A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
261 scholarly books by Bodleian Library Publishing and 49
have author last names that start with B
261 scholarly books by Bodleian Library Publishing and 49
261 scholarly books by Bodleian Library Publishing
49 have author last names that start with B have author last names that start with B
49 have author last names that start with B have author last names that start with B
Heritage Apples
Caroline Ball
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2019
In the course of the past century we have lost much of our rich heritage of orchard fruits. But with taste once again triumphing over shelf-life and sparking a renewed interest in local varieties, people around the world are rediscovering the delights of that most delicious and adaptable fruit: the apple.
This book features apple varieties from the Herefordshire Pomona that are still cultivated today. The Pomona—an exquisitely illustrated book of apples and pears—was published at the height of the Victorian era by a small rural naturalists’ club. Its beautiful illustrations and authoritative text are treasured by book collectors and apple experts alike. From the Blenheim Orange and Worcester Pearmain to the less fêted yet scrumptious Ribston Pippin, Margil, and Pitmaston Pine Apple, Heritage Apples is illustrated with the Pomona’s stunning paintings and tells the intriguing stories behind each variety, how they acquired their names, and their merits for eating, cooking, or making cider. Also featuring practical advice on how to choose and grow your own trees, this is the perfect book for apple-lovers and growers alike.
This book features apple varieties from the Herefordshire Pomona that are still cultivated today. The Pomona—an exquisitely illustrated book of apples and pears—was published at the height of the Victorian era by a small rural naturalists’ club. Its beautiful illustrations and authoritative text are treasured by book collectors and apple experts alike. From the Blenheim Orange and Worcester Pearmain to the less fêted yet scrumptious Ribston Pippin, Margil, and Pitmaston Pine Apple, Heritage Apples is illustrated with the Pomona’s stunning paintings and tells the intriguing stories behind each variety, how they acquired their names, and their merits for eating, cooking, or making cider. Also featuring practical advice on how to choose and grow your own trees, this is the perfect book for apple-lovers and growers alike.
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Stuart Ball
Bodleian Library Publishing
Bold amalgams of graphic design, psychology, and art, election posters have remained unsung—and sometimes even maligned—since their inception at the beginning of the twentieth century. Through a careful selection from among the more than seven hundred posters in the Bodleian Library’s Conservative Party Archive, this lavishly illustrated volume charts the evolution of the election posters created by Britain’s Conservative Party.
Organized chronologically and by political period, each chapter begins with a brief introduction highlighting the major themes of the period as well as the specific issues individual posters were designed to engage. Together, the chapters demonstrate the changing fashions in and attitudes toward advertising, political ideology, and standards of acceptability in the election poster, and they offer fascinating insight into the strategies of the Conservative Party up to the present day. Rounding out the discussion is a foreword by advertising tycoon Maurice Saatchi, who discusses the posters from a communications and design perspective.
At a time when the new media seems poised to put an end to more traditional forms of mass communication, Dole Queues and Demons offers a timely retrospective of an enduring feature of the British electoral landscape.
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Jeremy Barlow
Bodleian Library Publishing
A knees-up at the county fair. A duo of dancing ogres. A celebratory circle dance at London’s Piccadilly Circus. All of these lively scenarios feature in this enchanting survey of dance illustration throughout the centuries. But what can these vibrant—and often irreverent—images reveal to us about the history of dance and our changing attitudes toward it over time?
Drawing on a range of materials from the Bodleian Library, including manuscripts, visual art, dance cards, and invitations to balls, A Dance Through Time explores the imaginative ways in which artists and illustrators have responded to the challenge of creating a sense of movement. Social dancing reveals a dynamic tension between decorum and disregard, and for centuries artists have conveyed this in a highly stylized manner that makes use of curved forms to mimic gracious gestures and angular lines to represent those deemed showy or uncouth. Here, each illustration is carefully analyzed for what it shows us about the behavioral expectations of the time.
Lavishly illustrated, this book takes readers on a captivating journey through the changing fashions in European dance—from the waltz to the cha cha to the unbridled energy of rock and roll—providing ample insight into its history and colorful imagery.
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Jeremy Barlow
Bodleian Library Publishing
In The Cat and the Fiddle, Jeremy Barlow explores 700 years of musical humor, a topsy-turvy world in which monkeys fiddle and pigs play the bagpipes. It is a vision of chaos and devilry as depicted in a variety of sources—the illuminated borders of medieval manuscripts, eighteenth-century prints of urban life, and even the illustrations of children's books.
Barlow reveals the shifting meanings behind such images, as they were often symptomatic of larger cultural trend such as rapid industrialization and urbanization, an emerging class system, and the moral movements of the late nineteenth century. As he compellingly argues, the development of the printing press, the popular spectacle of public concerts, and the rise of new political uses for music all played a critical role in musical history and were distinctly evident in images of musical humor.
The archives of Oxford's Bodleian Library provided a rich supply of previously unpublished material for Barlow's research. With full-color images throughout, The Cat and the Fiddle will be a delight for scholars of art and political history as well as lovers of music everywhere.
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Through the Lens of Janet Stone
Portraits, 1953-1979
Ian Archie Beck
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2018
The wife of the distinguished engraver Reynolds Stone, Janet Stone established a kind of literary salon in the idyllic setting of the old Rectory at Litton Cheney in West Dorset, where their wide circle of friends could visit, work, and flourish. Janet’s photographs of these occasions feature informal portraits from the mid-twentieth century of many of the leading cultural figures and personalities of the day.
Included between these pages are portraits of the composers, actors, novelists, poets, and philosophers in the Stones’ milieu—from Benjamin Britten to Siegfried Sassoon and Frances Partridge—as well as members of the Stone family. Although not a trained photographer, Janet instinctively knew to click the shutter when her subjects were off-guard and at their most informal, capturing an array of candid shots—like one of John Bayley trying on a headscarf and a young Daniel Day-Lewis dressed up as a knight.
These unique portraits offer beguiling insight into a special set of circumstances: an idyllic place and time and a group of people drawn together by two contrasting but complimentary personalities, the shy genius of Reynolds met by the outgoing style and glamour of Janet Stone.
Included between these pages are portraits of the composers, actors, novelists, poets, and philosophers in the Stones’ milieu—from Benjamin Britten to Siegfried Sassoon and Frances Partridge—as well as members of the Stone family. Although not a trained photographer, Janet instinctively knew to click the shutter when her subjects were off-guard and at their most informal, capturing an array of candid shots—like one of John Bayley trying on a headscarf and a young Daniel Day-Lewis dressed up as a knight.
These unique portraits offer beguiling insight into a special set of circumstances: an idyllic place and time and a group of people drawn together by two contrasting but complimentary personalities, the shy genius of Reynolds met by the outgoing style and glamour of Janet Stone.
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A Conspiracy of Ravens
A Compendium of Collective Nouns for Birds
Thomas Bewick
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2014
A charm of goldfinches. An ostentation of peacocks. A murder of crows. The English language brims with witty words for flocks of birds! Thought to have originated from hunting manuals, the practice of inventing collective nouns for birds has since evolved into a sport all its own, with new words striving to perfectly capture the essence of each bird.
A Conspiracy of Ravens presents readers with a compendium of collective bird nouns from the distant and not-so-distant past. Some of the nouns are portentous, like a tiding of magpies. Others, like a murmuration of starlings or a chattering of choughs, convey sound. Still more reflect with literary flourish the beauty of the bird: what could be more celebratory than a crown of kingfishers or an exaltation of larks? Featuring songbirds, aquatic birds, garden favorites, and birds of prey, this book collects more than one hundred of the best and most imaginative expressions and illustrates them with charming woodcuts by the eighteenth-century artist and naturalist Thomas Bewick.
A beautiful and entertaining read, A Conspiracy of Ravens will delight bird-lovers and word-lovers in equal measure.
A Conspiracy of Ravens presents readers with a compendium of collective bird nouns from the distant and not-so-distant past. Some of the nouns are portentous, like a tiding of magpies. Others, like a murmuration of starlings or a chattering of choughs, convey sound. Still more reflect with literary flourish the beauty of the bird: what could be more celebratory than a crown of kingfishers or an exaltation of larks? Featuring songbirds, aquatic birds, garden favorites, and birds of prey, this book collects more than one hundred of the best and most imaginative expressions and illustrates them with charming woodcuts by the eighteenth-century artist and naturalist Thomas Bewick.
A beautiful and entertaining read, A Conspiracy of Ravens will delight bird-lovers and word-lovers in equal measure.
[more]
The Devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2018
Ambrose Bierce, journalist and former soldier for the Union army in the Civil War, began writing satirical definitions for the San Francisco Wasp in 1881, and later for the San Francisco Examiner, launching a journalistic career that would see him liked and loathed in equal measure and earn him the title of “the wickedest man in San Francisco.”
A contemporary of Mark Twain, Bierce brought his biting humor to bear on spoof definitions of everyday words, writing deliberate mistranslations of the vocabulary of the establishment, the church, and the politics of his day, and shining a sardonic light on hypocrisy and deception. These columns formed the beginnings of a dictionary, first published in 1906 as The Cynic’s Word Book, which stopped at the letter L, and five years later as a full A–Z text known as The Devil's Dictionary. More than one hundred years later, Bierce’s redefinitions still give us pause for thought: interpreting reporter, for example, as “a writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words”; un-american as “wicked, intolerable, heathenish”; and politics as “the conduct of public affairs for private advantage.” This timely new edition of Bierce’s irreverent and provocative dictionary is the perfect gift for misanthropes and word lovers alike.
A contemporary of Mark Twain, Bierce brought his biting humor to bear on spoof definitions of everyday words, writing deliberate mistranslations of the vocabulary of the establishment, the church, and the politics of his day, and shining a sardonic light on hypocrisy and deception. These columns formed the beginnings of a dictionary, first published in 1906 as The Cynic’s Word Book, which stopped at the letter L, and five years later as a full A–Z text known as The Devil's Dictionary. More than one hundred years later, Bierce’s redefinitions still give us pause for thought: interpreting reporter, for example, as “a writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words”; un-american as “wicked, intolerable, heathenish”; and politics as “the conduct of public affairs for private advantage.” This timely new edition of Bierce’s irreverent and provocative dictionary is the perfect gift for misanthropes and word lovers alike.
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The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
William Blake
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2011
No work has challenged its readers like Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell”—by turns iconoclastic, bizarre, and unprecedented—have been employed as the slogans of student protest and become axioms of modern thought. Most extraordinary, though, is the revolutionary method Blake employed in making the physical book. The Bodleian Library holds one of the first copies that Blake printed using a technique he called "illuminated printing," and it is the only work in which he signifies its importance.
This new facsimile edition of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell includes a plate-by-plate guide to the texts, interlinear figures, and larger designs in a commentary accompanying the transcript of each reproduced plate. Drawings from Blake’s manuscript notebook, which were used as a basis for the designs, as well as working proof impressions, are also included, demonstrating the evolution of the work. This edition also reproduces a single plate from each of the other eight surviving copies, revealing how over a period of more than thirty years Blake altered the way he finished each copy. An introduction explores the book's literary and historical background, Blake’s printing process, and the book's anonymous initial publication.
This expertly edited work is available for students and scholars in paperback and for collectors in a special hardcover edition. Both versions allow Blake’s vision to reassert its breathtaking power.
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The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
William Blake
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2011
No work has challenged its readers like Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell”—by turns iconoclastic, bizarre, and unprecedented—have been employed as the slogans of student protest and become axioms of modern thought. Most extraordinary, though, is the revolutionary method Blake employed in making the physical book. The Bodleian Library holds one of the first copies that Blake printed using a technique he called "illuminated printing," and it is the only work in which he signifies its importance.
This new facsimile edition of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell includes a plate-by-plate guide to the texts, interlinear figures, and larger designs in a commentary accompanying the transcript of each reproduced plate. Drawings from Blake’s manuscript notebook, which were used as a basis for the designs, as well as working proof impressions, are also included, demonstrating the evolution of the work. This edition also reproduces a single plate from each of the other eight surviving copies, revealing how over a period of more than thirty years Blake altered the way he finished each copy. An introduction explores the book's literary and historical background, Blake’s printing process, and the book's anonymous initial publication.
This expertly edited work is available for students and scholars in paperback and for collectors in a special hardcover edition. Both versions allow Blake’s vision to reassert its breathtaking power.
[more]
Typographic Firsts
John Boardley
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2018
How were the first fonts made? Who invented italics? When did we figure out how to print in color?
Many of the standard features of printed books were designed by pioneering typographers and printers in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Johannes Gutenberg is credited with printing the first books in Europe with moveable type in the fifteenth century, but many different European printers and publishers went on to find innovative solutions to replicate the appearance of manuscript books in print and improve on them throughout the Renaissance. The illustrated examples in Typographic Firsts originate in those early decades, bringing into focus the influences and innovations that shaped the printed book and established a Western typographic canon.
From the practical challenges of polychromatic printing and sheet music printing to the techniques for illustrating books with woodcuts and producing books for children to the design of the first fonts, these stories chart the invention of the printed book, the world’s first means of mass communication. Also covering title pages, maps, printing in gold, and printing in color, this book shows how a mixture of happenstance and brilliant technological innovation came together to form the typographic and design conventions of the book.
Many of the standard features of printed books were designed by pioneering typographers and printers in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Johannes Gutenberg is credited with printing the first books in Europe with moveable type in the fifteenth century, but many different European printers and publishers went on to find innovative solutions to replicate the appearance of manuscript books in print and improve on them throughout the Renaissance. The illustrated examples in Typographic Firsts originate in those early decades, bringing into focus the influences and innovations that shaped the printed book and established a Western typographic canon.
From the practical challenges of polychromatic printing and sheet music printing to the techniques for illustrating books with woodcuts and producing books for children to the design of the first fonts, these stories chart the invention of the printed book, the world’s first means of mass communication. Also covering title pages, maps, printing in gold, and printing in color, this book shows how a mixture of happenstance and brilliant technological innovation came together to form the typographic and design conventions of the book.
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Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing
This charming and quirky children's grammar book first appeared in 1824 as one of several beautifully hand-colored instructional texts published by John Harris in his "Cabinet of Amusement and Instruction." Intended to help children learn the art of grammar, the book is presented here in a faccsimilie edition.
A series of larger-than-life characters in the book, including Mr. Stops, Counsellor Comma, and the hero, Young Robert, humorously bring its lessons to life with witty and amusing verse such as: "See, how Semicolon is strutting with pride; Into two or more parts he'll a sentence divide." Lively and colorful engravings, meanwhile, infuse the book with an entertaining spirit, while also reinforcing the lessons laid out in its cheerful rhymes.
It is evident to see how a child would have enjoyed learning about grammar through Punctuation Personified, as its simple but instructive verse and vibrant illustrations skillfully open up a fresh world of knowledge. This new edition, featuring a modern introduction, will delight and amuse readers of all ages.
A series of larger-than-life characters in the book, including Mr. Stops, Counsellor Comma, and the hero, Young Robert, humorously bring its lessons to life with witty and amusing verse such as: "See, how Semicolon is strutting with pride; Into two or more parts he'll a sentence divide." Lively and colorful engravings, meanwhile, infuse the book with an entertaining spirit, while also reinforcing the lessons laid out in its cheerful rhymes.
It is evident to see how a child would have enjoyed learning about grammar through Punctuation Personified, as its simple but instructive verse and vibrant illustrations skillfully open up a fresh world of knowledge. This new edition, featuring a modern introduction, will delight and amuse readers of all ages.
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112 Gripes about the French
The 1945 Handbook for American GIs in Occupied France
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2013
When American troops arrived in Paris at the end of World War II, they were at first welcomed by the local population. However, the French soon began to resent the Americans for their brashness and display of wealth, while the Americans found the French and their habits equally irritating and incomprehensible: they bathed too little, drank too much, and were almost unfailingly unfriendly.
To bridge the cultural divide, the War Department commissioned humorist Leo Rosten to write this surprisingly candid guide that paired common complaints about the French with answers aimed at promoting understanding. From the fascinations of French nightlife to Gallic grooming and fashions, the guide sought to correct the misconceptions behind a litany of common complaints: Laissez-faire is not in fact a call to laziness, and the French do not play checkers in cafés all day—though they do extol the virtues of a leisurely lunch. The moral principles of the Frenchwoman ought not to be drawn from the few one might find loitering on the fringes of the camp.
Beyond their intended instructive purposes, the grievances included in the guide are at times as revealing of the preconceptions of the American servicemen as they are of the French, as well as offering fascinating insight into the details of daily life immediately after the war, including the acute poverty, the shortage of food and supplies, and the scale of destruction suffered by France during the six years of conflict. Illustrated throughout with charming cartoons and written in a direct, no-nonsense style, 112 Gripes about the French is by turns amusing and thought-provoking in its valiant stand against prejudice and stereotype.
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The Art of Good Manners
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2014
While many bemoan the lack of good manners in society today, the most courteous among us would feel mightily out of place across the dining table from a Dowager Countess. Upholding the highest standards of social decorum was of utmost importance for the 1920s British upper class and even more so for the aspiring middle class that sought to emulate it. Yet the path to perfect comportment seemed strewn—then as now—with pitfalls, from befuddling arrays of silverware to less-than-gracious houseguests. Originally published in the 1920s, this petite guide offers time-honored advice to avoid such pitfalls.
The Art of Good Manners ranges broadly across topics including courtship, children’s behavior, and civilized conversation before taking the reader through each course at a dinner party, where readers are reminded to neither gurgle the soup nor to make haste with the fruit course since “to peel an orange, apple or pear with a fruit knife and fork requires some practice.”
Charmingly presented, The Art of Good Manners is by turns humorously old-fashioned and timeless, and it makes the perfect gift for all who miss this elegant bygone era.
The Art of Good Manners ranges broadly across topics including courtship, children’s behavior, and civilized conversation before taking the reader through each course at a dinner party, where readers are reminded to neither gurgle the soup nor to make haste with the fruit course since “to peel an orange, apple or pear with a fruit knife and fork requires some practice.”
Charmingly presented, The Art of Good Manners is by turns humorously old-fashioned and timeless, and it makes the perfect gift for all who miss this elegant bygone era.
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The Art of Letter Writing
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2014
While many bemoan the lack of good manners in society today, the most courteous among us would feel mightily out of place across the dining table from a Dowager Countess. Upholding the highest standards of social decorum was of utmost importance for the 1920s British upper class and even more so for the aspiring middle class that sought to emulate it. Yet the path to perfect comportment seemed strewn—then as now—with pitfalls, from befuddling arrays of silverware to less-than-gracious houseguests. Originally published in the 1920s, the petite guides in the Bodleian Library’s series offer time-honored advice to avoid such pitfalls.
The Art of Letter Writing provides more than fifty examples of well-crafted correspondence that will lend confidence whether one needs to break off an engagement, accept an invitation to a country house weekend, complain about a courier, or write to a countess.
Charmingly presented, The Art of Good Letter Writing is by turns humorously old-fashioned and timeless, and it makes the perfect gift for all who miss this elegant bygone era.
The Art of Letter Writing provides more than fifty examples of well-crafted correspondence that will lend confidence whether one needs to break off an engagement, accept an invitation to a country house weekend, complain about a courier, or write to a countess.
Charmingly presented, The Art of Good Letter Writing is by turns humorously old-fashioned and timeless, and it makes the perfect gift for all who miss this elegant bygone era.
[more]
The Book Lovers' Anthology
A Compendium of Writing about Books, Readers and Libraries
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2014
A blessed companion is a book—a book that, fitly chosen, is a lifelong friend.”—Douglas William Jerrold
“Much reading is like much eating, wholly useless without digestion.”—Robert South
“If I had read as much as other men, I should have been as ignorant as they.” —Thomas Hobbes
Can books corrupt? Do badly written books sharpen or dull the minds of their readers? Ought we to take seriously the old saw that excessive reading can damage one’s sight? The Book Lovers’ Anthology offers answers to these questions and many more with a remarkable collection of reflections on books, readers, and libraries— by writers whose books are among the world’s best known and best loved.
Throughout the centuries, books have been a source of fascination— and sometimes frustration—for writers. Between the covers of the Anthology are excerpts from the novels of Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Jonathan Swift, among many others, all of whom paused in their fiction to extol the virtues of the written page. Those who are taken with the smell of books will find a like mind in Charles Dickens, who waxed poetic about the “pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed.” Very avid readers might even nod in knowing agreement with John Donne, who declared, “I shall die reading.” Other poets whose musings on libraries or books are excerpted for the Anthology include Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Milton, and Chaucer. These writings are interspersed by the meditations of essayists and diarists of centuries past—among them, Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, John Ruskin, and Michel de Montaigne.
With contributions from major writers across ages and genres, this is an essential anthology for which any bibliophile will want to find space on the shelf.
“Much reading is like much eating, wholly useless without digestion.”—Robert South
“If I had read as much as other men, I should have been as ignorant as they.” —Thomas Hobbes
Can books corrupt? Do badly written books sharpen or dull the minds of their readers? Ought we to take seriously the old saw that excessive reading can damage one’s sight? The Book Lovers’ Anthology offers answers to these questions and many more with a remarkable collection of reflections on books, readers, and libraries— by writers whose books are among the world’s best known and best loved.
Throughout the centuries, books have been a source of fascination— and sometimes frustration—for writers. Between the covers of the Anthology are excerpts from the novels of Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Jonathan Swift, among many others, all of whom paused in their fiction to extol the virtues of the written page. Those who are taken with the smell of books will find a like mind in Charles Dickens, who waxed poetic about the “pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed.” Very avid readers might even nod in knowing agreement with John Donne, who declared, “I shall die reading.” Other poets whose musings on libraries or books are excerpted for the Anthology include Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Milton, and Chaucer. These writings are interspersed by the meditations of essayists and diarists of centuries past—among them, Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, John Ruskin, and Michel de Montaigne.
With contributions from major writers across ages and genres, this is an essential anthology for which any bibliophile will want to find space on the shelf.
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The Food Lovers' Anthology
A Literary Compendium
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2014
“Show me another pleasure like dinner which comes every day and lasts an hour.”—Talleyrand
“He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”—Jonathan Swift
“There is no love sincerer than the love of food,” wrote George Bernard Shaw in 1903. Poets, novelists, chefs, and gourmands before and after him would seem to agree. Collected in this anthology is a mouthwatering selection of excerpts on the subject of eating, drinking, cooking, and serving food that is guaranteed to whet every reader’s appetite.
Themed sections group together poetry and prose on grapes and bottles, the ideal cuisine, hangover cures, and vivid vignettes about dinner party behavior. There are stories about food fit for kings, a duchess’s “rumblings abdominal,” fine dining, eating abroad, cooking at home, and gastronomic excesses. A section on food and travel features Edmund Hillary’s meal at the summit of Everest, Ernest Shackleton’s dish of penguin in the Antarctic, and Joshua Slocum on the unfortunate effects of cheese and plums while sailing solo around the world. Also on the menu are limericks, short-tempered cooks, recipes, fantasy food, special feasts, iron rations, tips on opening oysters, and the uses and abuses of coffee.
Featuring writers as diverse as Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Edward Lear, John Keats, Charles Dickens, Maria Edgeworth, and Marcel Proust, garnished with a generous helping of cartoons, this is a perfect gift for foodies, chefs, picnickers, and epicurean explorers.
“He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”—Jonathan Swift
“There is no love sincerer than the love of food,” wrote George Bernard Shaw in 1903. Poets, novelists, chefs, and gourmands before and after him would seem to agree. Collected in this anthology is a mouthwatering selection of excerpts on the subject of eating, drinking, cooking, and serving food that is guaranteed to whet every reader’s appetite.
Themed sections group together poetry and prose on grapes and bottles, the ideal cuisine, hangover cures, and vivid vignettes about dinner party behavior. There are stories about food fit for kings, a duchess’s “rumblings abdominal,” fine dining, eating abroad, cooking at home, and gastronomic excesses. A section on food and travel features Edmund Hillary’s meal at the summit of Everest, Ernest Shackleton’s dish of penguin in the Antarctic, and Joshua Slocum on the unfortunate effects of cheese and plums while sailing solo around the world. Also on the menu are limericks, short-tempered cooks, recipes, fantasy food, special feasts, iron rations, tips on opening oysters, and the uses and abuses of coffee.
Featuring writers as diverse as Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Edward Lear, John Keats, Charles Dickens, Maria Edgeworth, and Marcel Proust, garnished with a generous helping of cartoons, this is a perfect gift for foodies, chefs, picnickers, and epicurean explorers.
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How to Be a Good Husband
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2008
Don’t think that your wife has placed waste-paper baskets in the rooms as ornaments.
Don’t forget that very true remark that while face powder may catch a man, baking powder is the stuff to hold him.
Marriage can be a series of humorous miscommunications, a power struggle, or a diplomatic nightmare. Men and women have long struggled to figure each other out—and the misunderstandings can continue well after they’ve been joined in matrimony. But long before Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, couples turned to self-help booklets such as How to Be a GoodHusband and How to Be a Good Wife, two historic advice books that are now delightfully reproduced by the Bodleian Library.
Don’t forget that very true remark that while face powder may catch a man, baking powder is the stuff to hold him.
Marriage can be a series of humorous miscommunications, a power struggle, or a diplomatic nightmare. Men and women have long struggled to figure each other out—and the misunderstandings can continue well after they’ve been joined in matrimony. But long before Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, couples turned to self-help booklets such as How to Be a GoodHusband and How to Be a Good Wife, two historic advice books that are now delightfully reproduced by the Bodleian Library.
The books, originally published in the 1930s for middle-class British couples, are filled with witty and charming aphorisms on how wives and husbands should treat each other. Some advice is unquestionably outdated—“It is a wife’s duty to look her best. If you don’t tidy yourself up, don’t be surprised if your husband begins to compare you unfavorably with the typist at the office”—but many other pieces of advice are wholly applicable today. They include such insightful sayings as: “Don’t tell your wife terminological inexactitudes, which are, in plain English, lies. A woman has wonderful intuition for spotting even minor departures from the truth”; “After all is said and done, husbands are not terribly difficult to manage”; or “Don’t squeeze the tube of toothpaste from the top instead of from the bottom. This is one of the small things of life that always irritates a careful wife.”
Entertaining and charmingly illustrated, How to Be a Good Husband and How to Be a Good Wife offer enduringly useful advice for all couples, from the newly engaged to those celebrating their golden anniversary.
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How to be a Good Lover
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2012
Across the centuries, few experiences in life rival the excitement and emotional intensity of falling in love. Yet from the moment we set eyes on a special someone, the path to their heart seems strewn with devastating pitfalls. What if the object of our affection hates the way we wear our hair, finds our kisses lacking, or resents our talk of former loves?How does one go about successfully wooing a future husband or wife? Fortunately, there are time-honored strategies to avoid these pitfalls and help us attract and keep the paramour of our dreams.
Written in the 1930s for would-be lovers from the British middle-class, How to be a Good Lover is a delightfully antiquated guide that takes readers of both sexes through all the stages of a relationship, from the initial meeting to courtship, engagement, and marriage. In addition to weighing in on the proper age gap, dating outside one’s class, and the etiquette of gifting, the book brims with age-old nuggets of advice that range from practicalities such as “don’t attempt kissing in a canoe unless you are both able to swim”and “don’t kiss your lover with your hat still on your head” to more substantial advice such as the admonishment to show respect to your potential partner’s parents.
Charmingly illustrated with line drawings from the period, How to be a Good Lover is by turns humorously old-fashioned and timeless, and it offers sage advice for all hoping to one day find love.
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How to be a Good Mother-in-Law
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2013
“Do not march into the drawing-room and, having inspected it, say, “What a nice room, but —” “Do not look at your son steadfastly and then turn to his wife and tell her he is getting thin.” “When you wax eloquently on the way to keep soup hot, you are merely asking him to shout on the house tops that he prefers cold soup to mothers-in-law.” These are just a few of the words of wisdom on offer in How to be a Good Mother-in-Law, the latest in a series of delightful advice books that also includes How to be a Good Husband and How to be a Good Wife. While the station of mother-in-law is not one celebrated for its sympathy and is the subject of no shortage of off-color jokes, this slim guide shows that it is possible to achieve accord—even friendship—with the man or woman your son or daughter has chosen to marry.
Originally published in the 1930s, How to be a Good Mother-in-Law offers advice that ranges from the amusingly old-fashioned to the surprisingly still relevant today. Among the topics discussed are how not to behave on your son or daughter’s wedding day, how to visit the couple in their new home, how to interact with the grandchildren, and what degree of independence should be granted to married sons. For mothers-in-law considering living with the married couple, a chapter presents suggestions for how to negotiate this famously fraught situation. In another chapter called “Are They as Bad as They are Painted?,” the book reproduces a selection of tabloid tragedies, including the story of a mother-in-law that surprised a hapless couple by accompanying them on their honeymoon.
Whether you’re a new mother-in-law, a veteran to this much-maligned role, or a long-suffering spouse whose partner’s parent seems impossible to please—the pithy advice on-hand in How to be a Good Mother-in-Law will be warmly welcomed.
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How to be a Good Motorist
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2013
The 1920s were the age of the automobile, with the availability for the first time of relatively affordable cars and the rise of Ford Motor Company in America and Morris Motors in the UK. However, the laws governing driving were for the most part yet to be written and the rules of the road were rudimentary to say the least. With a growing number of motorists in need of guidelines, How to be a Good Motorist provided all the information one needed to enjoy—safely—the open road, offering advice on how to handle such hazards as skidding, headlight glare, and livestock on the road.
Among the practical and unusual guidelines offered are what precautions one should take when another car approaches and which parts of a car’s engine can be fixed in a pinch with emery paper, copper wire, and insulating tape. Some of the observations, like the cautionary note that, when driving, one ought to “look on all other drivers as fools” are sure to strike a chord with many motorists today. Others, like the suggestion that “a good chauffeur will save his employer a great deal of expense” evoke the style of a glamorous bygone era. The book covers such topics as unscrupulous secondhand car dealers, simple maintenance, women drivers, and “dashboard delights.” (Spoiler: For a well-equipped dashboard, don’t forget the speedometer.) For those planning a longer journey, the book also advises on how to choose the most pleasant picnic site when on the road.
How to be a Good Motorist is the perfect gift for the new driver or anyone who longs for a simpler time before rush-hour traffic reports and roundabouts.
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How to Be a Good Wife
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2008
Don’t think that your wife has placed waste-paper baskets in the rooms as ornaments.
Don’t forget that very true remark that while face powder may catch a man, baking powder is the stuff to hold him.
Marriage can be a series of humorous miscommunications, a power struggle, or a diplomatic nightmare. Men and women have long struggled to figure each other out—and the misunderstandings can continue well after they’ve been joined in matrimony. But long before Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, couples turned to self-help booklets such as How to Be a GoodHusband and How to Be a Good Wife, two historic advice books that are now delightfully reproduced by the Bodleian Library.
The books, originally published in the 1930s for middle-class British couples, are filled with witty and charming aphorisms on how wives and husbands should treat each other. Some advice is unquestionably outdated—“It is a wife’s duty to look her best. If you don’t tidy yourself up, don’t be surprised if your husband begins to compare you unfavorably with the typist at the office”—but many other pieces of advice are wholly applicable today. They include such insightful sayings as: “Don’t tell your wife terminological inexactitudes, which are, in plain English, lies. A woman has wonderful intuition for spotting even minor departures from the truth”; “After all is said and done, husbands are not terribly difficult to manage”; or “Don’t squeeze the tube of toothpaste from the top instead of from the bottom. This is one of the small things of life that always irritates a careful wife.”
Entertaining and charmingly illustrated, How to Be a Good Husband and How to Be a Good Wife offer enduringly useful advice for all couples, from the newly engaged to those celebrating their golden anniversary.
Don’t forget that very true remark that while face powder may catch a man, baking powder is the stuff to hold him.
Marriage can be a series of humorous miscommunications, a power struggle, or a diplomatic nightmare. Men and women have long struggled to figure each other out—and the misunderstandings can continue well after they’ve been joined in matrimony. But long before Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, couples turned to self-help booklets such as How to Be a GoodHusband and How to Be a Good Wife, two historic advice books that are now delightfully reproduced by the Bodleian Library.
The books, originally published in the 1930s for middle-class British couples, are filled with witty and charming aphorisms on how wives and husbands should treat each other. Some advice is unquestionably outdated—“It is a wife’s duty to look her best. If you don’t tidy yourself up, don’t be surprised if your husband begins to compare you unfavorably with the typist at the office”—but many other pieces of advice are wholly applicable today. They include such insightful sayings as: “Don’t tell your wife terminological inexactitudes, which are, in plain English, lies. A woman has wonderful intuition for spotting even minor departures from the truth”; “After all is said and done, husbands are not terribly difficult to manage”; or “Don’t squeeze the tube of toothpaste from the top instead of from the bottom. This is one of the small things of life that always irritates a careful wife.”
Entertaining and charmingly illustrated, How to Be a Good Husband and How to Be a Good Wife offer enduringly useful advice for all couples, from the newly engaged to those celebrating their golden anniversary.
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Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia, 1942
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2006
“Unlike cricket, which is a polite game, Australian Rules Football creates a desire on the part of the crowd to tear someone apart, usually the referee.” This is only one of the entertaining and astute observations the U.S. military provided in the pocket guides distributed to the nearly one million American soldiers who landed on the shores of Australia between 1942 and 1945. Although the Land Down Under felt more familiar than many of their assignments abroad, American GIs still needed help navigating the distinctly different Aussie culture, and coming to their rescue was Instruction for American Servicemen in Australia, 1942. The newest entry in the Bodleian Library’s bestselling series of vintage pocket guides, this pamphlet is filled with pithy notes on Australian customs, language, and other cultural facts the military deemed necessary for every American soldier.
From the native wildlife—a land of “funny animals”—to the nation’s colonial history to the general characteristics of Australians—“an outdoors sort of people, breezy and very democratic”—Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia gives a concise yet amazingly informative overview of the island nation. Regarding Aussie slang, it notes that “the Australian has few equals in the world at swearing. . . . The commonest swear words are ‘bastard’ (pronounced ‘barstud’), ‘bugger,’ and ‘bloody,’ and the Australians have a genius for using the latter nearly every other word.” The pamphlet also contains a humorous explanation of the country’s musical traditions—including an annotated text of “Waltzing Matilda”—as well as amusing passages on sports, politics, and the Aussies’ attitudes toward Yanks and Brits.
A fascinating look at a neglected Allied front in the Southern hemisphere, Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia, 1942 follows its successful predecessors as a captivating historical document of a pivotal era in history.
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Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain, 1942
Reproduced from the original typescript, War Department, Washington, DC
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2004
In 1942, the United States War Department distributed a handbook to American servicemen that advised them on the peculiarities of the "British, their country, and their ways." Over sixty years later, this newly published reproduction from the rich archives of the Bodleian Library offers a fascinating glimpse into American military preparations for World War II.
The guide was intended to alleviate the culture shock for soldiers taking their first trip to Great Britain, or, for that matter, abroad. The handbook is punctuated with endearingly nostalgic advice and refreshingly candid quips such as: "The British don't know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don't know how to make a good cup of tea. It's an even swap." By turns hilarious and poignant, many observations featured in the handbook remain relevant even today.
Reproduced in a style reminiscent of the era, Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain is a powerfully evocative war-time memento that offers a unique perspective on the longstanding American-British relationship and reveals amusingly incisive American perceptions of the British character and country.
The guide was intended to alleviate the culture shock for soldiers taking their first trip to Great Britain, or, for that matter, abroad. The handbook is punctuated with endearingly nostalgic advice and refreshingly candid quips such as: "The British don't know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don't know how to make a good cup of tea. It's an even swap." By turns hilarious and poignant, many observations featured in the handbook remain relevant even today.
Reproduced in a style reminiscent of the era, Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain is a powerfully evocative war-time memento that offers a unique perspective on the longstanding American-British relationship and reveals amusingly incisive American perceptions of the British character and country.
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Instructions for British Servicemen in France, 1944
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2006
When World War II drew to a close, British servicemen were sent to France to assist in the liberation and recovery of their war-ravaged ally, and a small but indispensable guidebook was packed into their knapsacks for the mission. A follow-up to the hugely successful publication of Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain, 1942, this pamphlet offers a rare and insightful glimpse into the lives of soldiers during the Second World War.
Instructions for British Servicemen in France, 1944 reminds British soldiers of the common points of culture and history Britain shares with France, and, above all, their mutual aim of defeating Hitler. The pamphlet attempts to teach British soldiers the ways of the French and warns them not give in to their urges: “If you should happen to imagine that the first pretty French girl who smiles at you intends to dance the can-can or take you to bed, you risk stirring up a lot of trouble for yourself—and for our relations with the French.” The pamphlet also features a pronunciation guide (“Bonjewer, commont-allay-voo?”), a list of useful phrases, and an unflinching account of the diseases and poverty ravaging the citizens of battle-torn France.
Instructions for British Servicemen in France, 1944 captures the complex dynamics of Anglo-French relations during the Second World War on an intimate and often humorous level and reveals all the fascinating aspects of life off the battlefield. Essential for the shelf of every historian and history buff, Instructions for British Servicemen in France, 1944 is a small document that nonetheless speaks volumes about its era.
Instructions for British Servicemen in France, 1944 reminds British soldiers of the common points of culture and history Britain shares with France, and, above all, their mutual aim of defeating Hitler. The pamphlet attempts to teach British soldiers the ways of the French and warns them not give in to their urges: “If you should happen to imagine that the first pretty French girl who smiles at you intends to dance the can-can or take you to bed, you risk stirring up a lot of trouble for yourself—and for our relations with the French.” The pamphlet also features a pronunciation guide (“Bonjewer, commont-allay-voo?”), a list of useful phrases, and an unflinching account of the diseases and poverty ravaging the citizens of battle-torn France.
Instructions for British Servicemen in France, 1944 captures the complex dynamics of Anglo-French relations during the Second World War on an intimate and often humorous level and reveals all the fascinating aspects of life off the battlefield. Essential for the shelf of every historian and history buff, Instructions for British Servicemen in France, 1944 is a small document that nonetheless speaks volumes about its era.
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Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 1944
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2007
“Don’t be too ready to listen to stories told by attractive women. They may be acting under orders.” This was only one of the many warnings given to the 30,000 British troops preparing to land in the enemy territory of Nazi Germany nine-and-a-half months after D-Day. The newest addition to the Bodleian Library’s bestselling series of wartime pamphlets, Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 1944 opens an intriguing window into the politics and military stratagems that brought about the end of World War II.
The pamphlet is both a succinct survey of German politics, culture, and history and a work of British propaganda. Not only does the pamphlet cover general cultural topics such as food and drink, currency, and social customs, but it also explains the effect of years of the war on Germans and their attitudes toward the British. The book admonishes, “The Germans are not good at controlling their feelings. They have a streak of hysteria. You will find that Germans may often fly into a passion if some little thing goes wrong.” The mix of humor and crude stereotypes—“If you have to give orders to German civilians, give them in a firm, military manner. The German civilian is used to it and expects it”—in the text make this pamphlet a stark reminder of the wartime fears and hopes of the British.
By turns a manual on psychological warfare, a travel guide, and a historical survey, Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 1944 offers incomparable insights into how the British, and by extension the Allied forces, viewed their fiercest enemy on the eve of its defeat.
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New Bodleian
Making the Weston Library
Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2015
In 2010, with a bequest from the Garfield Weston Foundation, the Bodleian Library and the London firm Wilkinson Eyre Architects began to move forward with plans to refurbish the New Bodleian. Having served the community for seventy years, the New Bodleian housed more than three million books and manuscripts and was listed as a site of historic interest. Now, the stately building on Broad Street would preserve its façade while gaining updates to meet modern research needs.
New Bodleian: The Making of the Weston Library tells the story of how the plans for the new Weston Library—as the New Bodleian is now known—were realized, describing in detail the architectural, academic, curatorial, and heritage considerations addressed, as well as the successful collaborations between clients and consultants. Among the updates introduced were enhanced public access, including new entrance spaces; redesigned reading rooms for the study of special collections; new teaching facilities; and state-of-the-art storage space for the library’s many treasures. With over one hundred color illustrations, the book sheds light on the challenges of meeting the needs of an internationally renowned, four-hundred-year-old institution in the twenty-first century.
New Bodleian: The Making of the Weston Library tells the story of how the plans for the new Weston Library—as the New Bodleian is now known—were realized, describing in detail the architectural, academic, curatorial, and heritage considerations addressed, as well as the successful collaborations between clients and consultants. Among the updates introduced were enhanced public access, including new entrance spaces; redesigned reading rooms for the study of special collections; new teaching facilities; and state-of-the-art storage space for the library’s many treasures. With over one hundred color illustrations, the book sheds light on the challenges of meeting the needs of an internationally renowned, four-hundred-year-old institution in the twenty-first century.
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The First English Dictionary of Slang, 1699
'B.E. Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2010
It’s a shame that so many very apt words fall out of common use over time, like “blobber-lippd,” which means having lips that are very thick, hanging down, or turning over; and “chounter”, which is to talk pertly, and sometimes angrily. Both words can be found in The First English Dictionary of Slang, originally published in 1699 as A New Dictionary of Terms, Ancient and Modern, of the Canting Crew by B. E. Gentleman. Though a number of early texts, beginning in the sixteenth century, codified forms of cant—the slang language of the criminal underworld—in word lists which appeared as appendices or parts of larger volumes, the dictionary of 1699 was the first work dedicated to slang words and their meanings. It aimed to educate the more polite classes in the language and, consequently, the methods of thieves and vagabonds, protecting the innocent from cant speakers and their activities.
This dictionary is also the first that attempts to show the overlap and integration between canting words and common slang words. Refusing to distinguish between criminal vocabulary and the more ordinary everyday English of the period, it sets canting words side by side with terms used in domestic culture and those used by sailors and laborers. With such a democratic attitude toward words, this text is genuinely a modern dictionary, as well as the first attempt by dictionary makers to catalog the ever-changing world of English slang.
Reproduced here with an introduction by John Simpson, chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, describing the history and culture of canting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as the evolution of English slang, this is a fascinating volume for all who marvel at words and may wish to reclaim a few—say, to dabble in the parlance of a seventeenth-century sailor one day and that of a vagabond the next.
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Postcards from Checkpoint Charlie
Images of the Berlin Wall
Andrew Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2008
Between 1945 and 1961, an estimated 2.5 million people fled East Germany in search of the political and economic freedom offered by West Germany. To thwart this tide of defections, on the morning of August 13, 1961, hundreds of East German troops began erecting the Berlin wall—a barrier that would take nearly twenty years to complete and would eventually span 166 kilometers. In Postcards from Checkpoint Charlie, the Bodleian Library assembles a stunning collection of images to document the wall’s impact worldwide.
The postcards in this fascinating volume trace the development of the wall—from its beginnings as a simple stretch of barbed wire to the daunting final structure made of concrete and containing over 300 watchtowers. The images capture scenes of tension and urgency, such as those at Checkpoint Charlie, where we see Allied and East German soldiers coldly observing one another through binoculars. Others document the wall’s ties with American history, including pictures of John F. Kennedy in 1963 when he declared his solidarity with all Berliners and a picture of Ronald Regan when he implored Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall. Also included are images from the toppling of the wall, when thousands of joyful East Germans realized the fulfillment of their personal dreams and marked the conclusion of the cold war.
An intimate look at one of the most visible manifestations of the postwar divide, Portraits from Checkpoint Charlie presents a key location in twentieth-century history through the eyes of those on the scene.
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Postcards from the Russian Revolution
Andrew Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2008
The tumultuous political events that swept Russia in the early twentieth century sent powerful ripples around the world. The Bolshevik revolutionaries and activists had sympathizers among Americans and Europeans alike, and one notable way they exercised their support was through artfully created postcards. This remarkable volumepresents for the first time a newly unearthed collection of those cards that recount the 1917 Russian Revolution in a novel way.
The postcards originated not only from Russia, but also from Germany, the United States, Belgium, and France, and they reflect their diverse origins in the rich array of artistic styles employed to create them. Whether simply drawn, hand-painted, or mass-printed, the cards present compelling and complex images of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the people who were enmeshed in it. The cards serve as concise yet powerful artistic documents of Russian history and culture, as they display bloody and graphic street scenes, rare pictures of lesser-known revolutionary leaders, satirical sketches of Russian rulers, portraits of the royal family, illustrations of palaces and institutional buildings, and depictions of pivotal events leading up to the Revolution such as the 1905 assassination of Grand Duke Alexander. Also included in this fascinating visual narrative are cards depicting crucial events from the aftermath of the Revolution, including the great famine of 1921 and public celebrations of the newly formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
An unprecedented and arresting exploration of the Russian Empire in its death throes, Postcards from the Russian Revolution reveals a wholly new and vibrant perspective on one of the most important political movements of the twentieth century.
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Postcards from the Trenches
Images from the First World War
Andrew Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2008
World War I has come down to us in indelible images—those of airplane bombers, bleak-eyed soldiers, stern-faced commanders, and the ruins of countless villages. But soldiers themselves also took photographs on the battlefield, and many of their striking images were transformed into postcards that were sent home to family and friends or collected as war mementos. Postcards from the Trenches gathers a number of these postcards to create a striking visual history of World War I.
The cards in this compelling volume were created not only by soldiers, but also by embedded journalists from France, Belgium, Austria, Germany, and Britain. The images capture scenes both humorous and poignant, including soldiers having a mock party with little food to eat, wounded soldiers smiling for the camera, a makeshift trench hospital, the bloody aftermath of a battle, and a huddle of men taking what they know could be their last communion before marching onto the battlefield. Other cards document the mundane duties that dominated wartime life, including men digging trenches, troops marching to new trenches and battlefields, and or soldiers nearly comatose with boredom while waiting for the fight to begin. This stunning visual narrative opens a new window into one of the most analyzed events in history, as the postcards’ images testify to the resilience and bravery of soldiers in the most trying circumstances.
A fascinating and unprecedented historical document, Postcards from the Trenches draws back the curtain to unflinchingly show the daily horror and humanity that define life in war.
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Postcards of Lost Royals
Andrew Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2009
This enchanting, unique collection of postcards recovers an old world swept away and forgotten over the decades. The lost royals captured here have not been misplaced or gone missing—what has been lost is the very foundation of their royalty. Collected here are royal figures from around the world who lost their titles and were displaced as a result of World War I and other early twentieth-century political movements.
The royal houses of Europe, Africa, and Asia once ruled a continent and held dominions beyond the seas. Today, just ten monarchs still reign in Europe, and those with only limited powers. Captured in these distinctive postcards held in the collection of the Bodleian Library are these lost emperors, kings and queens, czars and czarinas, princes and princess, and grand dukes and duchesses, who were left behind by the sweep of history. Featuring monarchs from the Balkans to the Iberian Peninsula, from Ethiopia to Korea, these portraits include members of the Russian imperial family, and royals from Romania, Bulgaria, and Germany, among others. But this is more than just a picture book; it provides a narrative snapshot of world history—alongside each postcard is an intriguing mini-biography of the pictured royal that provides a gripping account of his or her story.
Reminiscent of a forgotten era of glamour, grace, and regal power, Postcards of Lost Royals brings history to life and distills the essence of a long-vanished world of royalty.
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Postcards of Political Icons
Leaders of the Twentieth Century
Andrew Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2008
More than any preceding era, the twentieth century was defined by images. The widespread adoption of photography, the advent of film, and the increasing speed and ease of communications enabled people worldwide for the first time to know the faces of world leaders as intimately as those of their friends and family. The jutting jaw and jaunty cigarette holder of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Fidel Castro’s raised fist and bearded countenance, Tony Blair’s toothy smile, and Stalin’s bristly frown—these and other iconographic images immediately conjure up unforgettable, dramatic moments in history.
Opening with the end of Queen Victoria’s reign and continuing through the end of the cold war, Postcards of Political Icons tells the story of the twentieth century through images of its most recognizable leaders. The politicians who presided over the demise of colonialism, led the communist revolution, and fought two world wars are presented on these postcards in unusual–and often surprisingly personal—moments. Nelson Mandela is captured in a moment of privacy, looking dreamily into the distance; Yasser Arafat wrestles with chopsticks; while Benito Mussolini, known for his public performances, masters a new curious posture.
Reproducing many rare and little-seen images, Postcards of Political Icons offers a fascinating glimpse at the iconography of political power—and the reality of the people behind it.
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Bodleian Library Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing
From The Things They Carried and Platoon to today’s documentaries of soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ordeals of wartime soldiers are gripping, morally complex narratives of human strength and frailty. A Month at the Front offers another fresh and personal perspective on war. Recently acquired by the Bodleian Library, it is a first-hand account of a young and anonymous British soldier fighting in the frontline trenches of the First World War.
A Month at the Front chronicles one month in the life of a soldier from the 12th East Surrey regiment, and the economical yet powerful narrative vividly brings to life the sights, sounds, and horrors of war. “The first night passed uneventfully, except that we were shelled”—so begins the young man in spare prose, and the quiet drama unfolds from there. Constant bombings and the sobering landscape of war—“It was nothing unusual to come across . . . a dead comrade lying waiting for burial”—are occasionally relieved by humorous events such as the discovery that a troop of advancing Germans was “nothing more than few short willow shrubs waving about in the breeze.” The young soldier describes how his comrades gradually fall one by one, until he and three remaining fellow soldiers are captured by the enemy, an event that abruptly ends the narrative.
A Month at the Front is not penned by a famous author, nor does it claim to offer any broad perspective. Rather, it is the lone voice of an unknown young man thrust into fatal circumstances.
A Month at the Front chronicles one month in the life of a soldier from the 12th East Surrey regiment, and the economical yet powerful narrative vividly brings to life the sights, sounds, and horrors of war. “The first night passed uneventfully, except that we were shelled”—so begins the young man in spare prose, and the quiet drama unfolds from there. Constant bombings and the sobering landscape of war—“It was nothing unusual to come across . . . a dead comrade lying waiting for burial”—are occasionally relieved by humorous events such as the discovery that a troop of advancing Germans was “nothing more than few short willow shrubs waving about in the breeze.” The young soldier describes how his comrades gradually fall one by one, until he and three remaining fellow soldiers are captured by the enemy, an event that abruptly ends the narrative.
A Month at the Front is not penned by a famous author, nor does it claim to offer any broad perspective. Rather, it is the lone voice of an unknown young man thrust into fatal circumstances.
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German Invasion Plans for the British Isles, 1940
Bodleian Library Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2008
“I have decided to prepare for, and if necessary to carry out, an invasion against England.”—Adolph Hitler, July 16, 1940
Operation Sealion was the codename for the Nazi invasion of Britain that Hitler ordered his generals to plan after France fell in June 1940. Although the plan ultimately never came to fruition, a few sets of the Germans’ detailed strategy documents are housed in the rare book rooms of libraries across Europe. But now the Bodleian Library has made documents from their set available for all to peruse in this unprecedented collection of the invasion planning materials.
Operation Sealion was the codename for the Nazi invasion of Britain that Hitler ordered his generals to plan after France fell in June 1940. Although the plan ultimately never came to fruition, a few sets of the Germans’ detailed strategy documents are housed in the rare book rooms of libraries across Europe. But now the Bodleian Library has made documents from their set available for all to peruse in this unprecedented collection of the invasion planning materials.
The planned operation would have involved landing 160,000 German soldiers along a forty-mile stretch of coast in southeast England. Packets of reconnaissance materials were put together for the invading forces, and the most intriguing parts are now reproduced here. Each soldier was to be given maps and geographical descriptions of the British Isles that broke down the country by regions, aerial photographs pinpointing strategic targets, an extensive listing of British roads and rivers, strategic plans for launching attacks on each region, an English dictionary and phrase book, and even a brief description of Britain’s social composition.
Augmenting the fascinating documents is an informative introduction that sets the materials in their historical and political context. A must-have for every military history buff, German Invasion Plans for the British Isles, 1940 is a remarkable revelation of the inner workings of Hitler’s most famous unrealized military campaign.
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Wonderful Things from 400 Years of Collecting
The Bodleian Library 1602-2002
Bodleian Library Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2002
A timeless selection of Wonderful Things, this book highlights the tremendous range of the Bodleian Library's collections. From the sixth-century Laudian Acts—a manuscript probably used by Bede himself—to modern treasures such as one of Tolkein's own illustrations for TheHobbit, the objects chosen show the extent, variety, and quality of the Library's holdings and how they came to the Bodleian. Each work is sumptuously displayed in full-page color with facing-page descriptions. Collectively, they offer a fascinating glimpse into the principles, history, and future of collecting by a world-class institution.
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The Slave Trade Debate
Contemporary Writings For and Against
John Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2007
More than fifty years before the question of slavery launched the United States into the bloody turmoil of the American Civil War, Britain wrestled passionately with the same issues. A flood of pamphlets published by both abolitionists and slavery proponents fueled the debate, and they are now collected here in this fascinating volume in commemoration of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, 1807.
Written during the 1780s and 1790s, the pamphlets confront the issues surrounding slavery, such as the Rights of Man, the economic health of the British colonies, poverty in England, and, most prominently, the economic and moral condition of the African slaves. The authors on both sides of the debate—including such prominent figures as the eventual King William IV, Sir John Gladstone (father of the future Prime Minister William Gladstone), and the leading abolitionist William Wilberforce—draw upon biblical scriptures to justify their positions, providing illuminating insights into the theological debates of the time as well. Also included in the volume are an excerpt of abolitionist James Ramsay’s journal and an informative introduction that places the writings in their historical and social contexts. The Slave Trade Debate is an essential resource for scholars of transatlantic slavery and British history.
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Jane Austen
Illustrated Quotations
The Bodleian Library Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2017
“Next week I shall begin my operations on my hat, on which you know my principal hopes of happiness depend.”—from a letter to Cassandra, October 27, 1798
“You express so little anxiety about my being murdered under Ash Park Copse by Mrs. Hulbert’s servant, that I have a great mind not to tell you whether I was or not.”—from a letter to Cassandra, January 8, 1799
“Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony.”—from a letter to Fanny Knight, March 13, 1817
Much loved for the romantic plot lines and wryly amusing social commentary that spring from the pages of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and her other novels Jane Austen was also a prolific letter writer and penned missives on many subjects. To her sister Cassandra she wrote with candid humor about the effects of the Peninsular War (“How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!”), about her dislike of parties and social obligations (“We are to have a tiny party here tonight. I hate tiny parties, they force one into constant exertion.”), and about her impressions of London (“Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin to find already my morals corrupted.”). Austen’s characters likewise offer commentary on topics like moral character, gender inequality, ageing, and the disappointments of marriage. In Pride and Prejudice, for example, Charlotte Lucas cautions Elizabeth Bennet, “It is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are about to pass your life.”
Drawing together fifty quotations from Jane Austen’s letters and novels with illustrations that illuminate everyday aspects of life in the Georgian era, this beautifully produced volume will make the perfect gift for Janeites.
“You express so little anxiety about my being murdered under Ash Park Copse by Mrs. Hulbert’s servant, that I have a great mind not to tell you whether I was or not.”—from a letter to Cassandra, January 8, 1799
“Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony.”—from a letter to Fanny Knight, March 13, 1817
Much loved for the romantic plot lines and wryly amusing social commentary that spring from the pages of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and her other novels Jane Austen was also a prolific letter writer and penned missives on many subjects. To her sister Cassandra she wrote with candid humor about the effects of the Peninsular War (“How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!”), about her dislike of parties and social obligations (“We are to have a tiny party here tonight. I hate tiny parties, they force one into constant exertion.”), and about her impressions of London (“Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin to find already my morals corrupted.”). Austen’s characters likewise offer commentary on topics like moral character, gender inequality, ageing, and the disappointments of marriage. In Pride and Prejudice, for example, Charlotte Lucas cautions Elizabeth Bennet, “It is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are about to pass your life.”
Drawing together fifty quotations from Jane Austen’s letters and novels with illustrations that illuminate everyday aspects of life in the Georgian era, this beautifully produced volume will make the perfect gift for Janeites.
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Pocket Magna Carta
1217 Text and Translation
The Bodleian Library Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2016
Magna Carta, or “Great Charter,” is one of the most important documents in legal history. Originating in 1215 as a peace treaty between King John and a group of rebellious barons at Runnymede, it put into law the concept of individual liberty and transformed the role of the monarch toward the people. Magna Carta was subsequently revised and reissued throughout the thirteenth century, and the ideas it expressed have had a profound influence, including on the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Pocket Magna Carta reproduces the 1217 reissue of this landmark document, including both the original Latin text and a modern translation, as well as an accessible introduction that traces the background of Magna Carta’s signing and subsequent revisions throughout the centuries. It also explains how the text has become an enduring symbol of freedom in Britain and the wider world. A clear and concise introduction to one of the most important documents in legal history, Pocket Magna Carta will be welcomed by those with an interest in British history or the wider history of Britain in the world.
Pocket Magna Carta reproduces the 1217 reissue of this landmark document, including both the original Latin text and a modern translation, as well as an accessible introduction that traces the background of Magna Carta’s signing and subsequent revisions throughout the centuries. It also explains how the text has become an enduring symbol of freedom in Britain and the wider world. A clear and concise introduction to one of the most important documents in legal history, Pocket Magna Carta will be welcomed by those with an interest in British history or the wider history of Britain in the world.
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Revolution!
Sayings of Vladimir Lenin
The Bodleian Library Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2017
“Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” So wrote Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and founder of the USSR. Lenin was profoundly aware of the power of words. As a prolific writer and orator, he used his words to launch a soaring critique of imperialist society and to theorize the development of the world’s first socialist state. Much of his writing was translated into English in order to further the socialist cause.
Revolution! Sayings of Vladimir Lenin is a compilation of Lenin’s most famous sayings, taken from speeches, lectures, letters, and recorded conversations. Together, they show his views on topics ranging from democracy to terrorism, from religion to Stalin’s untrustworthiness, and from education to music. Accompanied by a range of striking images, including contemporary propaganda posters, photographs, portraits, illustrations, and Soviet art, these aphoristic proclamations offer an insight into the atmosphere of pre- and post-revolutionary Russia and the mind of one of the twentieth century’s most defining political figures.
Revolution! Sayings of Vladimir Lenin is a compilation of Lenin’s most famous sayings, taken from speeches, lectures, letters, and recorded conversations. Together, they show his views on topics ranging from democracy to terrorism, from religion to Stalin’s untrustworthiness, and from education to music. Accompanied by a range of striking images, including contemporary propaganda posters, photographs, portraits, illustrations, and Soviet art, these aphoristic proclamations offer an insight into the atmosphere of pre- and post-revolutionary Russia and the mind of one of the twentieth century’s most defining political figures.
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The Original Rules of Tennis
Tim Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2010
The pristine grass and white uniforms of Wimbledon and the aggressive hard courts of the U.S. Open have inspired tens of thousands of amateur tennis players in North America. Millions of people watch the tournaments each year on television and the stars of recent decades are household names, but relatively few people know the history of the game. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance it was a “jeu de paume,” a game played at French and English royal courts with hands rather than rackets. The modern game, however, dates from 1874, when Major Walter Clopton Wingfield developed a variation on the game for the amusement of his house guests in Wales. After he laid out the basic rules, the game spread quickly—the first championship at Wimbledon was held in 1877, followed soon after by the first American tournament in 1880.
Published in association with the All England Lawn Tennis Club—better known as Wimbledon—this attractive, collectible book examines the history of the rules of tennis from their first codification to the present day. Included is a fascinating introduction by John Barrett, the BBC’s now retired “voice of tennis” who played in twenty-one consecutive Wimbledon Championships, that looks at the circumstances of the composition of the first rules, their scope, and evolution. The Original Rules of Tennis is a must for spectators and players alike.
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The Original Rules of Golf
Tony Bodleian Library
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2009
More than 25 million people in the United States alone play golf each year. A game born on the stark, wind-swept landscape of Scotland in the fifteenth century, golf has grown over the centuries into a global phenomenon. It is a sport not only enjoyed by professionals and the spectators of international tournaments, but one enthusiastically enjoyed by amateurs everywhere who socialize with friends and colleagues on their local courses. Yet despite golf’s widespread popularity, few of us truly know its rules, which have grown more complicated and confounding as the game has grown in popularity. Extremely simple by comparison, the very first rules of the game are presented here in a charming, collectible format.
The first known rules of golf were drawn up in 1744 in Edinburgh for the world’s first open golf competition, hosted by the Gentleman Golfers of Edinburgh, who later became the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. Local golf clubs then adapted the Edinburgh rules for their own use—until 1897 when the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews assumed oversight of the rules, and published the first national set of golf rules. The original Edinburgh and St. Andrews rules are both reprinted here alongside delightful images of the game throughout the centuries. In addition, well-known golf writer Dale Concannon provides a thorough introduction that examines the history of the rules of golf from their first codification in Edinburgh to the present day.
A must-have for anyone who delights in the spirit of the game, The Original Rules of Golf will find fans among golfers and armchair spectators everywhere.
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The University of Oxford
A Brief History
Laurence Brockliss
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2018
The University of Oxford is the third-oldest university in Europe and remains one of the greatest universities in the world. Institutions have waxed and waned over the centuries, but Oxford has always succeeded in reinventing itself to meet the demands of a new age.
This book offers a succinct illustrated account of the university’s colorful and controversial eight-hundred-year history, from medieval times through the Reformation and on to the nineteenth century, in which the foundations of the modern tutorial system were laid. It describes the extraordinary and influential people who shaped the development of the institution and helped to create today’s world-class research university.
Richly illustrated with archival material, prints, and portraits, this book explores how a university in a small provincial town rose to become one of the top universities in the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
This book offers a succinct illustrated account of the university’s colorful and controversial eight-hundred-year history, from medieval times through the Reformation and on to the nineteenth century, in which the foundations of the modern tutorial system were laid. It describes the extraordinary and influential people who shaped the development of the institution and helped to create today’s world-class research university.
Richly illustrated with archival material, prints, and portraits, this book explores how a university in a small provincial town rose to become one of the top universities in the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
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Fifty Maps and the Stories they Tell
Jerry Brotton
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2019
The Bodleian Library’s map collection is a treasure trove of cartographic delights spanning more than a thousand years. This book features highlights from the collection together with rare artifacts and some stunning examples from twenty-first-century map-makers. Lavishly illustrated throughout, the book showcases a rich array: from military maps, digital cartograms, decorative portolan charts, and maps of heaven and hell; to a Siberian sealskin map and a twelfth-century Arabic map of the Mediterranean; to J. R. R. Tolkien’s cosmology of Middle-earth, C. S. Lewis’s map of Narnia, and a tapestry map by contemporary artist Grayson Perry. Each map is accompanied by a narrative revealing the story behind its creation and the significance of its design. The chronological arrangement highlights how the science and practice of cartography has changed over time and how this evolution reflects political and social transformations from century to century.
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Talking Maps
Jerry Brotton
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2019
Every map tells a story. Some provide a narrative for travelers, explorers, and surveyors or offer a visual account of changes to people’s lives and surroundings, while others tell imaginary tales, transporting us to fictional worlds created by writers and artists. In turn, maps generate more stories, taking users on new journeys in search of knowledge and adventure.
Drawing on the Bodleian Library’s outstanding map collection and covering almost a thousand years, Talking Maps takes a new approach to map-making by showing how maps and stories have always been intimately entwined. Including such rare treasures as a unique map of the Mediterranean from the eleventh-century Arabic Book of Curiosities, a twelfth-century map of the world by al-Sharīf al-Idrīsī, and C. S. Lewis’s map of Narnia, this fascinating book analyzes maps as objects that enable us to cross sea and land; as windows into alternative and imaginary worlds; as guides to reaching the afterlife; as tools to manage cities, nations, and empires; as images of environmental change; and as digitized visions of the global future.
By telling the stories behind the artifacts and those generated by them, Talking Maps reveals how each map is not just a tool for navigation but also a worldly proposal that helps us to understand who we are by describing where we are.
Drawing on the Bodleian Library’s outstanding map collection and covering almost a thousand years, Talking Maps takes a new approach to map-making by showing how maps and stories have always been intimately entwined. Including such rare treasures as a unique map of the Mediterranean from the eleventh-century Arabic Book of Curiosities, a twelfth-century map of the world by al-Sharīf al-Idrīsī, and C. S. Lewis’s map of Narnia, this fascinating book analyzes maps as objects that enable us to cross sea and land; as windows into alternative and imaginary worlds; as guides to reaching the afterlife; as tools to manage cities, nations, and empires; as images of environmental change; and as digitized visions of the global future.
By telling the stories behind the artifacts and those generated by them, Talking Maps reveals how each map is not just a tool for navigation but also a worldly proposal that helps us to understand who we are by describing where we are.
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Michelle P. Brown
Bodleian Library Publishing
The Celtic, Pictish, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking peoples who inhabited the British Isles and Ireland from late prehistory to the Normal Conquest left behind a rich visual heritage that continues to be felt today. The traditions of each of these peoples has been studied separately, but rarely has the historical interaction of these cultures been adequately considered.
Michelle P. Brown remedies this oversight, presenting an extensively illustrated art historical overview of this formative period in the region’s history. Describing the interactions between the region’s inhabitants, she also explores the formation of national and regional identities. Brown ranges across works as diverse as the Book of Kells, the Tara Brooch, the Aberlemno Stone, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Alfred Jewel, and the Benedictional of St. Ethelwold, showing how their complex imagery can be best interpreted. She also considers the impact of the art of this period upon the history of art in general, exploring how it has influenced many movements since, from the Carolingian Renaissance and the Romanesque style to the nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts movement.
Michelle P. Brown remedies this oversight, presenting an extensively illustrated art historical overview of this formative period in the region’s history. Describing the interactions between the region’s inhabitants, she also explores the formation of national and regional identities. Brown ranges across works as diverse as the Book of Kells, the Tara Brooch, the Aberlemno Stone, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Alfred Jewel, and the Benedictional of St. Ethelwold, showing how their complex imagery can be best interpreted. She also considers the impact of the art of this period upon the history of art in general, exploring how it has influenced many movements since, from the Carolingian Renaissance and the Romanesque style to the nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts movement.
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Can Onions Cure Ear-Ache?
Medical Advice from 1769
William Buchan
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2012
What common condition was once treated with cow dung? How might oyster shells relieve heartburn? Can eels really cure deafness? Is the secret to stopping a stubborn case of hiccups a simple ingredient found in most pantries? If you were struck by illness or injury in the late eighteenth century, you would most likely have been referred to Scottish physician William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine—and, as a result, you may have found yourself administering urine to your ears or drinking a broth made from sheep’s brains.
Originally published in 1769, Domestic Medicine was produced for the benefit of those without access to—or means to afford—medical assistance, and copies of the book were found in apothecaries and coffee houses, private households and clubs. In 1797, Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian and his crew even had the foresight to pack a copy before fleeing to the Pitcairns. Derived from folklore and the emerging medical science of the day, some of Buchan’s recommendations for how to live a healthy life still ring true: for instance, exercising, enjoying a varied diet, and getting an abundance of fresh air. Others are delightfully dodgy or even downright dangerous, such as genital trusses, the prescription of mercury, or the suggestion that Spanish fly might soothe aching joints.
Bringing together an exceedingly entertaining selection of entries from one of the earliest self-help books, Can Onions Cure Ear-ache? offers fascinating insight into the popular treatments of the time.
Originally published in 1769, Domestic Medicine was produced for the benefit of those without access to—or means to afford—medical assistance, and copies of the book were found in apothecaries and coffee houses, private households and clubs. In 1797, Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian and his crew even had the foresight to pack a copy before fleeing to the Pitcairns. Derived from folklore and the emerging medical science of the day, some of Buchan’s recommendations for how to live a healthy life still ring true: for instance, exercising, enjoying a varied diet, and getting an abundance of fresh air. Others are delightfully dodgy or even downright dangerous, such as genital trusses, the prescription of mercury, or the suggestion that Spanish fly might soothe aching joints.
Bringing together an exceedingly entertaining selection of entries from one of the earliest self-help books, Can Onions Cure Ear-ache? offers fascinating insight into the popular treatments of the time.
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N Is for Nursery
Blossom Budney
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2017
A is for all of us—everyone. Playing, learning, having fun.
The letters of the alphabet are brilliantly brought to life in a bright nursery school, where the children learn and play. B is for building blocks . . . but also for blowing out the candles on a birthday cake! C is for the colorful chairs the children take when the teacher rings a chime. Lively pictures designed around each letter show the children dancing, singing, listening to stories, tickling one another, and even engaging in an exciting game of tug-of-war. The fun rhymes and imaginative words for each letter make N is for Nursery a great book for children just learning to read and to recognize letters and letter sounds.
Originally published in 1956, N is for Nursery is the most recent addition to the Bodleian Library’s children’s book imprint and the perfect book for children to take with them on a new adventure like starting school.
The letters of the alphabet are brilliantly brought to life in a bright nursery school, where the children learn and play. B is for building blocks . . . but also for blowing out the candles on a birthday cake! C is for the colorful chairs the children take when the teacher rings a chime. Lively pictures designed around each letter show the children dancing, singing, listening to stories, tickling one another, and even engaging in an exciting game of tug-of-war. The fun rhymes and imaginative words for each letter make N is for Nursery a great book for children just learning to read and to recognize letters and letter sounds.
Originally published in 1956, N is for Nursery is the most recent addition to the Bodleian Library’s children’s book imprint and the perfect book for children to take with them on a new adventure like starting school.
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What Is Round?
Blossom Budney
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2017
The sun is round and hot and glowing. An orange is round on the tree where it’s growing.
Many things in the natural world are round—the sun, the moon, a bird’s nest with three bright baby birds. So are the turning wheels of a train and a hot air balloon high in the sky. So are cakes, pies, cookies, and many other delicious things to eat!
Page by brightly colored page, What is Round? invites young readers to pick out the shape in the world around them, from the smallest raindrop to a big spectacular carousel. Many of the objects can be found in our own homes, like the clock that tells the time or the colorful decorations on a Christmas tree. Others, like the portholes of a passing ship, require a watchful eye. Striking and vibrant illustrations by Vladimir Bobri accompany the playful rhymes of Blossom Budney in this lively look at this shape that can be found in the most unexpected places.
Originally published in 1954, What is Round? will make a wonderful addition to any child’s library, and it’s the perfect story to read aloud.
Many things in the natural world are round—the sun, the moon, a bird’s nest with three bright baby birds. So are the turning wheels of a train and a hot air balloon high in the sky. So are cakes, pies, cookies, and many other delicious things to eat!
Page by brightly colored page, What is Round? invites young readers to pick out the shape in the world around them, from the smallest raindrop to a big spectacular carousel. Many of the objects can be found in our own homes, like the clock that tells the time or the colorful decorations on a Christmas tree. Others, like the portholes of a passing ship, require a watchful eye. Striking and vibrant illustrations by Vladimir Bobri accompany the playful rhymes of Blossom Budney in this lively look at this shape that can be found in the most unexpected places.
Originally published in 1954, What is Round? will make a wonderful addition to any child’s library, and it’s the perfect story to read aloud.
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Staging History
1780-1840
Michael Burden
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2016
Throughout the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, historical events were tremendously popular as adaptations for the stage. From the Revolutionary War to the French Revolution, stage dramas brought history vividly to life through powerful vocal performances and visual spectacle. The scale of the production was often ambitious, such as a Sadler’s Well staging of the Great Siege of Gibraltar, which featured a large water tank with floating vessels. Another production on the same topic added live cannons, which set fire to the vessels during the performance!
Drawing on copious new research, Staging History reexamines extraordinary theatrical works of the period to show the role they played in shaping popular interpretations of history. Editors Michael Burden, Wendy Heller, Jonathan Hicks, and Ellen Lockhart are joined by other experts in the field in analyzing theatrical documents, including playbills, set designs, and musical scores, as well as paintings, prints, and other illustrations, in order to explore what counted as historical truth for the writers, performers, and audiences of these plays.
Drawing on copious new research, Staging History reexamines extraordinary theatrical works of the period to show the role they played in shaping popular interpretations of history. Editors Michael Burden, Wendy Heller, Jonathan Hicks, and Ellen Lockhart are joined by other experts in the field in analyzing theatrical documents, including playbills, set designs, and musical scores, as well as paintings, prints, and other illustrations, in order to explore what counted as historical truth for the writers, performers, and audiences of these plays.
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