Events – Page 10 – The Bodleian Conveyor

2012 Seminar on the History of the Book: Professor Raphaële Mouren, “The humanist editor as author”

from Martha Repp

The fifth in the 2012 series of the Oxford Seminars on the History of the Book was held at All Souls College, Oxford, on 17 February, 2012. Professor Raphaële Mouren of the École nationale supérieure des sciences de l’information et des bibliothèques (ENSSIB) in the University of Lyon spoke on “The humanist editor as author”. Her paper provided a fascinating insight not only into concepts of authorship in the sixteenth century, but into how scholarly editions of classical texts were prepared during this period.
For the purposes of Professor Mouren’s paper, the term “humanist” was understood to mean a scholar who reads, studies, revises, corrects, and edits classical texts for the purpose of producing a “reference edition”, that is to say an edition that will be used for preference by scholars working on a particular text. The person responsible for producing such an edition can be referred to as a “reference editor”, although there were also examples of “reference printers”, where the same person would be responsible both for the intellectual work of preparing the text, and for the physical production of the edition itself. The best known examples of such reference printers are perhaps the Manutius family in Venice or the Estienne family active in Paris and Geneva.
So, can these humanist editors of classical texts be considered as authors in the same way as the creators of original texts in the vernacular? And where can we look to find evidence of their activity? The most obvious place to start is by looking at the information provided in the editions themselves, and particularly at title pages, dedicatory letters, colophons, and other paratextual material. It is important to bear in mind in this context that the inclusion or omission of particular information on the title page, and the way in which that information is presented, are the result of conscious or unconscious decisions. These decisions will generally have been made by the printer; the specific format of the title page was in the sixteenth century, and generally still is, one of the few aspects of an edition over which the author or editor has no control. If the printer controlled the title page, the editor had an equivalent control over the dedicatory letter, and many humanists used such letters as a means of asserting their editorship of the text, and of spelling out the editorial strategies adopted and the problems encountered. One might expect the title page to an edition of a classical author to provide the name of the original author, the name of the editor, and the name of the printer or publisher. When looking at sixteenth century editions of such texts, however, it is striking how frequently the information provided on the title page is incomplete, or does not match the reality of how the edition was actually prepared.
As the reasons for these omissions or inaccuracies tend to vary from edition to edition, the remainder of Professor Mouren’s paper was devoted to looking at specific examples. These examples were chiefly taken from the editions produced by Pietro Vettori, a university lecturer and prolific editor of classical texts active in Florence in the mid- to late-sixteenth century.
The first example chosen was the three editions of the pseudo-Demetrius Phalereus’s De elocutione, printed in Florence between 1542 and 1562, all edited by Vettori and printed by the Giunta family. The title page of the 1542 edition merely gives the name of Demetrius Phalereus, the title of the work, and the date of publication. A colophon adds that the work was printed in Florence, but not much more. This lack of information may possibly be explained by the fact that the edition is in fact simply a reproduction of an existing edition of the text, and it was not usual for editors to be credited unless they had done substantial work on the text. An additional explanation may lie in the circumstances in which the edition was produced; it was printed at the beginning of the university year, and it is therefore probable that this was a text that Vettori intended to use in his university teaching, and that the priority was to have the edition available to his students as quickly as possible. This 1542 edition may even have functioned as a starting point from which Vettori and his students would go on to correct and revise the text. The extent of the editorial work Vettori ended up doing on this particular text is perhaps indicated by the difference in wording of the title page to the 1562 edition, which is described as Vettori’s commentary on Demetrius Phalereus, despite the fact that the edition includes both the pseudo-Demetrius’s original text, and a Latin translation of it.
The next example considered was the edition of Cicero’s complete works published by the Giuntas in Venice in 1537. The edition consists of four volumes of Cicero’s works, the first volume edited by Andrea Navagero and the remaining three volumes edited by Vettori. The title page to volume one does indeed credit Navagero as editor, but the title pages to volumes 2-4 make no mention of Vettori. In fact, the only mention of Vettori’s input is as the author of an ancillary volume of “Emendationes”. This is probably explained by the fact that in 1537, Vettori was only at the beginning of his career, whereas Navagero was already an established name, and therefore Navagero’s name, unlike Vettori’s would have been seen by the publishers as adding scholarly weight to their edition.
Vettori’s editions of Clement of Alexandria, Porphyry and Sallust are interesting in that they do not mention Vettori’s name on the title page, but do specify the manuscript he used to prepare his edition, the text selected being described as “E Bibliotheca Medicea”. It was common practice to indicate that a famous or important manuscript had been used in the preparation of an edition, since this was seen by printers as a way of making their edition seem newer and better than any of the other existing editions.
A final example considered was the various editions of Cicero’s Epistolae familiares published by Paulus Manutius during the sixteenth century. When Paulus Manutius published his first edition of the Epistolae familiares in 1540, he did not mention his own involvement either as editor or as publisher on the title page. As a result of this, when Vettori began work on his own edition of Cicero, he had to ask his own publisher, Bernardo di Giunta, to find out who had been responsible for the 1540 edition of the Epistolae familiares. When told that it had been Paulus Manutius, Vettori couldn’t quite believe it, and referred to the edition rather dismissively. This then left Paulus Manutius with the problem of how to record his own involvement as editor and publisher on the title page, and in his subsequent editions of the Epistolae familiares, he experimented with a number of different ways of achieving this, most of which involved his name appearing on the title page in two different places. Eventually, however, he settled on the formula “Corrigente Paulo Manutio”, used as an imprint, but also acknowledging his editorial input.

2012 Seminar on the History of the Book: Jane Everson, “The Italian Academies 1525-1700: a Themed Collection database and its research applications”

from Martha Repp

The fourth in the 2012 series of the Oxford Seminars on the History of the Book was held at All Souls College, Oxford, on 10 February, 2012. Professor Jane Everson, of Royal Holloway College in the University of London, spoke on “The Italian Academies 1525-1700: a Themed Collection database and its research applications”.

The main focus of Professor Everson’s paper was the project she has been much engaged in to create a comprehensive database of Academies active in Italy between 1525 and 1700, and of the people and publications associated with them. The project began in 2006, and currently involves Royal Holloway College, the British Library, and the University of Reading. The resulting database is one of the Themed Collection databases, accessible through the British Library web-site, and can be found on-line at http://www. italianacademies.org .

The term ‘Academies’ is used to refer to the 600 or so societies of like-minded people with similar academic interests that existed in Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most of these societies did identify themselves by the title “Accademia”, although some used the alternative identification “Convegna” (congregation). These societies could consist of anywhere between one and several hundred members, and were found throughout the Italian peninsula, both in major cities, and in smaller centres of population. The range of intellectual interests of such Academies was enormous, including languages, history, natural science, astronomy, technology, and music. They were international in their membership, and open to women as well as to men. Nor were female members entirely restricted to the passive roles of dedicatee or muse; many were actively involved as authors, contributors and illustrators. The Academies largely disseminated their ideas through the written word, and their links with the book trade were therefore critical. Some writers, such as the nineteenth century critic Francesco de Sanctis, have tended to dismiss the Academies as groups of idle dilettantes, dedicated to the production of sterile, worthless, and frequently vulgar or obscene “vanity publications”. However, the importance of the Academies for the intellectual history both of Italy itself, and of Europe in general, should not be underestimated. They are probably the earliest examples of learned societies, and their publications were widely distributed, translated, and read.

Despite the importance of the Academies, comparatively little scholarly work has been done on their publications. There have been studies of particularly well-known individual Academies, such as the Accademia della Crusca in Florence, or the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome. Equally, there has been research on the Academies in particular towns. Until very recently, however, the only available overview of the Academies as a whole has been Michele Maylender’s “Storia delle Accademie d’Italia”, published in Bologna between 1920 and 1930. A large part of the reason for this lack of scholarly interest has been the difficulty of accessing the primary material. Conventional catalogue records frequently do not record the involvement of an Academy with a particular publication at all, and even when they do, this information is generally not accessible through the search strategies allowed for by the catalogue. In fact, a study of library catalogues revealed that conventional catalogue searching for materials related to Academies only uncovered about 20% of the potentially relevant material actually in the library. Therefore, in order to access the material at all, researchers have had to rely on a combination of determination, inspired guess-work, and serendipity.

It was in order to supply this deficiency that Professor Everson’s project, “Italian Academies, 1525-1700: the first intellectual networks of Europe” was created. The aim of the project is to create a comprehensive database of all material associated with Academies held by the British Library. The first phase of the project ran from 2006 to 2009, and aimed to cover all material associated with Academies in Bologna, Siena, Naples and Padua. These cities were chosen because of the presence in them of a large number of Academies with a wide range of academic interests. The second phase of the project began in 2009, and extends the coverage of the database to include Academies active in Rome, Venice, Mantua, Verona, and the south of Italy, with a particular focus on Sicily.

Professor Everson gave a practical demonstration of the database, and how it can be used to answer particular research questions, enabling searches from as wide a range of starting points as possible. These potential starting points include the name of an Academy, a particular city, an individual member (either by real name or by nickname or pseudonym), a specific publication, the motto of a particular Academy, or even specific pictorial elements in an Academy’s emblem. Full records for particular Academies include all the names by which the Academy was known, the dates when it was active, and lists of members and publications associated with that Academy, together with a digitized image of the Academy’s emblem.

Questions from the seminar touched on the importance of the Academies in linguistic policy and in the dissemination of Italian as a language. Interestingly, the majority of the publications associated with the Academies are in Italian, with surprisingly few of them in Latin.

McKenzie Lecture 2012: John B. Thompson (Cambridge), ‘Merchants of culture’

John B. Thompson cast a sociologist’s eye over the worlds of the book in the twenty-first century. Taking a close look at Anglo-American publishing, Thompson devoted his lecture to revealing the structure and the dynamic of the publishing field, and the tensions within.

A major tension, he pointed out, was that the newly emerged large publishing corporations need to achieve growth every year, while the market for books is static. The solution that the corporations have found, Thompson argued, is not to publish more books, seeking a greater market share by placing more products on sale. Such an effort would quickly overload the production and publicity teams. Rather, publishers decide to publish fewer books — but these must be ‘Big Books’.

‘Big Books,’ said Thompson, are ‘not best sellers, but potential best-sellers’. The term describes potential rather than achievement. One of the factors identifying a ‘Big Book’ is ‘buzz’. Not mere marketing-department hype or 18th-century style puffery, ‘buzz’ could be defined as ‘expressions of enthusiasm by trusted others’. Here Thompson drew on his close observation of the members of the publishing tribe; their connections with and estimations of other members of the tribe played a factor in business decisions by determining how they evaluated the ‘buzz’ around a book.

These practices in publishing had consequences for booksellers, readers, and authors; and Thompson drew the attention of the audience to a question: is publishing becoming more or less ‘diverse’? He drew a distinction between ‘diversity of output’ – how many titles are published? – and ‘diversity in the marketplace’ — how many are actively marketed to their potential readers? The market, he argued, now tended toward a situation in which the ‘winner takes more’.

Audience questions drew out Thompson’s comments on the retailing of both printed and electronic books online. The power relationship between publishing corporations and retailers, he said, had changed with the advent of large online retailing and was likely to shift again as a result of e-publishing and the spread of e-book readers.

from Alex Franklin

2012 Seminar on the History of the Book: Nicholas Cronk, “The problem of ‘complete works’: the case of Voltaire”

from Martha Repp

The third in the 2012 series of the Oxford Seminars on the History of the Book, convened by Professor I.W.F. Maclean, was held at All Souls’ College, Oxford on Friday 3 February, 2012. Professor Nicholas Cronk, Director of the Voltaire Foundation, spoke on “The problem of ‘complete works’: the case of Voltaire”.

Professor Cronk’s paper considered many of the complete or collected editions of Voltaire’s works, beginning with the editions published in Voltaire’s own lifetime, and including examples of the decisions that Professor Cronk has himself had to make in the course of the Voltaire Foundation’s production, begun in 1968 and to be completed in 2018, of what is intended to be the definitive complete, critical edition of the works of Voltaire.
http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/www_vf/ocv/ocv_index.ssi

Voltaire became famous quite young, and the first edition of his collected works was published in 1728, when he was still only 34. The first edition of Voltaire’s “complete works” was published in 1756 by the Cramer brothers in Geneva, and Professor Cronk used the production of this edition to illustrate the occasional tensions inherent in the relationship between authors and printers or publishers when it comes to the production of an edition of the author’s “complete works”. By 1756, Voltaire was an established and successful writer, and therefore very much a marketable label from the point of view of his publishers. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that the Cramer brothers were keen to include as much material as they possibly could in their edition.

What is apparent from Voltaire’s correspondence with the Cramer brothers, however, is that Voltaire did not entirely endorse their aim of an all-inclusive edition. In fact on several occasions he asked them not to include, or reproached them for having included, material which Voltaire felt might reflect poorly on him as a writer. Voltaire therefore seemed to regard this “complete edition” as an opportunity to construct his own image for posterity.

It is apparent from his correspondence with the Cramers that Voltaire was well-informed both about the printing and publishing process, and about the market for books. It is perhaps interesting, in view of Voltaire’s apparent lack of interest in producing an exhaustive edition of his works, that the “Encadrée” edition of 1775, the last edition of Voltaire’s complete works published during his own lifetime, and which he personally oversaw, includes not only Voltaire’s own occasional poetry, but the replies to these poems by other writers. This perhaps indicates a recognition on Voltaire’s part of a certain degree of sociability in the creative process. It is nevertheless true that after Voltaire’s death, and without his direct involvement in the editorial process, the amount of material included in editions of his “complete works” increased enormously.

Speaking as the current editor of the Voltaire Foundation’s edition, Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, Professor Cronk then went on to consider the difficulties of producing such a series of volumes. Some of these difficulties are specific to Voltaire himself, others are more general.

Academic and editorial ideas have changed regarding whether “authorial intention” should privilege one edition, perhaps that which the author saw personally through the press, over another which had more historical impact on readers. How should an edition of an author’s complete works be organized? This question is particularly acute in the case of an author such as Voltaire, who wrote so much in so many different genres. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this would not have been an issue; it was standard practice for the “complete works” of an author to be organized by genre, beginning with the “grands genres”, such as theatre and epic poetry, then moving on to history, and finally ending with miscellaneous prose works. In practice, this leads to a tendency to create a series of anthologies of different kinds of works, and this is perhaps not the most helpful way of approaching an author such as Voltaire, who had a tendency to juxtapose works of a number of different genres, creating miscellanies of apparently disparate works, which he nevertheless intended to be read together. Therefore, any “complete” edition that is organized by genre runs the risk of splitting up these works, and actually goes against Voltaire’s aesthetic of variety.

There is also a risk of lumping together works that were not intended to be read together. The most obvious example of this, in the case of Voltaire, are the “Contes philosophiques”, a category which anyone familiar with Voltaire will recognize, but which he himself never used.

Only a tiny minority of Voltaire’s works were published under his own name, with the rest being published either under one of a bewildering array of pseudonyms, or anonymously. Everyone ‘knew’ that most of these anonymous or pseudonymous works were actually by Voltaire, but this was not always the case; in fact, there are some works where even today it has not been possible to establish with any certainty whether Voltaire wrote them or not. This is further complicated by Voltaire’s habit of denying authorship of works that he actually had written. This in turn created a situation in which it was very easy for other writers to pastiche Voltaire’s style, and pass their work of as his. Examples of such pastiches include the sequel to “Candide”, now generally recognized as being by the abbé du Laurence. Some of these pastiches are obvious, but others are not, and many remained in the accepted canon of Voltaire’s works for a surprisingly long time.

The final discussion explored all of these issues in more detail, as well as raising new ones, such as the current location of Voltaire’s manuscripts in St Petersburg, and the need to produce a detailed catalogue of these.

Walter Harding’s collection celebrated

Photograph - Shackleton, Roberts and Turner_2 — Then Bodley’s Librarian, Robert Shackleton; Julian Roberts; and Michael Turner opening the packing cases in 1975.

In 1975, Michael Turner (then of Special Collections, later Head of Conservation) with Bodley’s Librarian Robert Shackleton and the Keeper of Printed Books, Julian Roberts, opened the first of 900 packing cases containing the collection of Walter Harding of Chicago.

This legacy from a transplanted Englishman raised in Chicago brought a wealth of music into the Bodleian, including vast quantities of English secular song, English and foreign opera scores and music hall songs. Harding’s collection of American sheet music made the Bodleian the major holder of American song material on this side of the Atlantic.

Dr Abigail Williams (English Faculty, Oxford) will tell Harding’s story in a radio programme on Tuesday, 7 Feb. at 8:10 pm on BBC Radio 3. The programme includes interviews with Michael Turner and with Clive Hurst, the Head of Rare Books at the Bodleian Library.

Last month Harding’s life and collecting were honoured at the Library with a display of choice items in the library’s Proscholium and an evening of talks and song on 18 January. Dr Williams spoke about Harding’s life and his love of books, and about the remarkable story of how the collection came from Harding’s house in a run-down neighbourhood of Chicago to the Special Collections of the Bodleian Library.

Highlighting the value of Harding’s collection for music scholarship, Michael Burden, Professor of Opera Studies, took participants through an 18th-century opera libretto, of which some unique examples were collected by Harding, pointing out that these printed guides to performances are valuable clues to which songs were really sung on any night, given the cavalier attitude of 18th-century opera directors and singers to the composer’s actual score.

The weight of the Harding collection – 22 tons – was noted in the speeches. In fact the sheer scale contributes greatly to its utility for scholars today. Harding’s collections of verse and song, for instance of American sheet music, broadside ballads, and poetry anthologies, enable researchers to ask the kind of quantitative questions – touching on popular taste and on the movement of literary goods in a mass market – that are now regarded as key to understanding cultural developments in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Harding B 9_2 97b_2 — Captain William Moir shooting William Malcolm; from the Harding Collection, Bodleian Library

Several Bodleian Library and Oxford-based research projects and online resources draw upon the Harding Collection:
The Digital Miscellanies Index; 1000 poetry anthologies, printed in the 18th century
Bodleian Broadside Ballads; including 15,000 broadside ballads in Harding’s collection, from the 18th and 19th centuries
The John Johnson Collection of Ephemera, online archive, where Harding materials are featured in both the ‘Crime’ category (with broadsides featuring news of murders and executions) and the less sensationalist ‘Book trade’ category, represented by bookplates.

As the speeches and the display also revealed, the collector with time and knowledge to devote to his passion for music was able to acquire rare and unique items. On display was the sole surviving copy of a song by J.C. Bach performed at Vauxhall, and part-books printed in Venice in the 16th-century, one of which is also a unique survival.

The evening’s concert of music by the duo Alva (Vivien Ellis and Giles Lewin) included songs from Harding’s collection, one song of his own composition, and concluded with the hymn supposed to be his favourite, “When they ring those Golden Bells”.

Lay still my fond shepherd
In praise of Yarm (from The Yorkshire Garland)
The Horse Race (from The Yorkshire Garland)
(Tunes from) The dancing master, Playford
A true and tragical song concerning Captain John Bolton (from The Yorkshire Garland)
An thou were (traditional Scots song)
My Dad is a Delver (from Calliope, or, English Harmony (1739))
All dressed up with nowhere to go (music by Walter Harding)
When they ring those Golden Bells

2012 Seminar on the History of the Book: Mark Purcell, “The private library in Ireland before the Union”

from Martha Repp

The second in the 2012 series of the Oxford Seminars on the History of the Book was held at All Souls’ College, Oxford, on 27 January, 2012. Mr. Mark Purcell, Curator of Book Collections for the National Trust, spoke on “The private library in Ireland before the Union”.

The first preconception that Mr. Purcell’s paper sought to dispel is the idea, enthusiastically promoted by seventeenth century English propaganda such as Nahum Tate’s lyrics to Henry Purcell’s ode for the centenary of Trinity College, Dublin, that, before English intervention, Ireland was an entirely uncultivated country in which books were more or less unknown, and certainly unread. There is, in fact, evidence of significant sixteenth century Irish book collections. Nor were these collections entirely confined to monasteries and religious houses: as early as 1519, the Earl of Kildare is known to have had a collection of books in his castle at Maynooth. The main focus of the paper, however, was on the period from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.

Anyone interested in researching Irish private libraries labours under a number of distinct disadvantages. The first of these is the lack of a complete national archival record, with the destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland in 1922. The second is the lack of extant libraries, with many of the private libraries which are known to have existed having been destroyed, sold, or otherwise dispersed. To learn about these collections, one is therefore forced to rely on evidence other than the books themselves, such as bills of sale, correspondence with book dealers or lists of subscribers in printed books, but these only tell part of the story. For example, if you want to know whether a collection was shelved with the spines facing in or out, you need to know whether the books have fore-edge titles or not. Equally, the lavishness or otherwise of the bindings can indicate the extent to which the owners were using the books to put on a show for their friends and neighbours. Historical shelf-marks can reveal how the books were arranged, and ownership inscriptions can reveal information not only about who owned the books, but about how, where, when and for how much they were acquired, and how they were used.

The difficulties raised by this lack of surviving libraries are compounded by the fact that, of the libraries that do survive, few remain in their original setting, making it harder to gain a picture of the collection as a whole. Some have been absorbed into larger collections, such as the Townley Hall collection, now part of the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Others, such as the collection of William King (1650-1729), Archbishop of Dublin and ardent bibliophile, have been split up among several different locations. Equally, many surviving libraries have not been catalogued and are in very poor condition, and few have been studied in any detail.
Mr. Purcell then went on to consider to what kinds of people these libraries typically belonged. Many belonged to important members of the clergy, typically Protestant, English implants. Scholarship and reading were seen as suitable diversions for a clergyman, and the founding of diocesan libraries was seen as a useful way of promoting the Protestant interest in Ireland. This philanthropic impulse towards the creation of libraries does not, however, always seem to have taken into account whether a library was needed or likely to be used. Landowners were also important book collectors; by the eighteenth century, there was a general consensus that reading and owning books was something that a person of quality ought to do. One preconception about book owning by landowners during this period is that the books were intended for show by insecure social climbers, and were never actually read or used. In fact, the books that survive do show evidence of use. It should also be borne in mind that in Ireland, more so than in England, many members of the landowning classes had risen from comparatively obscure origins, and that many of these were scholars, or at the very least had an interest in books. Examples here include Judge Michael Ward of Castle Ward, a lawyer and book collector, whose son was later elevated to the peerage as Viscount Bangor. The professional classes, such as lawyers, doctors or army officers, also owned books, and were perhaps even more significant as book collectors than were the landowners. Evidence from Irish sale catalogues suggests that, of the libraries offered for sale, only 12% belonged to landowners, with 60% belonging to professional men. Book ownership was not restricted to men; there is also evidence of Irish private libraries belonging to women. Books aimed specifically at children do not really exist before the eighteenth century, but there is no shortage of school and college textbooks, or of books awarded as university prizes.

The books in these private libraries may have been purchased in Ireland; Dublin had a thriving book trade, both new and second-hand. They may equally have been purchased from London and either sent to Ireland or brought back in person, or even imported directly from the continent. The nature of the books is likely to be as varied as the owners who acquired them. There was, however, a distinction between books considered “useful” and books considered “curious”, and many collectors do seem to have been aware of the age, value and condition of the books they were acquiring.

The final question considered was how these books would have been stored, and who would have had access to them. Here, the frequently used term country-house library is perhaps misleading, as it suggests that all the books would always have been stored in the country, when in practice they may also have been kept in houses in town or professional offices. In general, during the period, there is a progression from libraries being kept in private spaces or closets (Archbishop King, for example, is known to have stored his books in a complicated series of numbered boxes), to libraries being public, ceremonial and social spaces. It should also not be assumed that, in important families with large numbers of books, there was only one library or collection of books in a single location. Access to the books was not always restricted to the family; in some cases, friends or connections of the family, or even particularly favoured retainers, were given access. If this is indeed the case, it calls into question the distinction between public and private libraries, and makes the history of libraries less a history of institutions than a history of individuals, networks, and connections.

The final discussion considered all of these issues in more detail, as well as raising new questions, such as whether catalogues for any of these collections survive, and whether the situation in Ireland can usefully be compared to the situation in Scotland.

2012 Seminar on the History of the Book ; Will Poole, ‘John Fell’s New Year Books’

from Martha Repp

The first in the seventeenth annual series of Oxford Seminars on the History of the Book, convened by Professor I.W.F. Maclean, was given at All Souls College, Oxford, on 20 January, 2012, by Dr. William Poole of New College, Oxford, on the subject of “John Fell’s New Year Books”.

Dr. John Fell, 1625-1686, was one of the dominant figures in the intellectual life of Oxford in the mid to late 17th century. He was elected Dean of Christ Church in 1660 at the age of 35, served as Vice-Chancellor of the University from 1666 to 1669, and, in 1676, became Bishop of Oxford, while still serving as Dean of Christ Church, continuing to hold both offices, as well as a number of other official and ecclesiastical positions, until his death in 1686. He was also an important figure in the development of printing in Oxford. He was one of the partners leasing the University press, and arranged for the use of the Sheldonian Theatre for printing purposes, as well as setting up a type foundry in Oxford and encouraging the Wolvercote paper mill.

Fell’s scholarly output includes sermons, biographical works, and numerous editions of classical and patristic texts, but Dr Poole’s paper focused on one particular aspect of this; the series of small format editions published in Oxford at Fell’s expense between 1666 and 1686, and known as the New Year Books because they were intended to be given by Fell as New Year gifts to his students.

The tradition of exchanging gifts at New Year was an old one, and it is not surprising that within academic communities these gifts should have come to take the form of texts. There is evidence of works having been printed in England as New Year gifts as early as the 16th century, most of which are attempts on the part of the author to attract the attention of wealthy and influential patrons rather than serious intellectual undertakings. In University settings, this exchange of gifts generally seems to have taken the form of students presenting their latest work to their tutors. Fell acknowledges this tradition in the 1669 edition of Clement of Rome, in which he states that part of his motivation for producing the series of New Year Books is that he frequently received New Year gifts of texts from his students, and that he felt it was, as he puts it, “turpissimum” for him to have nothing to give them in exchange. In addition to this practical motivation, Fell also seems to have had a general interest in producing a series of cheap editions of teaching texts for students long before he actually started the New Years Books. But he had to be careful not to upset the London Stationers, who monopolised the textbook market.

Fell’s New Year Books are generally small format (octavo or duodecimo) editions of texts by classical and patristic authors. They are distinguished by austerity and plainness, both in production and in editorial style, which demonstrates Fell’s preference for text over commentary and collation over exegesis. In most cases, the texts and versions presented were not new, and Fell seems to have done comparatively little work on them. It has been stated that the New Year Books are primarily patristic in nature, and this is certainly true after 1679 (possibly because at this point Fell was also working on his edition of Cyprian). Before 1679, however, there is generally a fairly equal balance between Christian and pagan authors. In general, the choice of authors and texts shows a preference for early Christian authors who warn of the dangers of schism, and who propound an episcopal, but definitely not papal, form of church government. Despite this inherent conservatism, it should not be assumed that the authors and texts chosen were always neutral, or that the texts were always read and received in a friendly manner; the choice of Nemesius as the New Year Book for 1671 appears, from the tone of the annotations in some surviving copies, notably Thomas Barlow’s, to have been particularly controversial.

Fell’s editorial practice appears to have depended heavily on collation; in most cases, the texts provided are collated from around four manuscripts. Although the manuscripts used are sometimes clearly identified, Fell tends to be less clear about which specific readings have been taken from which manuscript, making it hard to trace the collation process in any detail. It has been suggested that Fell used the New Year Books as an annual exercise for his students in preparing and editing a text, but the evidence for this is patchy. Fell does seem to have had some help in preparing these editions, certainly from Thomas Spark, who edited the 1679 edition of Zosimus and the 1678 edition of Herodian which may have been the New Year Book for that year and is certainly affiliated to the series, and probably from Edward Bernard, who Madan associates with the preparation of the 1666 edition of Pachymeres. Bernard also presented a copy of the 1686 edition of Origen to Friedrich Spanheim, and appears to have borrowed manuscripts from New College library on Fell’s behalf. However, Fell rarely if ever appears to have conceded overall editorial control to anyone else.

The final question considered was how these works were circulated, and to whom. Fortunately, as many of the books were acquired by Oxford college libraries, a large number of them have survived, in many cases in series which can be traced to particular academic owners. The majority of copies do appear to have been given as gifts, with several surviving copies having ex dono inscriptions recording the gift. These gifts were widely circulated within Christ Church, and less widely circulated outside, although this is more difficult to trace. Fell appears to have given copies to his academic peers and contemporaries, as well as to his students. Fell certainly had some copies bound for him by the Oxford binder Henry Ingram, but since these constitute relatively few copies, it is probable that he gave away unbound copies as well. Copies were passed on from one academic to another, and were certainly still being used as live academic texts in the eighteenth century. There is little evidence of the works having been circulated outside England. Although the nature of the works as gifts is always insisted on, and they are only rarely referred to in the Term Catalogues, there is also evidence of a commercial element to their production; they were produced in print runs of up to a thousand, more than could have realistically been given away, and there is also evidence of Fell having used copies of the books as capital within Oxford.

A stimulating final discussion considered many of the issues raised in the paper in more detail, such as whether there is evidence of the works having been given to a particular type of student, and whether the production of this kind of “teaching text” allowed for the publication of texts without the level of scholarly editorial work that would be required for a full-scale critical edition.

Bibliography Room in the Story Museum

On 7 December 2011 the Library celebrated along with the Story Museum in Oxford the successful installation of the Bodleian printing presses at the Story Museum on Pembroke Street. The six large presses (five of iron, one of wood) and other Bibliography Room materials will be housed in the Story Museum where printing workshops and courses will be available for students and for families. The presses will stay in the Museum throughout the period of the redevelopment of the New Library into the Weston Library.

Courses and classes for students, families and members of the public have already begun, and the programme for 2012 will soon be available on the Story Museum website (www.storymuseum.org).

Oxford’s other treasures: from Mill to Milligan

from Owen McKnight, Jesus College Library

The Bodleian Libraries are currently celebrating their long history of collecting with an exhibition of ‘Treasures’. Venerable as it is, the Bodleian was not the first library in Oxford: at least a quarter of the 44 colleges and halls had established libraries by the time the Bodleian opened in November 1602.

The college libraries have a continuous tradition of serving their members. They provide textbooks for today’s undergraduates at the same time as preserving and interpreting the historic books and manuscripts which have now become ‘special’ collections. The Committee of College Librarians has now published a new guide to the special collections in the care of Oxford’s colleges. [8 pages, PDF format].

06_colleges_corr_small — Brasenose and Lincoln Colleges drawn by John Bereblock in 1566 (Bodleian Library, MS. Bodl. 13)

Previously, the only guide to such material in college libraries was the late Paul Morgan’s compilation Oxford libraries outside the Bodleian. This has long been out of print, but it remains a valuable reference for its detailed survey of early printed books, manuscripts, and archives. The new document is intended as an accessible and up-to-date complement.

Among many diverse holdings, the guide reveals collections of Civil War tracts across Oxford, in Christ Church, Lady Margaret Hall, Lincoln, and Worcester. Somerville has the library of John Stuart Mill – and St John’s has the papers of Spike Milligan. Many Old Members have presented their literary papers, and other donations have created collections of books and manuscripts predating colleges’ foundations.

Each of the colleges and halls remains independent, both of the University and of one another. There is, nonetheless, close collaboration, notably in 2008 when the Bodleian mounted an exhibition under the title Beyond the Work of One: Oxford College Libraries and Their Benefactors , still available to visit online.

Researchers who wish to explore these collections are welcome on application in advance.

Medieval manuscripts masterclasses, 2011 — Second-hand books in the 15th century

Dr James Willoughby led the first medieval manuscripts masterclass of 2011, examining manuscripts from Bodleian collections that had been part of the library of St George’s Chapel, Windsor. The main problem was to establish when the books had arrived in St George’s Chapel. A 14th-century inventory from the library, fortunately preserved also in the Bodleian as MS. Ashm. Rolls 47, showed none of the manuscripts in question (many of them older than the Chapel itself, which was founded in 1348) were at that time in the Chapel library. In 1612, the transfer of 70 surviving manuscripts from St George’s to the Bodleian was recorded in the library records. Between those two dates, Dr Willoughby found the question that drove his research: were these manuscripts requisitioned from monasteries at the Dissolution ordered by Henry VIII (who is buried in the Chapel)? Or had the library acquired them by other means, through a second-hand market in manuscripts, active already in the 15th century? The evidence had to be sought in the style of bindings, in inscriptions, marks of chaining, and pressmarks.

The classes are convened by Professor Richard Sharpe (History Faculty) and Martin Kauffmann (Bodleian Library). See the current calendar of events.