Exploring the world of books at Oxford
Posts about ongoing research in book history at Oxford.
by Imogen Lewis (MSt. Modern Languages) Palaeography. Now halfway through Michaelmas term, History of the Book students may just about be able to spell the term – but do we really know what it means? Having stroked many a book, discovered the secrets contained within their binding, and even learned to painstakingly typeset our own, …
The Presentation of Holy Texts Wilfried Kuugauraq Zibell, MSt. Yiddish Studies In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. – John 1:1 (KJV) The relationship between the written word and religion is, for the Abrahamic faiths and the regions where they have historically predominated, inextricable. The …
by Jed Surio (MSt in Modern Languages) Evanghélia Stead ‘Goethe’s Faust I outlined. Moritz Retzsch’s prints in circulation’ (open access available via Brill). The seminar consisted of two sessions with Evanghelia Stead: on 25 October 2023 a lecture followed by a show-and-tell session making use of the vast material on ‘Faust’ and ‘Werther’ brought together …
By Giovanna Truong (MSt Yiddish Studies) Oxford’s former Schola Musicae stands tucked in a corner of the Bodleian Old Library quadrangle. In modern times, neither harmonized voices nor metred strums resonate from behind that wooden door; rather, a different rhythm altogether emerges. The clack of type, the punch of the press, the busy murmurs of …
by Clara Busch (MSt. Modern Languages) Once more it is the first week of Michaelmas in Oxford and a new cohort of graduate students embark on their journey through the Modern Languages and, most importantly, the History of the Book(s). On this first Wednesday of term students, scholars, librarians, and fellow Bibliophiles gathered in the …
My internship at Oxford in Medieval German Studies by Anja Peters Travelling to Oxford to work as an intern with Professor Henrike Lähnemann for Trinity Term of 2023, I didn’t fully know what to expect. Of course I knew why I was going: To gain insights into the work and research at one of the …
Exhibition held in the Voltaire Room, Taylor Institution Library, Oxford University, June 2023. The exhibition has grown out of the collaboration of students from the MSt in Modern Languages who edited the German and French pamphlets as part of the ‘History of the Book’ Method Option, one intern, Elena Trowsdale, from the MSc in Digital Scholarship with Emma Huber at the Taylorian who edited the English pamphlet, and an Art History intern from Hamburg University, Anja Peters, with Henrike Lähnemann. The two interns co-curated the edition which launches also the edition of the three early modern pamphlets in the Taylor Institution Library’s Reformation Pamphlets series. Thanks go to the librarians of New College which holds the French pamphlet, to the Bodleian Library which holds the English pamphlet, to Clare Hills-Nova for the Artists Book, to James Howarth for the loan of the beakhead, to Wes Williams for his advice on early modern monsters, to Jim Harris for opening the Ashmolean print room treasures, and to the whole team at the Taylor Institution Library for their help and support.
In honour of the symposium Literary, religious and manuscript cultures of the German-speaking lands: a symposium in memory of Nigel F. Palmer (1946-2022) on 19/20 May 2023, St Edmund Hall librarian James Howarth set up an exhibition in the Old Library of books related to the late Professor Nigel F. Palmer’s research, his activities and …
An Exhibition held in the Voltaire Room, Taylor Institution Library, Oxford University, 28 April 2023 to 12 May 2023. This small exhibition marks the publication of Charles Webster, In Times of Strife, Treasures of the Taylorian Series Three: Cultural Memory 5. It brings together holdings of the Taylor Institution Library and of Charles Webster’s personal …
A presentation by Charles Webster at the Weston Library Coffee Morning on 28 April 2023 on the occasion of the launch of his book In Times of Strife. Samuel Hartlib (c. 1600–1662) was a man of science and an agricultual and educational reformer, who relocated in the 1630s from Elbing (Royal Prussia) to London on …