When Prof. Lähnemann attended one of our seminars at the university of Würzburg the other day and told us about the Taylor Editions and the possibility to work on one of these edition projects as a part of an internship, I was instantly thrilled. As I had already spent a few months on an edition …
Category: Posts
“It was itself named Albion”: Learning to Print with an Albion Press
(Part 2) Printing an anniversary card for Sebastian Brant at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press On March 4th, Agnes Hilger and I got a broad insight into the process of typesetting and printing in the Bibliographical Press of the Old Bodleian Library. In a previous blogpost, Agnes describes movable type, an invention that was revolutionary for …
Movable Type
Part 1 of: Printing an anniversary card for Sebastian Brant at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press Agnes Hilger A snippet from my school knowledge memorised some time ago: Johannes Gutenberg invented “letterpress printing with movable type”. As is so often the case with such facts, I didn’t really think about it much at the time and just put it …
Translating Parchment: Deciphering Medieval German for Art in Translation
A special issue on parchment will appear this September 2021 in Art in Translation Caroline Danforth One’s interests can ebb and flow unpredictably…and I have observed how some of my own passions have quickly bloomed…and then swiftly subsided. One such “flare-up” (which I feared would prove temporary) developed twenty-two years ago after being blind-sided by …
Ovid Metamorphosed: The Hidden History of MS. Douce 117
Carrie Heusinkveld The narratives lurking just beneath the surface of a book – the intertwining threads of its inspiration, creation, and original owner – are frequently overshadowed by the story told by the visible words on the page. However, investigating this hidden history often uncovers a surprisingly complex web of movements and connections traversing physical, …
Teams Teaching Codicology. The Joy of Opening Manuscripts during Lockdown
Yesterday, in preparation for a Gregorian chant workshop and as part of the History of the Book show-and-tell sessions, Dr Andrew Dunning, R.W. Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, opened the Handbook of the Medingen Provost, Bodleian Library MS. Lat. liturg. e. 18. A full digitised copy is available, thanks to …
Reawakening Merton’s Beasts
Sebastian Dows Miller on his History of the Book project, increasing awareness of the Bestiary in Merton College Library, MS 249.
500 Years in the Making: Editing Luther’s De Libertate Christiana
Madeleine Ahern The Taylor Institution Library’s Latin copy of Martin Luther’s 1520 work On Christian Freedom (De Libertate Christiana) sits in the Special Collections storeroom on a rolling stack among an impressive selection of early modern printed texts from the Reformation. The text is identifiable by its shelfmark ARCH. 8o.G.1521.10 and its brown leather re-bound exterior with …
Hidden in Plain Sight: Secret Messages in Manuscript Marginalia
by Charlotte Ross Manuscript decoration enhanced the appearance of a text, increasing the value of the book and bringing a sense of status. The most illustriously decorated manuscripts ooze wealth and sophistication, acting as a statement of the owner’s importance. Even within the manuscript itself, these decorations establish a hierarchy amongst the text, identifying the …
Study Guide: Hitchhiker’s Guide to Digital Methods for Book History
Book history is a rich area for experimenting with digital methods. From digitisation to digital editions, there is inspiration aplenty for your own research projects. In this video, I discuss three examples of digital methods in action: the Voltaire Library Project; a digital edition of the Janua linguarum reserata from the Taylorian Library; and the …