Sylee Gore, ‘Self-portrait of a city in print: Berlin 2001-2010’
Through the generosity of Mr Anthony Davis, the Bodleian Libraries are pleased to award a prize each year to a student of the University of Oxford for an essay about a treasured book collection. The prize is named after Colin Franklin, bibliographer, book collector, and a friend to bibliophiles in Oxford. The competition is announced each October with a deadline in January.
The books in these student collections need not be rare or costly; the award is judged on the coherence and inspiration showing through the collection, and on how well, in the essay submitted, the student expresses the importance of the collection to themselves and shares the motives impelling them along their collecting journey and the successes (and sometimes failures) along the way.
The prize this year is awarded to Sylee Gore (Kellogg College) for her essay ‘Self-portrait of a city in print: Berlin 2001-2010’. Her diverse collection, principally of photographic books, attempts to recapture 10 years in the life of a city. The judges praised this in-depth examination of a particular place and time, recaptured and preserved in the books collected.
Julie Hamilton’s essay, ‘Ancient and modern voices from Egypt,’ was highly commended by the judges. They noted both her expertise in the subject matter – including a hieroglyph edition of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit — and her joy in the material form of her books. The judges were especially pleased to read that Ms Hamilton took a few of her books to be given custom bindings, by a fourth-generation bookbinder in Cairo.