Exploring the world of books at Oxford
Posts about Oxford’s libraries and our favourite libraries around the world.
Week five’s class at St Edmund Hall offered a fascinating glimpse into the world of library management and the art of caring for collections. Guided by James Howarth, the Hall Librarian, and Emma Carter, the Assistant Librarian, we delved into the practical and philosophical aspects of preserving books—not just for their content, but also for …
by Viviane Arnold, MSt. Modern Languages As the term slowly is coming to the end we had another highlight in our History of the Book course. The class was taught by Andrew Honey, a Book Conservator from the Bodleian Libraries who gave us exciting insights in the method of bookbinding and showed us how the …
By Edie Young (MSt in Modern Languages) Last week, History of the Book students had the rare opportunity to examine Merton College’s collection of mediaeval astronomical instruments, which were exceptionally out of their cases. Dr Laure Miolo gave a dazzling presentation on mediaeval astrolabes, equatoria, quadrants, and astronomical manuscripts. Laure brought her very own replica …
by Charlie Burrows (MSt. Modern Languages) Over the holidays, this year’s History of the Book class was set the simple but daunting task of choosing a book to present to the class during their first session of Michaelmas Term. Students might have been lured into thinking this to be an easy task when compared to …
By Molly Bray (MSt in Medieval Studies) For our first session as book-historians-in-training, we asked the question, ‘what is a book?’ Is it the form, the function? Now, for our second session, we get to see and, indeed, operate the mechanics that make one. Held behind a large wooden door and the once-accurate waymarker of …
The discovery of an unknown Bodleian manuscript of Hieronymus Emser’s defence against Huldrych Zwingli’s 1524 tract opposing the Catholic Mass, which celebrates its quincentenary this year, raises many questions: Who penned or commissioned it, for whom, why, and where did it come from?
For Volume 6 of the series ‘Reformation Pamphlets’, a team of Germanists from Halle and Oxford have edited two short polemical texts from 1523 held in the Taylorian by Martin Luther, dealing with the question whether monks and nuns should leave their monastic houses: Deutung der greulichen Figur des Mönchkalbs (‘Interpretation of the Gruesome Figure …
The Week 7 seminar, in which books are stored, relics are lost, and stairs are climbed.
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 …
The Taylor Institution’s collection of Georges de Peyrebrune’s Works, a unique collection in the UK. by Marie Martine, DPhil in Modern Languages (German and French) I came across Georges de Peyrebrune during the first year of my DPhil as I was looking for women writers in contact with naturalist literary circles in end-of-nineteenth-century France. I …