On Wednesday 15 October, 5-6.30pm, there will be 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). Luisa, daughter of the Taylor librarian Heinrich Krebs, was born in the librarian’s flat in the basement of the Taylorian and grew up there until she was 17. In her memoirs, she gives a lively (and at times acerbic) insight into academic life in Oxford and specifically in the library in the last decades of the 19th century.

The Taylorian itself was founded in the 19th century, at the time of establishing the ‘canon’ of German literature, dedicated to making texts in their original form available to students, starting with incunables and going to the newest contemporary literature. The four figures standing proud over the St Giles entrance of the building represent French, German, Italian, and Spanish literature as a group of women, collectively fighting, scattering a cornucopia, enlightening, and, last but not least, thinking. To celebrate, the Taylorian is extending the special exhibition ‘German in the World’ which opened on 2 September 2025, until the end of October. Both the catalogue and the memoirs are open access available via the Publications website of the Taylor Editions.