Past Events
2011 Oxford Literary Festival
2nd Apr 2011
We are proud to support the Oxford Literary Festival again this year and to provide our iconic buildings as venues for some of the Festival's activities. For bookings please visitwww.OxfordLiteraryFestival.com.
12 noon: Dr. Sarah Thomas, Bodley’s Librarian
The Future of the Bodleian Libraries
Libraries today are at the epicentre of change as the Internet transforms the speed and mode of the dissemination of ideas. The Bodleian is embracing the future with a revitalising renovation of the New Bodleian Library, created 70 years ago as a storehouse for books, into a welcoming public space for exhibitions and cultural programmes and as a destination for researchers engaged in advanced scholarship using special collections. Simultaneously the Bodleian is building a digital infrastructure to support the mission of the University of Oxford. Dr Sarah Thomas, Bodley's Librarian, will present an illustrated vision of the future of the Bodleian.
16.00: D.R. Thorpe, Philip Ziegler, Vernon Bogdanor
Prime ministerial lives and letters: a panel discussion
The panel will include D.R. Thorpe, biographer of Harold Macmillan, Philip Ziegler, biographer of Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, and Kenneth O Morgan, biographer of James Callaghan. Each speaker will select material from the prime ministerial collections in the Bodleian Library and explore what they reveal about the prime minister, their papers and the times in which they lived. The discussion will be chaired by Professor Vernon Bogdanor, editor of a recent book on postwar British prime ministers. Items selected from the Bodleian's prime ministerial collections by the panel will be on display.
This event will last one hour and a quarter.
18.30: Mr Tom Phillips
The Postcard Books: Private Portrait Gallery of the Great British Public Revealed
In 1902, the post office allowed personal messages as well as addresses on the backs of postcards. In addition, the proliferation of photographic studios and the mass production of the Box Brownie meant that, for the first time, ‘ordinary’ people could afford to own their portraits, and to have them replicated as a photo postcard for only a penny a card. An industry was born. Within the studio, individuals could choose how they were presented through a variety of dramatic props, theatrical backdrops or costumes. Over 50,000 photo-postcards from this era (1900-1950) have been collected and thematically arranged by the artist Tom Phillips. This archive, recently acquired by the Bodleian Library, is now featured in a series of books, designed and assembled by Tom Phillips. The first four books Readers, Women & Hats (already published), Weddings and Bicycles (both due for publication in May) feature lots of pictures of real and anonymous people under the various headings.
Sunday 3 April
12 noon: Dr Stephen Harris, Druce Curator of the Oxford University Herbaria; University Research Lecturer, Dept. of Plant Sciences
Mastering Mother Nature
Examining the changing role of the garden in Britain from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, Dr Harris will look at the reasons behind the explosion of interest in what Darwin called the ‘abominable’ mystery of plants, and the rise of horticulturalists’ obsession with the cultivation and domination of plant species. The talk will be illustrated with rarely-seen botanical images from the Bodleian Libraries and herbaria in the University of Oxford, among the finest in the world.
14.00: Daisy Hay
Young Romantics - The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives
Shattering the myth of the Romantic poet as a solitary, introspective genius, Daisy Hay reveals the communal existence of the astonishingly youthful circle who gathered around Percy Shelley, Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron in the decade following 1813. Her Young Romantics offers tales of love, betrayal, sacrifice and friendship, all of which were played out against a background of political turbulence and intense literary creativity.
She also reveals the central part played in the drama by Elizabeth Kent, Leigh Hunt's sister-in-law, a writer and botanist. And among the wide range of manuscript and archival sources on which she draws is a recently-discovered fragment of memoir by Claire Clairmont, who accompanied the Shelleys on their honeymoon and later became Byron's mistress.
16.00: Ashley Jackson, Professor of Imperial and Military History at King’s College, London and David Tomkins, Project Manager, Mapping Crime beyond the John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library
Illustrating Empire: Images from the John Johnson Collection
The Bodleian Library holds a significant collection of ephemera related to the British Empire as seen by generations of people in their everyday lives. This talk will consider some of the themes (e.g. emigration and settlement; imperial authority; exploration and knowledge; travel and communications) encountered in studying the Empire and Britain’s connection with the non-European world, using a selection of evocative illustrations from the Bodleian’s John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera.
THE LYELL LECTURES - James P R Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2010-2011 - The general procedures
3rd May 2011 5:00pm
Professor David Parker, Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham, will deliver a series of lectures entitled:
'Describing the New Testament'
All lectures at 5pm in the University Museum of Natural History, Parks Road, Oxford
Tuesday 3 May 2011, The general procedures
THE LYELL LECTURES - James P R Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2010-2011 - What is a New Testament Manuscript?
5th May 2011 5:00pm
Professor David Parker, Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham, will deliver a series of lectures entitled:
'Describing the New Testament'
All lectures at 5pm in the University Museum of Natural History, Parks Road, Oxford
THE LYELL LECTURES - James P R Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2010-2011 - Understanding how manuscripts are related
10th May 2011 5:00pm
Professor David Parker, Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham, will deliver a series of lectures entitled:
'Describing the New Testament'
All lectures at 5pm in the University Museum of Natural History, Parks Road, Oxford
THE LYELL LECTURES - James P R Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2010-2011 - Editing the Greek New Testament
12th May 2011 5:00pm
Professor David Parker, Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham, will deliver a series of lectures entitled:
'Describing the New Testament'
All lectures at 5pm in the University Museum of Natural History, Parks Road, Oxford
Thursday 12 May 2011, Editing the Greek New Testament
THE LYELL LECTURES - James P R Lyell Reader in Bibliography 2010-2011 - The New Testament of the future
17th May 2011 5:00pm
Professor David Parker, Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham, will deliver a series of lectures entitled:
'Describing the New Testament'
All lectures at 5pm in the University Museum of Natural History, Parks Road, Oxford
The Place of Bindings in book history and bibliography: Resources and research
9th Jun 2011 10:00am-5:00pm
Merton College, Oxford
Followed by an evening lecture and display in the Divinity School, Bodleian Library, 5:30 - 7 pm
Convenor: Professor Nicholas Pickwoad
NOTE: this event is now CLOSED to new registrants.
e-mail bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Oxford Open Doors 2011
11th Sep 2011 11:00am-5:00pm
Free admission to see the Divinity School, Convocation House and Chancellor's Court. No need to book.
Come and see the 15th century Divinity School, the University’s oldest teaching and examination room. Take a seat on a bench and marvel at the beautiful carved stone ceiling in this masterpiece of English Gothic architecture.
Explore Convocation House, built in the 17th century as a meeting place for the University's supreme legislative body, where Parliament was held during the Civil War.
Don’t forget to look in the adjoining Chancellor’s Court, formerly used as Oxford University’s Court.
We regret there is no access to the Library's Reading Rooms (rooms with books) during Oxford Open Doors.
There will be a small display in the Proscholium on the theme of the Olympics as part of the Bodleian Library’s celebration of Open Doors.
Fnd out more about Oxford Open Doors on the main event website.
Kafka lectures
24th Oct 2011 4:15pm-7:15pm
The Bodleian Library celebrates the acquisition of Franz Kafka’s letters to his sister in partnership with the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach with a series of events held in the Sheldonian Theatre on 24 October:
- 16.00 - Welcome by Dr Sarah Thomas, Bodley’s Librarian
- 16.15 - Reading of Act I, Scene I from Alan Bennett’s play Kafka’s Dick
- 16.30 - Kafka’s Writings: Private Confessions or Public Property? Lecture by Ritchie Robertson, Taylor Professor of the German Language and Literature, University of Oxford
- 17.00 - Panel discussion chaired by Katrin Kohl, Professor of German Literature, University of Oxford
Liebe Ottla, an exhibition of Franz Kafka’s letters to his sister with highlights from the Bodleian Kafka collection is currently on display in the Proscholium until 30 October.
All Welcome. Admission Free.
Centre For The study Of The Book Masterclasses.
7th Nov 2011 2:15pm-3:30pm
Pitt Rivers Museum Lecture Room.
Simplicity and subtlety in the Oxoniensis of Catullus (MS.Canon.Class.Lat.30) .Dr.David Butterfield (Cambridge).
Masterclasses are open to all but please register if you are not a member of the Univesity, Email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. For more information and directions to the lecture room, see the CSB website, www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb
Friends of The Bodleian Lectures: Editing 'Huge Holinshed' for the 21st Century
8th Nov 2011 1:00pm-1:30pm
Convocation House, Old Bodleian Library (Entrance in Old Schools Quad)
Dr Felicity Heal (Fellow and Tutor in Modern History, Jesus College)
Dr Heal will talk about the two editions (1577 and 1587) of Holinshed's Chronicles, which was the definitive chronicle collection of the Elizabethan era, best known for providing much of the material for Shakespeare's English histories.She will look at the differences between the editions, and then discuss the on-line comparison of the texts that she and her colleagues have undertaken.
The FOB lectures are open to all but please register in advance by email: fob@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Centre For The study Of The Book Masterclasses.
14th Nov 2011 2:15pm-3:30pm
Pitt Rivers Museum Lecture Room.
Playing the Fame Game: T E Lawrence, Hardy and the canonic manuscript Ed Maggs (Maggs Brothers).
Masterclasses are open to all but please register if you are not a member of the University. Email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. For more information and directions to the lecture room, see the CSB website, www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb
Centre For The study Of The Book Masterclasses.
21st Nov 2011 2:15am-3:30am
Pitt rivers Museum Lecture Room.
The evolution of the Middle English poetic manuscript. Prof.Anthony Edwards (De Montfort).
Masterclasses are open to all but please register if you are not a member of the University. Email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. For more information and directions to the lecture room, see the CSB website,www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb
Friends of The Bodleian Lectures:Lost and Found: the Bodleian Shakespeare Folio
22nd Nov 2011 1:00pm-1:30pm
Convocation House, Old Bodleian Library (Entrance in Old Schools Quad)
Dr Emma Smith ( Fellow and Tutor in English, Hertford College)
Dr Smith will discuss the story of how the Bodleian lost its First Folio of Shakespeare in the seventeenth century,and the efforts to get it back at the beginning of the twentieth.It's a story of personal rivalries as well as national ones,of a wonderfully amateurish and individual fundraising campaign,and of the way Oxford was changing on the eve of the First World War - as well as about the value of the book itself.
The FOB lectures are open to all but please register in advance by email: fob@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Centre For The study Of The Book Masterclasses.
28th Nov 2011 2:15pm-3:30pm
Pitts Rivers Museum Lecture Room
Agrippa: assessing the value of a self-destructing text .Kevin Begos ( Publisher and donor of Agrippa, a book of the dead).
Masterclasses are open to all but please register if you are not a member of the University. Email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. For more information and directions to the lecture room, see the CSB website,www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb
Ragtime to riches : celebrating a musical legacy
18th Jan 2012 5:00pm-7:00pm
Divinity School and Convocation House, Old Bodleian Library
‘Shabby old man leaves collection worth millions’, Chicago Tribune, 14 Dec 1973
‘Organist dies at 90 in Home Filled with Rare Sheet Music’, New York Times, 14 Dec 1973
‘Pauper’s Collection for Oxford Library’, New York Times, 18 Jan 1975
These were some of the newspaper headlines announcing Walter Harding’s legacy to the Bodleian Library.
Walter Newton Henry Harding was not an academic or a book dealer. He worked as a ragtime pianist in Chicago. Yet he was able to build an enormous collection of poetry and song, sheet music, and opera scores. His success as a book collector was partly due to the unfashionable nature of the material he was collecting: ephemeral, popular publications with little commercial value in the mid-twentieth century.
From Jan. 7 to 29, a selection of items from the Harding Collection will be on display in the Proscholium, Bodleian Library.
At the event on 18 January, Dr Abigail Williams (English Faculty) recounts the surprising history of how Harding’s collection came from the basement of his family home in Chicago to the Bodleian Library. Professor Michael Burden (Music Faculty) assesses the legacy of Harding in the Bodleian music collections.
The evening will include a short concert of music, performed by voice and violin duo, Alva.
Refreshments will be served.
Tickets free. E-mail - with Subject line: HARDING MUSIC - rsvp@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or phone 01865 277000 to reserve tickets.
BOOK LAUNCH 'Private Acts: The Acrobat Sublime' by Harriet Heyman. Photographs by Acey Harper
23rd Jan 2012 5:00pm
5.00pm Display of selected materials from the Bodleian illustrating acrobatics over the centuries
5.30pm A conversation about ‘dancing on the thin edge of possibility’. Heyman and Harper will screen videos on the making of this extraordinary photographic record of acrobats in unexpected open spaces.
View the poster here.
This event is free and open to all but please register in advance Email: wilma.minty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk; Tel: 01865 277084
Location: Convocation House, Bodleian Library
The documentary spoor of Clement Attlee
24th Jan 2012 5:00pm-6:00pm
MODERN POLITICAL PAPERS - Opening lecture
Professor Peter Hennessy (Queen Mary, University of London)
In conjunction with the Attlee Foundation
Location: Convocation House, Bodleian Library
Before Tolkien: Manuscripts, Audiences and Readers of Middle English Romance
1st Feb 2012 1:00pm-1:30pm
LUNCHTIME LECTURE TO ACCOMPANY THE EXHIBITION ‘THE ROMANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES’
Dr Alison Wiggins (Senior Lecturer in English Language, School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow)
Location: Convocation House, Bodleian Library
Reconstructing a remarkable 17th-century garden from John Aubrey’s drawing of the Deepdene, Dorking
7th Feb 2012 1:00pm-1:30pm
FRIENDS OF THE BODLEIAN LECTURE
Sarah Couch (Architect, RIBA and Visiting Lecturer, University of Bath)
Location: Convocation House, Bodleian Library
Merchants of Culture: the publishing business in the 21st century
9th Feb 2012 5:00pm
THE ANNUAL MCKENZIE PUBLIC LECTURE
John B. Thompson (University of Cambridge)
Location: Convocation House, Bodleian Library
The Birth of Romance in England
15th Feb 2012 1:00pm-1:30pm
LUNCHTIME LECTURE TO ACCOMPANY THE EXHIBITION ‘THE ROMANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES’
Dr Laura Ashe (University Lecturer and Tutor in English Literature, Worcester College, Oxford)
Location: Convocation House, Bodleian Library
Signs of life at the Bodleian: genealogical diagrams in Bodleian collections
28th Feb 2012 1:00pm-1:30pm
FRIENDS OF THE BODLEIAN LECTURE
Dr Giles Bergel (Tutorial Fellow, Faculty of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford)
Location: Convocation House, Bodleian Library
'The Watsons': Jane Austen Practising
1st Mar 2012 1:00pm-1:30pm
LUNCHTIME LECTURE FOR THE WORLD BOOK DAY DISPLAY
Professor Kathryn Sutherland (Professor of Bibliography and Textual Criticism, St. Anne’s College, Oxford)
Location: Convocation House, Bodleian Library
Medieval Romance and the Gift of Storytelling
7th Mar 2012 1:00pm
LUNCHTIME LECTURE TO ACCOMPANY THE EXHIBITION ‘THE ROMANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES’
Dr Nicholas Perkins (University Lecturer and Tutor in English, St Hugh’s College, Oxford; Curator of the exhibition)
Location: Convocation House, Bodleian Library
Book signing and reception: An Exile on Planet Earth by Brian Aldiss
20th Mar 2012 5:30pm-7:00pm
Location: Convocation House and the Divinity School, Bodleian Library, Oxford, OX1 3BG.
This book is published to celebrate the many achievements of Brian Aldiss and his long and close association with the Bodleian Library.
5.30-6pm
Brian will read short extracts from his book.
6-7pm
Reception and book signing.
Copies of An Exile on Planet Earth will be on sale in the Bodleian Shop.
R.S.V.P.
Wilma Minty
Shakespeare and Medieval Romance
23rd Mar 2012 1:00pm-1:30pm
LUNCHTIME LECTURE TO ACCOMPANY THE EXHIBITION ‘THE ROMANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES’
Professor Helen Cooper (Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Magdalene College, Cambridge)
Location: Convocation House, Bodleian Library
LECTURE: European topographic mapping: new directions in Eastern Europe
2nd Apr 2012 5:00pm-6:30pm
THE OXFORD SEMINARS IN CARTOGRAPHY – 19th annual series
Dr Alexander Kent (Canterbury Christ Church University)
University of Oxford Centre for the Environment, South Parks Road
PERFORMANCE: A Love Like Salt
20th Apr 2012 7:30pm
Live Music and Storytelling
Commissioned by the Bodleian and English Faculty to accompany 'The Romance of the Middle Ages' exhibition, The Devil’s Violin Company bring you an unforgettable mingling of live music and storytelling, recounting the traditional tales that lie behind some of our most celebrated works of literature.
LECTURE: Shakespeare and the Book
24th Apr 2012 5:00pm-6:00pm
THE LYELL LECTURES 2012
Lukas Erne (University of Geneva)
TS Eliot Lecture Theatre, Merton College
LECTURE: Wireless Communications during the Titanic Disaster
26th Apr 2012 1:00pm-2:00pm
LECTURE TO ACCOMPANY THE DISPLAY ‘TITANIC CALLING’
Michael Hughes (Bodleian Libraries)
Convocation House, Bodleian Library
LECTURE: Shakespeare, Publication, and Authorial Misattribution
26th Apr 2012 5:00pm-6:00pm
THE LYELL LECTURES 2012
LECTURE:The Bodleian Library and the Scientific Revolution
1st May 2012 1:00pm-1:30pm
FRIENDS OF THE BODLEIAN LECTURES
LECTURE: Introducing Shakespeare’s Early Publishers
1st May 2012 5:00pm-6:00pm
THE LYELL LECTURES 2012
LECTURE: Investing in Shakespeare’s Playbooks
3rd May 2012 5:00pm-6:00pm
THE LYELL LECTURES 2012
LECTURE: Investing in Shakespeare’s Poems
8th May 2012 5:00pm-6:00pm
THE LYELL LECTURES 2012
LECTURE: The choice of Paris: picking historic film locations
15th May 2012 1:00pm-1:30pm
FRIENDS OF THE BODLEIAN LECTURES
Michael Pickwoad (Film Production Designer)
LECTURE:British Contemporary Design Binding
23rd May 2012 1:00pm-1:30pm
LECTURE TO ACCOMPANY THE DISPLAY ‘DESIGNER BOOKBINDERS UK TOUR ’
Convocation House, Bodleian Library
LECTURE: Jain treasures at the Bodleian and Jain manuscripts
25th May 2012 5:15pm-6:15pm
LECTURE TO ACCOMPANY THE DISPLAY JAINPEDIA
Professor Nalini Balbir (Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris)
Convocation House, Bodleian Library
Advance registration is required
Email: larisa.roberts@bodleian.ox.ac.uk