Exploring the world of books at Oxford
Welcome to the Taylor Institution Library! The Taylor Institution is the University of Oxford’s library for Modern Foreign Languages. It was funded by Sir Robert Taylor in a codicil to his will in 1788. Due to his will being contested, the University didn’t have access to the funds until 1834, when it was also considering …
Written by Delilah Pearson, MSt. in Modern Languages 2025 Week one of Michaelmas saw this year’s History of the Book cohort gather for the first time – M.St. Modern Languages students with a range of specialisms, brought together by their curiosity about, among other things, palaeography, conservation techniques, and discussions surrounding books as cultural objects. As we trickled …
The Studienstiftung Sommerakademie came together for a week in Oxford for a project on ‘Unlocking the Archives’. We spent the week learning the ins and outs of the Oxford libraries and learning everything to know about cataloguing, encoding, and exhibiting manuscripts and early printed books, focussing on pamphlets from the peasants’ war printed 500 years …
On Wednesday 15 October, 5-6.30pm, there was the launch of a new book in the Taylorian, Room 2, where the building itself and its inhabitants are the protagonists: Luisa Hewitt: The Girl Who Lived in the Library, edited by Christina Ostermann on the occasion of the 2025 conference of the Association for German Studies (AGS). Both the …
To celebrate the 2025 conference of the Association for German Studies (AGS), the Taylorian is showing a special exhibition linked to the theme of the conference ‘German in the World’, opening on 2 September 2025 and running until end of October 2025. The catalogue is open access available via the Publications website of the Taylor …
00:50 Marie Martine: Opening 04:45 Emily Dicker on creating the visual imagery 07:09 Victoria Mckinley-Smith on the translation process 09:03 Emily Dicker, Victoria Mckinley-Smith, Lia Neill, and Isabella Reese: Reading The launch presented a new bilingual edition of ‘Werde, die du bist !’, a novella by the German feminist essayist and writer, Hedwig Dohm (1831-1919), …
First started October 2019 by Maximilian Krümpelmann, updated June 2025 by Christina Ostermann Maximilian Krümpelmann explains the features of an unusual manuscript in the Taylor Institution Library, MS. 8° Germ. 1. Part of the History of the Book seminar series for Master students at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of …
Workshop on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the collaboration between Christiane Mariane von Ziegler and Johann Sebastian Bach and the performance of BWV 128 with the team from the new edition of the works of Ziegler, https://www.ziegler-edition.de at the University of Oxford, 7–8 May 2025 . Full programme. Organiser: Henrike Lähnemann. In 1725, Johann …
Are you curious about what manuscripts can tell us beyond their texts? Join Digital Scholarship @ Oxford and the Bodleian Libraries for a hands-on workshop using data from manuscript catalogues to explore trends and patterns in medieval manuscript production. You’ll learn: You’ll have the opportunity to work directly with manuscripts from the Bodleian’s collections, learning …
Eighth week of Michaelmas brought the moment we had all been waiting for… having spent the term learning from the experts, it was time for the History of the Book students to put all their newly-founded knowledge into practice. With over a million special collections items to choose from, finding a project was no easy …
Guest blog by Carol Regulski on the launch of her transcription of Hieronymus Emser’s book Auß was grund vnnd vrsach Luthers dolmatschung / vber das nawe testament / dem gemeinē man billich vorbotten worden sey (Leipzig: Wolfgang Stöckel, 1523) https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/emser/ My attention was first drawn to Emser’s book in 2009, when Professor David Yeandle at …