Bibliographical Press – Page 5 – The Bodleian Conveyor

Sonnets 2016: the Bodleian Library collects 154 sonnets from presses around the world

Lucy Evans, Rare Books

From close to home and further afield, from Oxford to Moonshine Road, California, to New Delhi and Llandogo, hand-press printers across the world answered the call to print Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets.

An enthusiastic response meant all 154 sonnets were quickly assigned. The UK and the USA are the most heavily represented countries with particularly strong showing from Oxford, California and Iowa. Submissions are also expected from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy , Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Spain.

The printers involved range from large scale operations to university departments, not for profit organisations, the Virginia Arts of the Book Center , individuals printing at home and an ex-librarian from Australia.

The project is now well underway and we eagerly await parcels winging their way to the Bodleian from across the world. Congratulations to the Kings Bookshop, Callander, who were the first to submit sonnet 92, translated into Scots!

Follow the links to see some of the presses and people involved in this effort.

Pictures of sonnets in type and on the press, as these are received from the printers, can be seen on our twitter feed @bodleiancsb, #154sonnets

Calling all printers: Shakespeare’s Sonnets in 2016

In a cycle of 154 short, 14-line poems first published in 1609, William Shakespeare meditated on themes of love, death, and desire. During 2016, the Bodleian Libraries will be producing and collecting newly printed copies of each of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The Bodleian is seeking examples from hand-press printers worldwide made in this, the 400th year since the death of William Shakespeare.

Contributions of individual sonnets by Shakespeare, whether in English or in translation, will be welcome from printers up to the deadline of 30 September 2016. These should be created by hand, using any means of relief printing. Selected submissions, forming at least one complete collection of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, will be added to the Bodleian’s permanent collection and the donors will be notified.

If you would like to join this effort, please see the Sonnets 2016 webpage.

Image of Sonnet 24 printed 23 Jan. 2016 — Sonnet 24, a variant version with a comment by William Henry Fox Talbot, set and printed by Bodleian staff on 23 Jan. 2016

The Bodleian’s printing workshop in the Old Schools Quadrangle

Stir-up Sunday, composed and printed by the English masters’ students

The Bodleian’s Bibliographical Press is now located in the seventeenth-century Old Library, with an entrance from the Old Schools Quadrangle. Watched over by the statue of the Earl of Pembroke standing in the quad, the door marked ‘Schola Musicae’ opens onto a workshop housing five free-standing presses and the composing frames and type cases that support the teaching of hand-press printing. Here are a few of the things that have been going on since September —- ‘printweeting’: artist Tamarin Norwood composed 140-character messages, and we thought about the difference between characters and sorts — Oxford Open Doors on 12 September welcomed visitors to the room to see demonstrations of typesetting and printing — University of Oxford students learned to compose and print, working with Dickens and Martin Luther texts — at the Christmas Card printing session open to the public, participants were creative with lino cuts and with the display type and metalcut blocks in the room — the press produced a keepsake for the Bodleian’s 12 millionth book: a poem by Percy Shelley championing a free press.
For more information: bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk; tweet @theBroadPress