells for the staging of the Siege of Gibraltar, and another production on the same theme used live cannons which set fire to the vessels in each performance. This illustrated volume, researched and written by experts in the field, explores contemporary theatrical documents (playbills, set designs, musical scores) and images (paintings, prints and illustrations) in seeking to explain what counted as history and historical truth for the writers, performers and audiences of these plays. In doing so it debates the peculiar contradictions of staging history and re-examines some spectacular box office hits.

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