We are pleased to announce that bookings are now being taken for the Humanities Research Fair for postgraduates which will take place on Monday 27 January 2-5pm, South School, Exam Schools, OX1 4BG (map).
This free event is an excellent opportunity for Humanities postgraduate students to gain a wider perspective on the wealth and riches of research sources available for your field of study.
In a single place you get to meet lots of experts at the same time. You can learn about resources you may not yet have yet considered and meet the curators of collections who can guide you towards relevant material or useful finding tools.
The format of the Fair encourages you to explore and discover new materials at your own pace, to be curious, to network and to make connections to experts and their peers while also learning about creative use of sources in Digital Humanities.
40+ stalls
Special collections (archives & early printed books, maps, museums)
Topical stalls (e.g. resources for English literature, Theology, History, Modern Languages, Biography)
Geographical stalls (e.g. US studies, Latin American, Far & Near Eastern, European)
General resources (e.g. Information skills, Open Access, Digital Humanities, Top 10 Tips from a Graduate)
Take part in the live historical printing with the Centre for the Study of the Book
Relax with a cup of tea at the Student Wellbeing stall and try your hand at fiendish Bodleian jigsaw puzzle
A series of talks on Digital Humanities will accompany the Fair.
Humanities postgraduates, come and join us the Humanities Research Fair on Friday 29 November 2019, 3-5pm, Exam Schools.
The Fair is an excellent opportunity for you to gain a wider perspective on the wealth and riches of research sources available for your field of study.
At the Fair you can learn about resources you may not yet have yet considered and meet the curators of collections who can guide you towards relevant material or useful finding tools. Over 40 stalls will cover many areas:
Special collections (archives & early printed books, maps, museums)
Topical stalls (e.g. resources for English literature, Theology, History, Modern Languages, Biography)
Geographical stalls (e.g. US studies, Latin American, Far & Near Eastern, European)
General resources (e.g. Information skills, Open Access, Digital Humanities, Top 10 Tips from a Graduate)
The format of the Fair encourages you to explore and discover new materials at your own pace, to be curious, to network and to make connections to experts and their peers while also learning about creative use of sources in Digital Humanities.
Researchers and students working on early modern history will usually, at some point or other, come across the need to use State Papers Online (SPO) which is accessible via SOLO and Databases A-Z. SPO a wonderfully rich source database but not easy to use and the extent of the content is not always fully understood. Oxford researchers now have access to a webcast of a 1h12m long training session with Cengage’s trainer Caroline Beckford and a few historians, 3 May 2018, 1.30-3pm, Lecture Theatre, History Faculty.
The training session goes into some detail explaining the content of the materials that have been digitised (letters, treaties, maps, plans, etc.) and how to find them. If you want to learn more about SPO and have an hour to spare, then I highly recommend watching the webcast from the comfort of your armchair and a cup of tea by your side.
What is State Papers Online?
SPO contains the Tudor and Stuart governments “domestic” and “foreign” papers – the equivalent of today’s documents from the Home and Foreign Offices and the Royal Archives. These everyday working papers of the British royal government reveal Tudor and Stuart society and government, religion and politics in all its drama allowing scholars to trace the remarkable – and frequently violent – transformations of the 16th & 17th centuries.
This major resource re-unites the Domestic, Foreign, Borders, Scotland, and Ireland State Papers of Britain with the Registers of the Privy Council and other State Papers now housed in the Cotton, Harley and Lansdowne collections in the British Library. The papers are digitised images and are accompanied by the Calendars. The Calendars State Papers are fully searchable, and each Calendar entry has been linked directly to its related State Paper.
Charter for the Levant Company, [Jan 7] 1591; Document:SP 97/2 ff. 159-60 – State Papers Online (accessed 10 April 2010)
Among the Calendars included are the HMC Calendars and the Haynes/Murdin transcriptions of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House.
SPO is relevant to those studying Early Modern British and European history: diplomatic, political, social, cultural, local, legal, religious, kingship and queenship, exploration, travel and trade and early empire; Early Modern literature; Renaissance and Reformation Studies; Tudor & Stuart history.
Ho Tim Seminar Room University of Oxford China Centre (Dickson Poon Building, Canterbury Road)
No booking required!
The Visual History Archive® is USC Shoah Foundation’s online portal that allows users to search through and view more than 55,000 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide. Initially a repository of Holocaust testimony, the Archive has expanded significantly to also include survivor and witness testimony from other genocidal events: the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923), the Nanjing Massacre (1937), the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda (1994) and the Guatemalan Genocide (1978-1996) as well as more recent testimonies relating to the Anti-Rohingya Mass Violence (August-October 2017).
This 2 hour workshop run by the USC Shoah Foundation will provide hands-on training on how to use the Visual History Archive, introducing students, librarians, staff, and faculty to the archive’s history, collections, interface, and search engines that are the key to unlocking the research and teaching potential of the archive. Learn about watching interviews and get tips how successfully to navigate the many testimonies.
Following on from the first History Day 2018 blog post on Oxford’s archival resources for women’s history, I now turn my attention to interesting full-text online source databases which are available to all registered Bodleian readers. The resources span early modern to modern periods and cover a range of materials, such as diaries, letters, papers and publications by women or for women. Many have a surprisingly global reach though English-language sources still dominate.
Conducting full-text searches in these resources is very difficult. However, many databases are structured in such way as to help find information about women’s daily lives, their thoughts and feelings, but also provide facts and reports on their contributions to e.g. the war efforts. As ever, the more you know about your topic, gleaned from secondary readings, the more success you are likely to have when searching these resources.
Defining Gender, 1450-1910(subscription resource)
A thematically organised collection of original primary source material from British archives, which ‘explores the study and analysis of gender, leisure and consumer culture’.
Association for Promoting the Education of Women, 1889-1899 correspondence. Defining Gender.
EMLO provides access to a combined finding aid and editorial interface for basic descriptions of early modern correspondence: a collaboratively populated union catalogue of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century letters.
21 Feb 1650: More, Henry (Dr), 1614-1687 (Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England) to Conway, Anne, 1631-1679. EMLO.
Gerritsen Collection–Women’s History Online, 1543-1945 (subscription resource)
A collection of ‘books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the revolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women’s rights’, with ‘more than 4,700 publications from continental Europe, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand, dating from 1543-1945. This resource has a more global reach than it might appear.
Granet, La polygynie sororale… (1920), Gerritsen Collection
North American Women’s Letters and Diaries (subscription resource)
Collection of some 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries from individuals writing from colonial times to 1950. Documents the personal experiences of over 1,300 women.
International Women’s Periodicals, 1786-1933: Social and Political Issues (Archives Unbound) (subscription resource)
Online access to 57 women’s magazine and journal publications covering the late eighteenth century to the 1930s. The material allows researchers to explore the role of women in society and the development of the public lives of women as the push for women’s rights (woman suffrage, fair pay, better working conditions, etc.) grew in the United States and England. Some of the titles in this collection were conceived and published by men for women; others, conceived and published by male editors with strong input from female assistant editors or managers; others were conceived and published by women for women. It is therefore also useful for the study of the history of women’s publishing. The strongest suffrage and anti-suffrage writing was done by women for women’s periodicals. Suffrage and anti-suffrage writing, domesticity columns, and literary genres from poetry to serialized novels are included in these periodicals
Gallery of Fashion, Nov 1794. International Women’s Periodicals 1786-1933.
London Low Life (subscription resource)
This collection brings to life the teeming streets of Victorian London, inviting students and scholars to explore the gin palaces, brothels and East End slums of London in the 19th century. From salacious ‘swell’s guides’ to scandalous broadsides and subversive posters, the material sold and exchanged on London’s bustling thoroughfares offers an unparalleled insight into the dark underworld of the city. Children’s chapbooks, street cries, slang dictionaries and ballads were all part of a vibrant culture of street literature.This is also an incredible visual resource for students and scholars of London, with many full colour maps, cartoons, sketches and a full set of the essential Tallis’ Street Views of London – resource for the study of London architecture and commerce. Also includes George Gissing’s famous London scrapbooks from the Pforzheimer Collection, containing his research for London novels such as New Grub Street and The Netherworld.
Women’s Refuges 1871-1880 in London. Thematic Data Map. London Low Life.
Mass Observation Online (subscription resource)
This is a collection of much of the material from the Mass Observation Archive which also records the voices of women. It includes the entire File Report sequence 1937-1972, access to all of the Day Surveys, Directives and Diaries, 1937-1967, Mass Observation Publications 1937-1965 and 87 Topic Collection (e.g. e.g. Smoking Habits 1937-1965, etc.). The Worktown Collection includes material of a major study of the towns of Bolton (Worktown) and Blackpool (Holidaytown).
Diarist 5387, 11 July 1940 [on sexual harassment]. Mass Observation
Useful for the study of social history, sociology, etc., of modern Britain, it covers topics such as abortion, old age, crime, eating habits, shopping, fashion, dance, popular music, coal mining, adult education, sex, reading, ethnic minorities, and the decline of Empire. It is a resource that will be useful to historians, literary scholars, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists.
Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers 1500-1700(subscription resource) Access to 230 digitised manuscripts from the Perdita Project, written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Women, War and Society, 1914–1918 (Archives Unbound) (subscription resource)
A digital collection of First World War charity and international relief reports, pamphlets, photographs, press cuttings and more. It fully documents the essential contribution of women during the Great War as well as the revolutionary and permanent impact the World War I had on the personal, social and professional lives of these women. It is an important collection for research into 20th century social, political, military and gender history.
Report On The Increased Employment Of Women During The War With Statistics Relating To July 1917. The Women at Work Collection, Imperial War Museum, London, in Women, War and Society, 1914–1918.
Women Writers Online (subscription resource) A full-text collection of texts by pre-Victorian women writers, published by the Women Writers Project at Northeastern University.
I close with reference to the underrated Waterloo Directory of English Newspapers and Periodicals 1800-1900 (subscription resource). For instance, it helps you locate details of Victorian periodicals on e.g. women’s interest as well as give details of editors, circulation figures, etc.
Waterloo Directory for English Newspapers and Periodicals 1800-1900 – Women Fashion search
There is even more!
It goes without saying that other online source databases will of course have material relevant for women’s history, even though they are not dedicated to them. Browse our Databases A-Z to discover more.
In a large library system such as the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford college libraries, holding over 13 million books and vast archives between them, archival resources on women can be difficult to spot. Therefore, in honour of History Day 2018, organised by the Institute of Historical Research Library and Senate House Library, and whose theme this year is women’s history, this blog post aims to highlight the archives of a selection of remarkable women who were in some way connected to Oxford or whose papers were deposited in Oxford. Their lives span the political, literary, social and scientific spheres of late 18th, 19th and 20th century Britain. Each one of them has a story to tell, in their own way, through their diaries and letters, and each is outstanding and interesting for their various contributions to British life, culture and science. Collectively, the archives document women’s lives and their struggles for recognition and rights, but also celebrate their achievements both before and after the suffragette movement.
The history of women in Oxford’s male-dominated university is briefly described at History of Women at Oxford. It was thanks to individual initiatives, and the pioneering work of the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women (AEW), that women’s colleges came to be established in Oxford. Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville opened in 1879, followed by St Hugh’s in 1886 and St Hilda’s in 1893. Women only become full members of the University in 1920.
6 March 2018 — 22 February 2019
Venue: Treasury, Weston Library (Map)
Pirates and poets; suffragettes and explorers – this exhibition celebrates the achievements of women who dared to do the unexpected. Sappho to Suffrageshowcases some of the Bodleian’s most remarkable and treasured items. Highlights on show from the Bodleian Libraries collections of over 13 million items include:
2nd century BCE fragments of Sappho’s poetry written on papyrus;
Ada Lovelace’s 19th century notes on mathematics;
the manuscript of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein;
a manuscript of Jane Austen’s juvenilia, Volume the First;
photographs by the Victorian photography pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron; and
a musical score by Fanny Mendelssohn.
the only known surviving version of the board game Suffragetto:
Highlights of the exhibition also include a ‘lost banner‘, a specially commissioned recreation of a banner originally used by the Oxford Women’s Suffrage Society in 1908, and a display featuring the perspectives of contemporary women one hundred years since the vote was won.
‘Margot’ Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith by Elliott & Fry. NPG x90783
Political hostess and diarist. Married H.H. Asquith, the Home Secretary, in 1894. In 1905 Asquith became Chancellor of the Exchequer and in 1908 Prime Minister. Her leading position, as Asquith’s wife, in London Society is reflected in her correspondence.
The collection includes diaries, 1876-1923; general correspondence, 1876-1945, followed by family correspondence, 1884-1945; literary papers, 1879-1945; personal papers.
Barbara Anne Castle, Baroness Castle by Walter Bird 17 June 1964 NPG x1664273
Labour cabinet minister and campaigner.
The papers comprise diaries 1953-2001, family correspondence 1903-2000; political papers (encompassing papers relating to the Labour Party, backbench MP subject files, ministerial papers, MEP papers, and House of Lords subject files); speeches and lectures, 1937-2001; financial and legal papers, 1919-2002; personal papers, 1926-2002; Secretaries’ papers, 1983-2002; Drawings and paintings, 1967-[1995]; and Photographs, 1905-98.
Imperial activist. Married Lord Edward Herbert Gascoyne-Cecil (1867-1918) in 1894. She subsequently married Viscount Milner (1854-1925) in 1921. She had an interest in politics and was editor of The National Review1932-48.
The collection consists mainly of the papers of Violet Milner. It contains material relating to 19th- and 20th-century British and Imperial history, in particular the Boer War. The coverage of 20th-century South African politics is notable. Most major British politicians and political events of this period are documented in some way.
(Helen) Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury by Howard Coster. 1933. NPG x3017
Liberal political figure and daughter of H.H. Asquith and his first wife Helen.
Held the position of President of the Women’s Liberal Federation twice, from 1923-5 and again 1939-45. In 1945 she was invited to become President of the Liberal Party Organization, the first woman to do so, holding office until 1947. In 1963 she became the first woman to give the Romanes lecture at the University of Oxford, speaking on ‘The Impact of Personality on Politics’.
She also wrote articles for magazines, mainly for women, and letters to newspapers on national and international causes. Awarded a life peerage in 1964 and attended House of Lords until her death in 1969.
Evelyn Emmet, Baroness Emmet of Amberley by Walter Bird, November 1958. NPG x167398
Politician and Conservative MP.
Educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (1917-20) where she read literae humaniores. Her political career began in local government but played a national role serving on the Home Office probation advisory committee and of the Home Office special commission on cinema and the child in 1950. In 1952 and 1953 she was the UK delegate to the UN’s general assembly. Became an MP in 1955 and elevated to the Lords in 1964, serving there as deputy speaker and deputy chair of committees 1968-77.
The papers include diaries, correspondence, speeches, articles, broadcasts, and printed papers relating to her political career.
Best known as the author of the memoir Testament of Youth. She was accepted to read English at Somerville College, Oxford, in 1915; returned after World War I in 1919, changing her course to Modern History. Papers of Vera Brittain consist of:
Notebooks concerning her participation in the World Pacifist Conference and her lecture tour in India, 1949-50
Volume of photographs of Cape Comorin, India, n.d.
Papers of Vera Brittain held at Somerville College: the Somerville archive contains a collection of her letters, diaries, photos and books left to the College by her friend and one-time literary executor Paul Berry.
The Abinger collection comprises the correspondence and papers of three generations of the Godwin & Shelley families. This includes the majority of the surviving correspondence and papers of the philosopher and author William Godwin and his first wife, the feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft, and second wife, the translator and bookshop owner Mary Jane Clairmont, as well as the correspondence of Everina Wollstonecraft and Eliza Bishop, Mary Wollstonecraft’s sisters.
Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie. oil on canvas, circa 1797. NPG 1237
Writer, advocator of women’s rights and philosopher.
Best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), a best seller of its day, but also wrote novels and a book on the history of the French Revolution.
Archive includes correspondence & papers from 1785 to 1797.
Mary Shelley by Richard Rothwell. oil on canvas, exhibited 1840. NPG 1235
Writer and daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft. Best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus(1818).
Archive includes correspondence and papers, manuscripts of novels, short stories, poems, non-fiction works, personal papers (drawing, inventories, financial papers).
A fair copy of Shelley’s 1817 script for Frankenstein (MS. Abinger c.58) is available in Digital.Bodleian.
Read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Papers include the manuscripts of published and unpublished novels and short stories, literary papers, notebooks, diaries and correspondence. Loose leaves removed from some of the bound volumes, including notes and drafts for novels, are in MS. Pym 99.
English interior decorator, hostess and socialite. The collection includes letters from many of the literary and society figures of her day, some personal and family papers, a few diaries of Lady Colefax, her visitors’ books, and a number of photograph albums.
Victoria photographic pioneer. Cameron’s work was largely forgotten until the 1940s, but she has been widely recognised since then as one of the most important and innovative photographers of all time.
Her photographs can be found in a number of albums held at the Bodleian Library, amongst them an album, which she had compiled for Sir Henry Taylor. These photos are collectively known as The Henry Taylor Album.
Dame Elizabeth Maconchy by Howard Coster. 1938. NPG x23833
Irish composer.
The archive contains almost all the manuscripts of her compositions as well as some printed scores, programmes, press cuttings, and some correspondence.
Mary Somerville by James Rannie Swinton. chalk, 1848. NPG 690
Science writer and mathematics expositor.
Received many honours during her lifetime, and after her death, Somerville College, Oxford, founded in 1879 as a women’s college, was named after her. A Somerville scholarship for women also commemorates her name.
Archive includes correspondence and papers, also relating to the Somerville family.
Ada Lovelace by William Henry Mote, after Alfred Edward Chalon. stipple engraving, published 1839. NPG D5124
English writer, mathematician and early computer pioneer.
Active in Victorian London’s social and scientific elite alongside Mary Somerville. The main part of this collection of papers belonged to Annabella, Lady Byron.
The collection also contains correspondence of Ada and her husband William, 1st Earl of Lovelace, used by Doris Langley Moore in her biography Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1978). See Bodleian Ada Lovelace blog.
Physiologist (esp. on respiration) and clinical pathologist.
Studied unofficially (women were not yet admitted to the university for that subject) and then researched physiology in Oxford. The archive comprises personal and scientific papers, spanning her lifetime, as well as family papers.
Papers relating to the education of women at Oxford University. Women were not admitted to membership of the University until 1920, although they had been allowed to sit some University examinations and attend lectures for over forty years by that date. It was the work of the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women (AEW), founded 1878, that women’s colleges came to be established in Oxford.
The archive includes minute books, 1878-1920; papers relating to the finances of the Association, 1878-1922; papers relating to students, 1883-1920; and printed and miscellaneous papers, 1877-1920.
More from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (subscribers only):
All new History Graduates are invited to this year’s Graduate Research Fair, Thursday 1st November (4th Week), 2-4pm at Exam Schools!
Come and get hints, tips and advice from some of Oxford’s librarians, archivists and academics about how best to make use of Oxford’s resources for your thesis. We will have specialists from Bodleian Special Collections, Legal History, Biographical Sources (including the ODNB and History of Parliament), College Libraries and Archives, American Studies, East Asia, South Asia and Middle East Studies, Latin American Studies, the John Johnson Collection, Visual Sources and Resources, as well as Brookes Archives and Special Collections and the Oxfordshire History Centre. This year we are also delighted to welcome the Institute for Historical Research, Senate House Library, and The National Archives, as well as Gale Cengage and the Bibliography of British and Irish History. We will also be hosting the ever-popular Tips from a Graduate stall – come and speak to someone who has survived at least part of the Oxford graduate study programme and get tips on how to navigate your time here.
No booking required for this event – just come to Exam Schools and dive straight in!
Join the Attlee Foundation and Bodleian Libraries on the 25th of October in the Weston Lecture Theatre to celebrate the life and legacy of Clement Attlee.
The event will commence with a lecture given by John Bew on the political thought of Clement Attlee. A Professor of History and Foreign Policy at the War Studies Department at King’s College London, John Bew is also the author of five books including the award-winning biography Citizen Clem: A Life of Attlee (2016), which received the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography and the Best Book in the U.K.
A list by Clement Attlee of his “best appointments”, n.d. [post 1951] [MS. CRA. 10].
The lecture will be accompanied by a display of items from Clement Attlee’s personal archive. Covering the years 1945-1951, the display offers viewers a unique insight into the life and work of Attlee, forming a celebration of his achievements in both personal, political and public arenas.
Booking Information:
This event is free but places are limited so please complete the booking form via our website to reserve tickets in advance. All bookings are subject to a £1 booking fee.
Doors open at 6.15pm. The lecture begins at 6.30pm, and will be followed by a drinks reception.
New students are encouraged to attend orientation tours of the Radcliffe Camera, which will take place regularly during 0th week and 1st week (see below for tour times). Staff will be ready to provide useful information on collections, the location of key facilities, and the services on offer. We look forward to seeing you!
The ODNB’s August 2018 update adds twenty-seven articles (including one reference group article), containing twenty-six biographies, accompanied by ten portrait likenesses. The particular focus is on women and Parliament in the period after 1918 when women’s suffrage was (partially) gained, and when women could stand for parliament for the first time. Their biographies have been curated by Dr Mari Takayanagi, senior archivist at the Parliamentary Archives. Read the full editorial introduction to this month’s update.
ODNB’s Reference groups are selected biographies on a particular topic/ themes, professions, clubs, movements, etc. They are particularly useful if you don’t know the names of individuals.
The biography of the one female candidate (out of 17) to be elected, is available in the ODNB: Constance Markievicz was elected as the Sinn Fein candidate for Dublin St Patrick’s constituency. Although she was the first woman MP, she did not take her seat in Parliament in line with other Sinn Fein MPs. She was also a Polish countess by marriage.
Other ODNB reference groups also relevant to women’s history in this period are, for instance:
To find more books, using the following subject searches in SOLO:
Women — Political activity — Great Britain — Biography
Women — Suffrage — Great Britain
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The format of the Fair encourages you to explore and discover new materials at your own pace, to be curious, to network and to make connections to experts and their peers while also learning about creative use of sources in Digital Humanities.
Grayzel, Susan R. ; Proctor, Tammy M.,
Berthezène, C., & Gottlieb, J. (eds.),