By Sophie Lay (Senior Library Assistant, Reader Services) and Harry Whattoff (Graduate Trainee)

A display was housed in the English Faculty Library throughout Trinity Term 2025 until Friday 4th July 2025 – the closing date of the EFL. This display detailed the history of the EFL, from it’s first inception to its assimilation into the Bodleian Humanities Library. This blog archives the research undertaken in this display.

Acland House (1914-1920)

The English Faculty Library was founded in 1914 by an endowment from the English Fund, largely set up by Joseph Wright¹. It was established in Acland House, 40 Broad Street (part of the land where the Weston Library now stands). It owned 342 books, many gifted by delegates of the Clarendon Press or Joseph Wright. It had a budget of up to £25 per year. Percy Simpson was appointed as Librarian on a part-time basis.

By 1915, the EFL owned 800 books. In 1916, Wright organised an appeal to buy A. S. Napier’s library upon his death for the EFL. This contribution and others meant that by 1917, the EFL owned 4,250 books. (Harker, p.5)

The library opened to women (registered students) in 1916, with elaborate gendered opening hours that meant men and women would never meet. This was rescinded in 1920.

Professor Arthur Napier

Professor Arthur Sampson Napier was one of the founding members of Oxford University’s Faculty of English Language and Literature². Before coming to Oxford, he was born in Cheshire and educated at Rugby School and Owens College, Manchester; his family had expectations for him to join their china manufacturing firm, so, he initially studied chemistry³. He continued this line of study at Exeter College, Oxford, where he attended additional lectures on comparative philology and English philology – this soon became the inspiration for his career in the field.

Napier began a readership in the department of English at the University of Berlin in 1878, then in 1882, was appointed Professor of English language and literature until his return to Britain in 1885⁴. Later that year, he applied for, and was appointed as, the Merton professor of English language and literature at Oxford. Over the coming years, Napier would push for the creation of an undergraduate English honours course; this finally came to pass in June of 1894 along with the newly established School of English⁵.

The Napier Memorial Library Fund

Upon the passing of A.S. Napier in 1916, the Committee of English Studies (made up of Charles Harding Firth, Walter Raleigh, David Nichol Smith & Joseph Wright) made an appeal for funds to purchase Napier’s extensive personal book collection to join the existing material in the English Faculty Library at Acland House. Napier’s books can still be found in the EFL collection, including his collection of mainly German nineteenth-and early twentieth-century pamphlets and offprints on Old and Middle English.

Exam Schools (1920-1939)

In 1920, the EFL relocated to the attic of the exam schools.

1924 saw the end of Wright’s English Fund, so the EFL established a Library Committee and began to charge a £1 annual subscription per undergraduate reader to fund the library. Another source of funding was the Walter Raleigh Memorial Fund, which saw many early texts purchased in 1927. (Harker, p.6)

However, all these books drew a problem; in 1928, the Library Committee had noted a problem with ‘the scribbling in books by apparently half-witted readers’ (Harker, p.6). By 1931, the EFL had amassed 10,000 books. Recommendations began to be made that a new building was added onto the exam schools to house the library – however, this was not to be.

The 1930s saw a lot of change in the library; J.R.R. Tolkien and C.L. Wren were tasked with a ‘complete reorganisation of the philological section’ or the library. And in 1935, Percy Simpson retired after 20 years in post; his tone as librarian can be summarised by his preference to “deal with readers on the assumption that they are ladies and gentlemen.”⁶

In 1939, the Exams Schools were needed for as a military hospital during the war⁷. As a result, the EFL was temporarily relocated into the Taylor Institution.

Percy Simpson

Percy Simpson was the first librarian of the English Faculty Library, initially set up in 1914. The idea of a library for the English School originally came from Sir Walter Raleigh who was also the one to secure Simpson’s position as a lecturer in the faculty. Simpson had previously graduated from Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he became particularly interested in Elizabethan literature and, more specifically, the works of Ben Jonson. After university, he became a classical master at a school in London; alongside this, he was also able to continue with his academic work⁸. It was during this period, in 1888, when he purchased a copy of the 1616 Folio of Jonson’s works as a gift for his son. However, upon his son’s untimely death, Simpson donated the text to the English Faculty Library in the 1950s – it has remained here ever since.⁹

Upon his arrival in Oxford in 1913, Simpson worked both for the Clarendon Press and the English School. In a pamphlet written for Simpson’s 85th birthday¹⁰, we get a sense of how busy he would have been:

“His teaching career began in earnest in 1918; with the flood of ex-service men the number of his pupils was so large that, including lectures, classes, and hours of attendance at the newly formed Faculty Library, of which he was the first Librarian, he reckoned that he worked fifty hours a week in full term in the years 1919-1921.”¹¹

At the time, the library was located in Acland House on Broad Street. This was a labyrinthine conglomeration of multiple 17th-century homes which had been renovated and added to over the centuries. Pantin notes that, in the 19th century, two libraries had been added to the property¹² – one of these likely would have housed the first English Faculty Library in which Simpson worked. This building, along with other 17th-century houses on Broad Street, was ultimately demolished in 1936/37 to make way for the New Bodleian Library – now called the Weston Library.

Before this, however, the library had already moved to the attic of the Examinations Schools in 1920; it is here where Simpson would have remained until his retirement in 1935. The pamphlet continues to discuss his legacy:

“The Library owes to its first Librarian its possession of many valuable early books, and the absence from its shelves of many less valuable later ones. His comments on receiving suggestions that the library should acquire critical works of which he disapproved were often pungent. In addition he taught both undergraduates and research pupils, and examined both with formidable seriousness”.¹³

C. S. Lewis, whose time at Oxford overlapped with Simpson’s, certainly reinforces the remarks made on his seemingly merciless examination style. In a letter to his brother from June 14th 1932, Lewis writes:

“I have been infernally busy getting ready for Schools and have therefore little to tell you (By the bye Percy Tweedlepippin is my colleague and his principles as an examiner are perhaps worth recording. In answer to a suggested question of mine he retorted ‘It’s no good setting that. They’d know that!’)”¹⁴

It’s not easy to tell whether this nickname for Simpson is either endearing or disparaging, however, as a committed member of the faculty for over twenty years, we’re sure it’s the former. In any case, it does seem to conjure a rather enchanting image of Simpson which, alongside a description of him as “short, rosy faced, with […] blue eyes twinkling behind his spectacles”¹⁵ paints a kind picture of the English Faculty’s first librarian.

Taylor Institution (1939-1948)

The EFL experienced some quiet years during the war, as most men were required for the war effort. It was a time of small budgets and small readership; bookshelves were burned for fuel, and only 150 readers were registered for the academic year starting in 1945 (Harker, p.9).

Fortunately, the EFL was returned to the Exam Schools in 1948.

Exam Schools (1948-1965)

In 1948, the EFL had 550 junior members – a big jump from the war years. By 1950, the library was acquiring 500 books a year, and this led to the EFL’s first exhibition in 1952 (Harker, p.9). Unfortunately, this also led to the EFL wanting for space.

Plans began to be developed for the EFL to move into a new space on Merton Street that would be shared with History. However, it quickly became apparent that the space would not be large enough for English too (though it did house our Icelandic, Palaeographical, and York Powell collections, for a while).

In 1957, the idea was developed for the Manor Road building, which would be shared with the Law faculty. The move would require increased library staffing: a full-time librarian and an assistant, to facilitate longer opening hours (a whole 18 hours a week! Only in term-time, mind.)

In 1960, the subscription was abolished, and reader numbers continued to rise. By 1963, the EFL had amassed 34,000 volumes, 500 readers, and was acquiring books at a pace of 1,000 a year.

Naturally, the space in Exam Schools space was becoming untenable, with: cramped reading rooms, no staff areas, books stacked on the floor, no toilet (the being nearest 3 floors away), the floors only mopped once term, outbreaks of dead pigeons, and beetle infestations! Still, it was noted that the space had “a certain impressive charm, and the Librarian and Assistant Librarian were sad to leave it.” (Harker, p.11)

Professor Herbert Davis

The English Faculty Library in the St. Cross Building was opened on Saturday 8th of May 1965 by Professor Herbert Davis. This exact date is evidenced by the entry Davis wrote in his 1964/65 pocket diary on page 145; as part of his archive, we hold 27 of his pocket diaries from the years 1937-65. There are also various letters, poems, photographs, scholarly works, and lectures which remain. The relevant pocket diary has been displayed as part of this exhibition.

Before opening the EFL as we know it, Davis was brought up in rural Northamptonshire until he attended St. John’s College, Oxford, with an exhibition in Classics in 1911. With a plan to continue his studies in Germany, he moved to Heidelberg in 1914, before soon returning and joining the Royal Garrison Artillery in 1916. After the war, Davis took a position at Leeds University until 1922 when he moved to Canada and ultimately became a professor at the University of Toronto. This is where he spent fifteen years of his life, concentrating his studies on the works of Jonathan Swift. Davis moved around a lot during his career – he also worked at Cornell University and eventually became President of Smith College, Massachusetts.¹⁶

In 1949, he made a final return to Oxford to become Reader in Bibliography and Textual Criticism until his retirement in 1960¹⁷. Despite this, Gardner notes how active Davis remained within the English Faculty:

“After his retirement in 1960 to an Emeritus Professorship (he had been given a titular Professorship in 1956), he continued to supervise and examine research students, to conduct the printing classes, and to assist, with practical advice drawn from his wide experience of libraries all over the world, in the planning of the new and splendid building for the English Faculty Library at Oxford, which he enriched with a valuable Swift collection”.¹⁸

St Cross Building (1965-2025)

The English Faculty Library officially opened on the 8th May 1965 – but other areas of the St Cross Building were used before this date! (Harker, p.12). The first purpose-built space for the EFL had provision for 150 readers, and was designed by Leslie Martin, who was inspired by Lethaby’s ideas on the cube and square. He worked with Gordon Russell to create special, custom tables specifically for the space, utilising his fascination with in-built lighting. He did occasionally knock horns with the faculty: for example, Martin wanted the library to have 16 columns – but the faculty insisted upon only 8, not wanting the space to feel too crowded.¹⁹

“…the simpler plan and more extensive natural side light makes the English Library a particularly pleasurable space in which to work. The height of the roods holding the skylights give a cool, white light, while the clever section and underlying sense of order imposed by the grid create a sense of great calm.” (Harwood, p.123)

In 1966, the EFL had 639 readers borrowing 21,000 books a year. It used a customised classification scheme, owned 36,000 volumes, and was acquiring books at a pace of 2,000 a year (Harker, p.14). In 1975, the library acquired the Wilfred Owen Collection, followed by the Turville-Petre Collection in 1982. In 1985, the EFL became the first library to transfer its catalogue from physical to a computerised format.²⁰

While much has changed since that time in the library staff, collections, and readership, the St Cross Building has remained the home of the EFL for over 60 years. The EFL currently holds c.64,000 books onsite, with additional EFL books and materials in the offsite storage facility, comprising lower-use material as well the library’s various special collections. The 2023/24 academic year saw c.21,000 loans issued, and c.9,000 books used in-house (only including physical items, not e-resources used).

Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities (2025-)

On July 4th of 2025, the English Faculty Library in the St. Cross Building closed its doors for the final time in preparation to move our collections into the Schwarzman Centre – Oxford University’s new Centre for the Humanities. The building will house nine institutes/departments, including: English; History; Linguistics, Philology & Phonetics; Medieval and Modern Languages; Music; and Philosophy. As such, other relevant library collections will be merging alongside our own to form the Bodleian Humanities Library. These are:

• Music Faculty Library
• Oxford Internet Institute Library
• Philosophy and Theology Faculties Library
• Film collections from the Taylor Institution Library
• History of Medicine Library

The library will be staffed and fully open 9am-9pm, Monday to Sunday. Part of the library will also be available for students to use 24/7 as a study space (collections will be accessible 9am-9pm only).

The new library will have a floor area of 2,046 square metres, almost the exact same figure as the combined floor area of the libraries moving in. There will be c. 240 reader seats for general use. Spaces include two large study areas with formal seating, and a variety of other spaces, including five small bookable group study/consultation rooms (for up to four people), a larger group study room (eight seats), a multimedia room with music and film collections, a digital study room, and pockets of more informal, relaxed seating.

In addition, there are 80 seats in dedicated graduate study spaces, including two bookable eight-seater group study/discussion rooms.

The library includes a rare materials teaching room, and items from the English Faculty Library’s special collections can be called from the offsite store to the new library for consultation and teaching.

Alongside the library, the building as a whole will have the following amenities:

• Concert hall (500 seats)
• Flexible lecture and drama theatre (250 seats)
• Film Screening and Lecture Theatre (87 seats)
• Black box experimental performance space
• Multimedia digital TV broadcasting and sound studio
• Exhibition hall
• Café and various meeting spaces
• Schools and Public Engagement Centre
• Great Hall
• Virtual global classroom
• Rehearsal rooms and studio spaces

Sources

Main Source: Harker, J. (1980) ‘The Historical Development of the English Faculty Library, Oxford’. Ealing Miscellany. 17. pp.1-28. Much of the information used in the chronological side of this blog was sourced from Harker’s work. Where other sources have been used, these are noted.

1. Wright, E. M. (1932) The Life of Joseph Wright. London: Oxford University Press. ↩︎
2. Ker, Neil. “A.S. NAPIER, 1853-1916”. Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature in Honour of Herbert Dean Meritt, edited by James L. Rosier, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 1970, pp. 152-181. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110820263-015. ↩︎
3. MacMahon, M. K. C. “Napier, Arthur Sampson (1853–1916), philologist.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.  October 04, 2007. Oxford University Press. Date of access 25 Apr. 2025, <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-94131>. ↩︎
4. ibid. ↩︎
5. “About the Faculty.” Faculty of English, www.english.ox.ac.uk/about-the-faculty. ↩︎
6. This paragraph is part of a notice written (and signed) by Percy Simpson, and dated 18th November 1929. It is held in the Percy Simpson Archive in the English Faculty Library, item 43-44. ↩︎
7. Faculty of English Language and Literature. FA 2/5. Oxford University Archives. ↩︎
8. A List of the Published Writings of Percy Simpson. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1950. ↩︎
9. Information taken from catalogue card for The Workes of Benjamin Jonson, 1616. ↩︎
10. “Dr. Percy Simpson.” Times, 16 Nov. 1962, p. 15. The Times Digital Archive, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS251880304/TTDA?u=oxford&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=e452b076. Accessed 23 Apr. 2025. ↩︎
11. A List of the Published Writings of Percy Simpson. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1950. ↩︎
12. Pantin, W. A. “The Recently Demolished Houses in Broad Street, Oxford.” Oxoniensia, vol. 2, 1937,  pp. 171-200. ↩︎
13. A List of the Published Writings of Percy Simpson. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1950. ↩︎
14. Lewis, C. S. Collected Letters. Edited by Walter Hooper, London, Harper Collins, 2004. ↩︎
15. Gardner, Helen, and Rebecca Mills. “Simpson, Percy (1865–1962), literary scholar.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. September 28, 2006. Oxford University Press. Date of access 11 Apr. 2025, <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-36105> ↩︎
16. Gardner, Helen. “Herbert John Davis 1983-1967.” Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 54, 1968, pp. 289-299. ↩︎
17. “Prof. Herbert Davis.” Times, 30 Mar. 1967, p. 14. The Times Digital Archive, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CS237726846/TTDA?u=oxford&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=8831bb63. Accessed 23 Apr. 2025. ↩︎
18. Gardner, Helen. “Herbert John Davis 1983-1967.” Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 54, 1968, pp. 289-299. ↩︎
19. Harwood, E. (ed.) (2013) ‘Leslie Martin and the St Cross Building, Oxford’, in Harwood, E., Powers, A. and Saumarez Smith, O., Twentieth Century Architecture II : Oxford and Cambridge. London: Twentieth Century Society. pp.122-135. ↩︎
20. Faculty of English Language and Literature. FA 2/5. Oxford University Archives. ↩︎

The English Faculty Library is currently dressed up in its most colourful finery. Each year, for both LGBT+ History Month (February) and Pride Month (June), various pride flags drape the halls of the library and I must say, they look wonderful. Whilst the EFL does not have a designated LGBT+ History Month display like some other libraries will this year, our current display (curated by yours truly) is particularly topical.

The title of the display is “TO BE DESTROYED:” The Legal History of Book Censorship in the UK and it is essentially a (mostly) complete timeline of the major events/publications that resulted in the creation of the 1959 Obscene Publications Act. As such, the display begins in 1476 (the introduction of the printing press to England); traverses past John Milton’s ‘Areopagitica’ of 1644; makes a stop in 1857 (the first Obscene Publications Act); picks up a little context in 1868 (Cockburn’s definition of the term ‘obscene’); strolls past the various obscenity trials of the twentieth century; and finally comes to its conclusion at the present day. It also considers the wider impact these various laws had and touches upon their international reach.

As shown in the display, the current piece of legislation (the 1959 Act) took huge steps in reforming previous laws aimed at curbing the publication, sale, and distribution of material deemed to be obscene and corruptive. In numerous instances, these historic laws resulted in the censorship of an array of queer literature; most famously, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928).

But let us first get into the crux of what is meant by the term ‘obscene’. The Act’s predecessor was that of 1857, enacted at a time when the political elite became concerned about the rise in literacy rates – especially amongst the working classes. As such, Lord Campbell penned his Obscene Publications Act which made the distribution of ‘obscene’ materials a statutory offence. It also gave police the authority to search for, seize, and destroy these documents. One thing Lord Campbell did not do, however, was define the term ‘obscene’.

Understandably, confusion arose surrounding the vagueness and looseness of his terminology, so, in 1868, during the case R v Hicklin, the Lord Chancellor Alexander Cockburn provided his famed definition of the term (see below). It was this definition which “dominated obscenity law ever since” (Crawley 66) and provided the legal foundations to the cases of some of the most famous works of literature. It is important to note too that, in this case, it was ruled that extracts of a book should be judged independently of the text as a whole. In other words, if any isolated material was obscene, then the whole book would be judged as so.

“I think the test of obscenity is this, whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall.” (‘Regina v. Hicklin’)

So, this was Cockburn’s definition…still fairly vague right? It was, however, these words which ultimately led to Hall’s novel being outlawed – sixty years after they had been spoken. The text’s main ‘offence’ was its portrayal of a lesbian relationship; however, it is famously tame and free of any explicit material. Additionally, lesbianism was not outlawed at the time so the reason for censorship fell upon Lord Cockburn’s interpretation of the word ‘obscenity’. To the judge, Sir Chartres Biron, the novel did indeed have the tendency to ‘deprave or corrupt’ because it looked upon the protagonist and their sexuality with sympathy. Therefore, the novel was ordered to be destroyed and was banned until 1949 – after Radclyffe Hall’s death.

Yet in the spirit of this year’s LGBT+ History Month theme, Activism and Social Change, Radclyffe Hall’s case was a landmark one in showcasing the frustration of censorship laws of the time and the need for change. Wan writes that “Norman Birkett, the defence lawyer, had assembled a formidable group of witnesses, including E.M. Forster, Desmond McCarthy (the editor of Life and Letters), Leonard and Virginia Woolf, [and] Vita Sackville-West” (150) to defend the novel and oppose censorship. Most of these figures were queer creatives, and all were members of The Bloomsbury Group – an influential artistic social circle of the early twentieth century.

Unfortunately, their desire for change was not met this time, however, due to the vast amount of publicity which the case attracted, Hall’s status as a lesbian icon was firmly cemented. In many ways, Hall’s trial also led to wider exposure to this so-called ‘obscene’ material, thus, having the opposite of the intended effect. Alterations to the Obscene Publications Act finally came about in 1959 after a few years of legal back and forth on the matter. This included a new test for obscenity in which the whole of the text and its literary merit should be considered before receiving its judgement. In 1960, this amendment would be tested in the case R v Penguin Books Ltd – the infamous trial of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover which you can read more about in the display!

*It is important to note that, whilst Radclyffe Hall can indeed be viewed as a courageous advocate for social change, her personal politics can divide opinion. To understand more about her life, I would recommend listening to the Bad Gays podcast featuring Jana Funke, Professor of Modern Literature and Sexuality Studies at Exeter University. The link to the episode can be found below!*

https://badgayspod.com/episode-archive/cw21b2uyw6oqmv41l1encmqi0y0mqe

Works Cited

Crawley, Karen. “’The Chastity of our Records’: Reading and Judging Obscenity in Nineteenth-Century Courts.” Censorship and the Limits of the Literary: A Global View., edited by Nicole Moore, New York; London, Bloomsbury, 2015, pp. 65-77.

‘Regina v. Hicklin’ (1868), Law Reports 3: Queen’s Bench Division, 1867-68, p.371, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112103768471&seq=443&q1=obscenity.

Wan, M. (2016). The Well of Loneliness trials: lesbianism and the return of the repressed. Masculinity and the Trials of Modern Fiction (pp. 138-170). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315544083-11

Michaelmas term has officially come to a close and things have certainly slowed down at the EFL. One thing which does remain busy, however, is our processing table – we’ve had some very exciting new titles make their way into the library recently! So, if you’ve made plans to cosy up with a book over the next few weeks, or, are hoping to hit your 2024 reading goal but are unsure on what to finish the year off with, then maybe this curated list of some of our hottest Michaelmas acquisitions will give you some ideas.

For future reference, if you ever want to keep an eye on what’s making its way into the library but can’t quite make it in, then check out LibraryThing to stay in the loop. We also have our New Books Display (frequently updated by yours truly) which is where most of our recent additions end up. Anyway, let’s get onto the books.

Fiction

Look at all of these beautiful covers! Here’s a little about each one:

• James / Percival Everett – A reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from the perspective of Huck’s companion, Jim. Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, Everett’s novel contemplates identity, belonging, and oppression.
• The Hotel / Daisy Johnson – A collection of short horror stories set in a hotel on the Fens. Built upon cursed ground, the hotel becomes that liminal space where things are not quite as they seem…
• The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho / Paterson Joseph – An historical fiction novel based upon the real life of Charles Ignatius Sancho. Understood to be one of Britain’s first Black voters, Sancho was a writer, composer, and abolitionist in the 18th century.
• The Safe Keep / Yael van der Wouden – Another 2024 Booker Prize shortlist title, The Safe Keep follows Isabel’s comfortable and structured life in post-WWII Netherlands. However, Isabel’s routine is suddenly overturned by the arrival of her brother’s girlfriend Eva: the catalyst for the ensuing tale of desire, fury, and discovery.
• The Mighty Red / Louise Erdrich – Set in a small farming community in North Dakota, environmental concerns are the bedrock of Erdrich’s novel. The central plot  revolves around those embroiled in an ill-fated wedding, all dealing with the difficulties of rural life amidst the 2008 financial crisis.
• Long Island / Colm Tóibín – This novel is a follow-up to Tóibín’s bestseller Brooklyn in which Eilis Lacey immigrates from Ireland to New York City in the 1950s. Having now been married for twenty years, Eilis suddenly meets a stranger who throws her whole existence into question.

Poetry

We’ve had some absolutely stunning poetry titles arrive at the EFL this term – here’s just a snapshot:

• Mother of Flip-Flops / Mukahang Limbu – An upcoming Oxford-based poet (and alumnus!) who writes about queerness, boyhood and the immigrant experience amongst other topics. This is his debut publication.
• With My Back to the World / Victoria Chang – This poetry collection is a literary conversation with American artist Agnes Martin. Using her abstract artwork as the stimulus for her own meditations on grief, identity, feminism and depression, Chang’s poetry is deeply affecting.
• Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology / edited by Rigoberto González – a wonderful collection of over 180 poets from the 17th century to present day. Those poems written in Spanish are displayed in their original language alongside an English translation.
• Manorism / Yomi Ṣode – An analysis of the lives of Black British men and boys, this debut collection traverses through topics of identity, family, generational trauma, and masculinity.
• The Keelie Hawk: Poems in Scots / Kathleen Jamie – The previous Scottish Makar (national poet), Jamie’s collection reflects on various aspects of nature and the human experience. Each poem is also accompanied with an English translation.
• Signs, Music / Raymond Antrobus – A tender exploration into preparing for and experiencing fatherhood for the first time. Antrobus writes about love, legacy, the deaf experience and masculinity in this moving collection.

Non-fiction

If non-fiction titles are more your style, then perhaps one of these will take your fancy:

• The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective / Sara Lodge – This text uncovers the forgotten lives of the real female detectives at work in Victorian Britain. It also examines their role and portrayal in Victorian drama and fiction and how this compares to their lived experiences.
• Salvage: Readings from the Wreck / Dionne Brand – This text is the first non-fiction title from Brand since her brilliant A Map to the Door of No Return (also at the EFL!). In Salvage, Brand returns to the classic novel to explore traces of colonialism and the legacies of empire more widely in literature between the 17th and 19th centuries.
• The Position of Spoons: and Other Intimacies / Deborah Levy – This book is an intimate invitation to the thoughts and inspirations behind Levy’s writing process.
• Young Bloomsbury: The Transgressive Generation that Reimagined Love, Freedom and Self-Expression / Nino Strachey – A detailed look into the colourful lives of those in the Bloomsbury Group, written by a descendent of core member Lytton Strachey.
• The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary / Sarah Ogilvie – This one’s for the word-lovers! Ogilvie’s book tells the story of the hugely diverse group of people who contributed to the creation of one of the world’s most famous texts.
• Hardy Women: Mother, Sisters, Wives, Muses / Paula Byrne – Byrne’s book is both an examination of the fictional women that Hardy wrote and an exploration into the real women that shaped his life, imagination, and his work.

This concludes our new books post for Michaelmas 2024; I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about some of the wonderful titles we’ve acquired over the last few months! As mentioned, this is just a few of the many we have added to our shelves here at the EFL, so do have a look at LibraryThing for the complete list of our new books if you’d like to.

Wishing you a restful winter vacation – happy reading!

The Subtleties of Snow: Eight Literary Depictions

Although we are technically still in Autumn, the days of long evening shadows and crisp, brown leaves underfoot seem well behind us now. The sun sets at 4pm, and bitter winds have finally begun to blow down Oxford’s narrow streets signifying an imminent close to the 2024 Michaelmas Term. We’ve even had our first flurry of snow – the very subject of our new display at the English Faculty Library.

The display queries the way in which snow has impacted characters in literature, or, acted as potential inspiration for authors. Furthermore, it highlights some of the many ways which writers have used snow to develop specific narratives and/or to allude to wider social issues. This blog post will detail the eight texts used in the display and discuss how snow has more of an impact on them than it may initially seem.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous / Ocean Vuong (2019)

Whilst snow is not a central motif in Vuong’s memoir, his depiction of it is still noteworthy. Towards the opening of the text, our protagonist, Little Dog, is asked by his grandmother, Lan, to pluck out her grey hairs. Having been deeply affected by the horrors of the Vietnam War in her youth, Lan struggles with PTSD, and Vuong suggests that this trauma has imbued itself into her physical being; it has become the grey hairs on her head. Lan says, “Help me, Little Dog. […] Help me stay young, get this snow off of my life – get it all off my life” (Vuong 23).

As Little Dog extracts her hair, Lan extracts vivid memories and stories from the war, almost as though the action of removal consequently produces these images of the past. Vuong writes that “the room filled with our voices as the snow fell from her head, the hardwood around my knees whitening as the past unfolded around us” (23). Here, snow acts as a route into the past, becoming the vessel in which Vuong can highlight how physically attached those memories are to Lan. But why does Lan call these grey hairs “snow” in the first place? And, to what extent can we think of snow as invoking the past more widely? Questions to ponder over…

“As I plucked, the blank walls around us did not so much fill with fantastical landscapes as open into them, the plaster disintegrating to reveal the past behind it.” (22)

– This item can be requested from the Collections Storage Facility (CSF)!

Dubliners / James Joyce (1914)

One of the most famous depictions of snow in literature comes from James Joyce’s short story “The Dead,” featured in Dubliners. A tale about hopelessness and mediocrity, it follows Gabriel Conroy who attends a Christmas party with his wife, Gretta. As they are about to leave, Gabriel notices his wife deeply entranced by a song she hears. It transpires that she was moved by the memory of Michael Furey, a young lover of hers who had died from trying to visit her in the rain whilst ill. This sends Gabriel into a spiral of contemplation, causing him to realise how he had never been able to love so passionately.

Having to compete with the dead provokes a sense of meaninglessness and fragility within Gabriel, one that is exacerbated by the wintry weather outside. Saint-Amour writes that “the final paragraph of “The Dead” describes the loss of distinctions—the blurring of localities by a universalizing snowfall, the merging of “all” the living and the dead” (108), illustrating how the snow acts as a reminder of finality and mortality; it is the ultimate end to all. Like for Vuong then, snow in “The Dead” is the gateway between past and present, but here, it is also the gateway between the world of the living and the dead, with Joyce using it as a warning to all of what is to come.

“Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” (Joyce 176)

“It sifts from Leaden Sieves –” / Emily Dickinson (1862)

– Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them

Snow appears in Dickinson’s poetry almost sixty times (Folsom 362). This poem is one of her most famous allusions to it and highlights the endless nature of a cold winter. Dickinson does this predominantly through the poem’s structure. Written in uninterrupted quatrains, these provide a sense of permanency, as though the snow that falls ubiquitously is ceaseless. This is furthered by the excessive use of dashes and caesuras throughout – the snow continues to cover everything. As Folsom notes, “Dickinson portrays no human life; the scene is relentlessly one of desolation; snow is no place to frolic in Dickinson’s world” (370). So, snow becomes representative of death and isolation; it is, like for Joyce, that metamorphic substance which turns the land of the living into the land of the dead.

“It Ruffles Wrists of Posts

As Ankles of a Queen –

Then stills it’s Artisans – like Ghosts –

Denying they have been -” (Dickinson ll. 17-20)

See the full poem on the Poetry Foundation website below:

“It sifts from Leaden Sieves –” / Emily Dickinson

A Christmas Carol / Charles Dickens (1843)

Snow is simply a feature of winter in this one, but it’s fair to say that the display would feel incomplete without Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge is our protagonist, a man who famously despises Christmas but undergoes a great transformation throughout the text. One of the ways in which Dickens portrays this is through his depiction of the weather. In the opening, he writes that, “external heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. […] No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose […]. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him” (Dickens 8). In other words, his indifference to the weather reflects his own sense of superiority, as well as his withdrawal from society more widely. It also resembles his cold-heartedness – a classic example of pathetic fallacy!

Over the course of the novella, as each spirit visits Scrooge, he learns that he must change his miserly ways. Upon waking up on Christmas morning, after a night of tough realisations, Scrooge notes that there is “no fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious!” (134). So, as Scrooge changes, so does the weather; his reaction to it symbolic of a new beginning.

“‘I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!’ Scrooge repeated” (132)

Snow Country / Yasunari Kawabata (1956)

Snow Country is a jewel in the literary crown of Japanese fiction. First published in 1956, it was one of the texts cited by the Nobel Committee when awarding Kawabata the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. The novel follows Shimamura’s retreat to an onsen town in Niigata where he reignites a romantic relationship with a geisha named Komako. Kawabata writes Shimamura’s entry to the rural snowy landscape as though it were an entry to a new world altogether. The opening line reads: “the train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country” (Kawabata  3), thus, beginning his novel with a shift into a dazzling yet unforgiving new terrain. The snow is immediately a transformative force.

But in Kawabata’s novel, the snow is not simply part of a landscape, it is part of a tradition. Towards the text’s climax, Shimamura wanders around various remote villages in the area. He is trying to find Chijimi – a type of material used for making clothes which has historically been bleached in the snow. Kawabata writes: “there is Chijimi linen because there is snow […]. Snow is the mother of Chijimi” (104). Known for being remarkably durable, the thought of Chijimi makes Shimamura compare its strength to his fading admiration for Komako, realising that he must end things with her. Snow then becomes a symbol of creation, endurance, and change in the novel – a force which even love cannot compete with.

“The thread was spun in the snow, and the cloth woven in the snow, washed in the snow, and bleached in the snow. Everything, from the first spinning of the thread to the last finishing touches, was done in the snow.” (Kawabata 104)

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“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” / Robert Frost (1923)

– Complete Poems of Robert Frost

Whilst not indicative of death like in Dickinson’s poem, snow in Frost’s poem certainly brings about questions of mortality. Arguably his most famous work, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” depicts the speaker stopping mid-journey to watch snow fall peacefully upon some woods, then eventually continuing with their trip. A poem of stasis and of quiet, it has endless analytical possibilities and garners just as many questions. Why does the speaker stop? What entices the speaker about the forest? Where is the speaker heading? These are just a few of those questions.

Whilst these are all up to interpretation, it is evident that the snow adds to a sense of mystery and curiosity throughout. Without it, perhaps the speaker would not have even stopped. So, what it is about the snow then? If it does symbolise death as in some of the other works in this display, then is the speaker contemplating death? If they are, is that what the final repeated lines are referring to? Or do we need to build upon the (almost) silence of the poem to suggest that the speaker just wanted to take a break from a tiring journey? Perhaps listening to “the sweep of easy wind and downy flake” (ll. 11-12) allowed them that peace. Either way, the snow here plays a critical role, so have another read through and see what answers you can come up with.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.” (Frost ll. 13-16)

See the full poem on the Poetry Foundation website below:

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” / Robert Frost

Native Son / Richard Wright (1940)

Richard Wright predominantly wrote about the social injustices and discrimination that Black people experienced in America in the early twentieth century. His novel Native Son is set in a poor area of Chicago’s South Side in which his protagonist, Bigger Thomas, lives with his family. Bigger’s life takes a tragic turn when he accidentally kills a White woman, and the plot which consequently unfolds reveals the racial prejudices that were prevalent at the time.

Wright alludes to nature extensively in the text, but his depiction of snow is particularly important. After Bigger’s gruesome attempt to cover his actions are discovered, he flees into a blizzard. He writes:

“Then he leaped, headlong, sensing his body twisting in the icy air as he hurtled. […] He was in the air a moment; then he hit. It seemed at first that he hit softly, but the shock of it went through him, up his back to his head and he lay buried in a cold pile of snow, dazed. Snow was in his mouth, eyes, ears; snow was seeping down his back” (Wright 651).

Montgomery suggests that “the snow is emblematic of the cold white world which opposes Bigger’s quest for selfhood” (460), illustrating how Wright utilises the weather to highlight the oppressive forces working against Bigger. This is further realised when Bigger is eventually captured in the snow by the Chicago Police. For Wright then, snow is a tool to expose wider social issues – a tool which Wright additionally employs in some of the many haikus that he wrote towards the end of his life.

Emma / Jane Austen (1815)

As in the modern day, snow also made headlines in Georgian England. Most notably in the winter of 1813/14, when London was so cold that the Thames froze over and paved an icy path for the city’s final Frost Fair. Heavy snow was also widely reported across the country, with various accidents occurring as a result. It was after this infamous winter that Jane Austen began writing Emma (Introduction xxi)…

In Chapter 15, set at the Weston’s home during a Christmas Eve dinner, Mr John Knightley declares that it has begun to snow. In a frenzy of concern about how they shall safely return home in less than half an inch of snow, the party attendants scramble into different carriages. This suddenly leaves Emma Woodhouse, our matchmaking protagonist, alone with the (rather tipsy) Mr Elton – the vicar.

Consequently, Mr Elton makes a rather abrupt marriage proposal to Emma, “declaring sentiments which must be already well known, hoping – fearing – adoring – ready to die if she refused him” (Austen 101). Sadly, for Mr Elton, she does indeed refuse him, but this moment in a frosty carriage highlights Elton’s intention to marry for money; he marries another wealthy woman shortly after this rejection.

It is interesting to observe here how Austen uses the weather as a chance to deepen character complexities and develop the narrative. Bartlett writes that “the snow in Emma is one of those events which provides everyone present with the opportunity to act intensely in character” (152), suggesting that, for Elton, his character is, in fact, one motivated by money and social status; a character which, arguably, only the warmth of “Mr Weston’s good wine” (101) and the cold of the snow could oust from his façade.

“The snow was no where above half an inch deep – in many places hardly enough to whiten the ground; a very few flakes were falling at present, but the clouds were parting, and there was every appearance of its being soon over.” (100)

Honourable Mentions:

• Winter / Ali Smith
• “The Snow Fairy” / Claude McKay
• I’m Thinking of Ending Things / Iain Reid
• The Ice Palace / Tarjei Vesaas
• Little Women / Louisa May Alcott

Bibliography

Austen, Jane. Emma. Oxford, Oxford UP, 2022.

Bartlett, Nora. Jane Austen : Reflections of a Reader, edited by Jane Stabler, Open Book Publishers, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/oxford/detail.action?docID=6475844.

Cowley, Katherine. “The Justified Fear of Snow in Jane Austen’s ‘Emma.’” Jane Austen’s World, 20 Feb. 2022, janeaustensworld.com/2022/02/20/the-justified-fear-of-snow-in-jane-austens-emma/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2024.

Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol: a facsimile of the manuscript in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York, James H. Heineman, Inc, 1967.

Dickinson, Emily. “It sifts from Leaden Sieves -.” Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them, edited by Cristanne Miller, Harvard UP, 2016, p. 248.

Folsom, L. Edwin. “”The Souls That Snow”: Winter in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson.” American Literature, vol. 47, no. 3, 1975, pp. 361-376.

Frost, Robert. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Complete Poems of Robert Frost, Jonathan Cape, 1951, p. 250.

“Introduction.” Austen, Jane. Emma. Edited by Richard Cronin and Dorothy McMillan, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2005, pp. xxi–lxxiv.

Joyce, James. Dubliners. Oxford, Oxford UP, 2008

Kawabata, Yasunari. Snow Country. London, Penguin Books, 2011.

Montgomery, Maxine L. “Racial Armageddon: The Image of Apocalypse in Richard Wright’s “Native Son”.” CLA Journal, vol. 34, no. 4, 1991, pp. 453-466.

Saint-Amour, Paul K. “”Christmas Yet To Come”: Hospitality, Futurity, the Carol, and “The Dead”.” Representations, vol. 98, no. 1, 2007, pp. 93-117.

Vuong, Ocean. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. London, Vintage, 2020.

Wright, Richard. “Native Son.” Richard Wright Early Works: Lawd Today!, Uncle Tom’s Children, Native Son, New York, The Library of America, 1991, pp. 443-851.