Bodleian Libraries

Inspiring collections and beautiful libraries. Facilitating world-class research at the University of Oxford. The Bodleian Libraries is the largest university library system in the UK and include one of the oldest libraries in Europe.

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Our wonderful new logo.

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True translations

There’s a wonderful Neil Gaiman quote that we often see on Library social media.

“Google can bring you back 100,000 answers,” he said. “A librarian can bring you back the right one.”

We wondered if we could apply the same thinking to Google Translate, and what the resulting aphorism would be in that case.

Our upcoming exhibition, Babel: Adventures in translation seeks to explode the very idea that translators will be made obsolete by Google Translate and its ilk.

Translation isn’t merely about word-for-word rendering into another language. Our exhibition will show how translation is an act of creation and interpretation, and has been part of our daily lives since time began.

So maybe, about Google Translate, we can say something like “Google can bring you back the fastest translation. A translator will bring you back the truest.”

Or maybe “most meaningful” or “most creative.”

Okay, maybe something got a little lost as we translated this idea from one subject to another. *cough*

Maybe we should have just consulted Neil Gaiman. His adaptation of the Studio Ghibli movie Princess Mononoke from Japanese to English is very true, meaningful and creative, and almost certainly wasn’t done at computer-mind speeds.

Babel: Adventures in translation will run in the Weston Library’s ST Lee Gallery from 15 February to 2 June 2019. Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, as pictured at the head of this post, will be one of the many items in the exhibition, alongside several Bodleian treasures, some truly beautiful books, glorious manuscripts, and... some surprises.

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It’s December - time for the Bodleian Libraries online advent calendar

The first window has been unlocked on our 2018 #BODvent calendar.

Visit the website now to get your first glimpse at what December brings to the Bodleian. More and more will be revealed each day, and slowly the calendar will give up its many secrets...

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What’s that ticking you can hear? Is it your digital media? Make backups now, before it’s too late!

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King James I, out in Oxford

You may have seen Alan Cumming having a whale of a time as King James I on this week’s Doctor Who. We certainly won't be forgetting that performance in a hurry.

Particularly perceptive or knowledgable visitors to the Bodleian Libraries perhaps recognised the the monarch from this sculpture in our Old Schools Quad.

The inscriptions on the books read HAEC HABEO QVAE SCRIPSI or these things I have written and HAEC HABEO QVAE DEDI or these things I have given.

The inscription below the sculpture translates to:

In the reign of our godlike James, the most learned generous and excellent of kings, these buildings were constructed for the service of the Muses, the library was assembled, and all that was still needed for the splendour of the university was happily planned, taken in hand, and completed. To God alone the glory.

You can read more about King James I, including his relationships with both sexes, on the Out in Oxford website.

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Conservation presentation

Bodleian Library conservators Nicole Gilbert and Andrew Honey are today presenting at the Icon Book and Paper Group Conference, being held here in Oxford at the wonderful Pitt Rivers museum.

Their presentation this morning detailed Andrew's conservation of Jane Austen's Volume the First. The treatment carried out on this book focused on the repair of the damaged and broken spine folds of the manuscript, as well as the broken sewing and collapsed spine, without the need for dis-binding the manuscript.

All repairs were carried out in-situ and the original structure was disturbed as little as possible during treatment. The photographs with this post (one at the head, five below) show the work in progress, as well as the final result.

Volume the First is now housed in a maroon cloth-box that was created just for this purpose, alongside fragments of the original covering leather from the damaged spine.

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Scrolls turned to charcoal by Vesuvius

The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 is without a doubt one of the most famous, if not iconic, volcanic events in history. The first rumblings were felt on 23 August - which was the feast day of Vulcan, no less - and then, on 24 August, the volcano erupted.

The event was witnessed by a 17 year-old Pliny the Younger, who wrote some vivid, first person accounts in his letters. It’s because of his descriptions that particularly violent volcanic eruptions are still referred to as Plinian. 

Herculaneum was one of the Roman towns which were buried under tens of metres of pumice and ash during the eruption. One house in Herculaneum contained a library filled with papyrus scrolls which were turned into charcoal by the heat of the volcanic ash.

These charcoal scrolls were discovered by excavators in the 1750s. Four of them were presented to the Bodleian Library in 1810 by George, Prince of Wales.

Then, in 1883-4, one of the scrolls was unrolled and mounted into a series of frames, which were much more recently digitized.

The Bodleian Libraries hosted an exhibition called Volcanoes in early 2017. Still available is the tremendous accompanying book, written by curator David Pyle.

(The image at the head of this post is a detail from William Hamilton's Campi Phlegraei)

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Physiology, Zoology and the Natural History of Man

Sir William Lawrence (1783-1867) first published his work Lectures on Physiology, Zoology and the Natural History of Man in 1819. This book, which expressed pre-Darwinian ideas on the evolution of man, was quickly suppressed by Lawrence as he was being threatened with prosecution for blasphemy. However further pirated editions were printed - and left seemingly unexpurgated.

The pamphlet shown here, Cursory Observations on the Lectures is a response to Lawrence’s work, also published in 1819. Its author, Edward William Grinfield (1785-1864) a biblical scholar and former Lincoln College Oxford student, pleads with Lawrence to refrain from contradicting the Scriptures, and urges Lawrence’s pupils to discount his ideas on theology.

In this pamphlet we discovered these 1958 letters between C. D. Darlington (1903-1981) who at the time was the Sherardian Professor of Botany at Oxford, and Professor Robb-Smith (1908-2000) a distinguished Oxford pathologist. In these letters Darlington and Robb-Smith the compare the 1819 edition of Lawrence’s book with a later, most-likely pirated, 1823 version.

Darlington mentions  that he is of the opinion Huxley based his title Man’s Place in Nature, on Lawrence’s Natural History of Man, and that he thinks Lawrence was a far better writer than Huxley and Darwin!

A year after this exchange, Darlington had his work Darwin’s Place in History published.  In this book Darlington draws attention to the suppression of Lawrence’s work as well claiming, rather controversially, it was helpful in forming Darwin’s perspectives years later.

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Book opening

Yesterday, we told you about Bodleian reader Ben Mountford’s request for a book being cancelled because that book had been sitting for decades in the stacks, with some 460 or more of its pages still connected, uncut and unopened, just the way they had been printed.

Ben updated us on what happened next. He said that “In the end Tony, one of the amazing team at the the Rhodes House Library [at the time, one of the Bodleian Libraries], cut about 30 pages a day for me.

“So I got to read the book in instalments, like an old serial.”

We asked our conservation team to record a quick demonstration of how pages would be opened by knife. This particular book, we should tell you, is not from our collection.

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Cancelled for the cutting of quires

When Bodleian reader Ben Mountford ordered a book from the stacks in 2009, we quickly cancelled his request. Why? Here's the note that Ben was sent in order to explain.

“You appear to be the first reader to request this item (received in the Bodleian in 1896) as practically all of the 465 pages are still joined to each other! I will separate them with a conservation knife but this will take some time."

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The unexpected appearance of Abbess Čika’s prayer book

Senia Paseta, curator of Sappho to Suffrage, writes about one of the items in the exhibition that means the most to her.

The last thing I expected to find when sifting through potential inclusions in the Bodleian’s Sappho to Suffrage: Women who Dared exhibition was a rare and beautiful item which was made and used more than one thousand years ago in an abbey in Zadar, only a few meters from my parents’ home.

This is an exquisite prayer book, most likely made for the personal use of Abbess Čika, who founded the city’s Benedictine abbey in around 1066. The prayer book was written in Beneventan script, a form of Latin which was mainly used in parts of southern Italy and Dalmatia between the 8th and 13th centuries. This is a fitting reflection of the city itself which has been shaped by a myriad of cultural and political influences, still evident today. Like the city, the book is a product of transnational forces, of the movement of ideas, people and words across time and place.

The abbey still stands in the heart of the city, flanked by Roman ruins and byzantine churches. Čika’s Benedictine nuns continue to live there, serving as custodians of her history and the history of the church in Dalmatia. I’ve walked past it a hundred times but only stopped to talk to the nuns for the first time in April. I talked to them about Čika and the exhibition, and about my role in it as the Oxford historian daughter of returned Croatian emigres.

The nuns showed me Čika’s own cross and asked to see pictures of the exhibition. They were amazed to hear that I had held Čika’s book in my own hands, but were utterly unsurprised by its inclusion in any exhibition featuring remarkable women. They mourn the loss of the book, but felt, I think, glad to know that it was safe, valued and appreciated by thousands of visitors. I hope that at least one of them will be able to visit the exhibition herself.

Sappho to Suffrage will be running in the Weston Library’s Treasury until early 2019.

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When the King broke the key to the New Bodleian

King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, were crowned at Westminster Abbey, London, on 12 May 1937.

Some years later, on 24 October 1946, the Bodleian Libraries hosted the King and Queen when they came to officially open the New Bodleian, now the Weston Library. It was an occasion so momentous that something simply had to go wrong.

So it did, and the ceremonial silver key that King George VI was given to open the library door broke off in the lock.

Somehow, Mr GW Beesley, the then secretary to the University of Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor and the Bedel of Arts, managed to get purchase on the key’s broken shaft and turn it, unlocking the door and allowing the King inside.

The broken key is now kept as one of the Bodleian’s most personal treasures; that’s it you can see at the head of this post. It was designed personally by Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect of the New Bodleian.

The door has seen very little use of any kind since but remains ‘The George VI door’ in tribute.

This Pathe video shows newsreel footage from the day. Unfortunately it doesn’t work too well as a recap of key-breaking drama but it does offer some very vivid glimpses of the Oxford of 1946.

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We recently acquired our 13 millionth (MILLIONTH!!!!) printed item - a very snazzy book on Renaissance manuscripts (see http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/OXVU1:LSCOP_OX:oxfaleph021176793).

If you read one book a week, it would still take you almost 250,000 years to get through our collections. Any takers?

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The chair that sailed around the world

On 4 April 1581, Queen Elizabeth I boarded the Golden Hind at its mooring upon the Thames Estuary and watched as, by her request, the French ambassador bestowed knighthood upon Francis Drake.

The Queen was making a political manoeuvre by not knighting Drake herself as she did not want to be seen as condoning a pirate in the eyes of the Spanish.

Just months before, Drake had steered the ship around the world in only the second global circumnavigation in history, and the first to be completed by a single captain.

After Drake’s knighting, the Golden Hind remained on public display in Deptford by request of the Queen. Unfortunately, the ship’s structure decayed quite rapidly from rain and bad weather and by 1662, very little good timber remained.

The ship was broken up and the best of the remaining wood was fashioned into a chair by John Davies, the keeper of Deptford’s naval stores. He then gave this chair as a gift to the Bodleian Library.

What else remained of the Golden Hind is now believed to be buried in Convoy’s Wharf, a former Tudor Shipyard. The chair is still here at the Bodleian Libraries and to this very day stands on display in the Divinity School, where visitors can see it for themselves. You will find it alongside the Wren Door, as shown in this photograph.

Hanging on the back of the chair is a tablet bearing commemorative verses by Abraham Cowley, in both Latin and English. By now they’ve become rather hard to read by the naked eye, but there is a helpful transcription on hand.

To this great Ship which round the Globe has run,

And matcht in Race the Chariot of the Sun,

This Pythagorean Ship (for it may claime

Without Presumption so deserv’d a Name,

By knowledge once, and transformation now)

In her new shape, this sacred Port allow.

Drake & his Ship, could not have wisht from Fate

A more blest Station, or more blest Estate.

For Lo! a Seate of endles Rest is giv’n

To her in Oxford, and to him in Heav’n.

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The Collector’s Edition of Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth is just beautiful

Now available for pre-order is this unique keepsake of this summer’s landmark Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibition.

This is a truly lavish Collector’s Edition of the book, bound in Cialux book cloth and published in a custom-made presentation box, complete with special endpapers reproducing Tolkien’s drawing of the Elvenking’s Gate.

As well as the book itself, the box also contains seven unique facsimiles items of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, each of them printed on fine Italian paper.

1) Tolkien’s painting of the dust jacket for The Hobbit, reproduced for the first time on both sides.

2) A drawing of the Tower of Orthanc on the back of an Oxford undergraduate student’s exam paper on Chaucer, reproduced for the first time on both sides.

3) A manuscript page from The Lord of the Rings describing and illustrating Shelob’s Lair, reproduced for the first time on both sides.

4 and 5)  The Father Christmas letter and envelope for 1936, addressed to Tolkien’s youngest children, Christopher and Priscilla, and bearing a jewel-like stamp from the North Pole.

6) The accompanying Christmas card depicting Polar Bear’s bath.

7)  A facsimile of the newly discovered map drawn by Christopher Tolkien, with annotations in J.R.R. Tolkien’s hand, including notes such as ‘Hobbiton is assumed to be approx. at the latitude of Oxford’ and ‘Minas Tirith is about the latitude of Ravenna’.

Each facsimile faithfully reproduces the originals kept in an underground safe in the Bodleian Library and they come presented in a custom-made envelope bearing Tolkien’s cipher, along with a notes that describe and interpret each item.

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The surprising, the amusing and the pub chat-enhancing

Newly released by Bodleian Publishing is the addictive, bathroom break-extending Library Miscellany, a very compelling cornucopia of library trivia and history. 

To help spread the word, the book’s author, Claire Cock-Starkey, has just completed a virtual tour of bookish blogs. Here are links to every blog in the full safari, where you will pick up a wealth of surprising, amusing and pub chat-enhancing facts.

Fictional libraries of note

The two libraries onboard the Titanic

A library of smells

Some famous folk who were also librarians

The patron saints of librarians

The reading room at The British Museum

The Vatican’s secret archive, or Archivum Secretum Apostolicum Vaticanum

Some very overdue library books

The work of the ‘Tome Raider’ and some other notable book thefts

The Circulating Libraries that predated free public libraries

And we finally end up at The Bodleian Libraries with some ideas about book storage

...and there’s plenty more where that came from.

A Library Miscellany is out now, alongside its perfect companion, last year’s The Book Lover’s Miscellany.

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Meet a book from our living library

After proving to be a popular success during the Curiosity Carnival, our Living Library will once again be open to the public at the Weston Library, on the evening of Friday 23 February.

The premise is simple: choose a book from the shelf and check it out, at which point your choice comes to life and, instead of reading, you sit down and chat with your Living Book instead. Library magic!

One of the books available this time will be Rethinking Medieval Remedies: Recipes for Laughter. The blurb promises unicorn horns, boiled owls and dead men’s skulls, and there’s plenty more gruesome and surprising ingredients where those came from.

On the shelf, this Living Library exclusive will look rather like the green dustjacket at the head of this post, but then... when you check it out...

...you’ll have a hard time telling this Living Book from Hannah Bower, its author. 

Other books in the current Living Library collection include, amongst many more, How to Write a Medieval Poem by Jennifer Nuttall, How English Became English by Simon Horobin, and A Room of One’s Own - The Place of Women in the Middle Ages by Annie Sutherland.

Free tickets to Library Lates and the Living Library within are available now.