The Bodleian Libraries (BODcasts) - podcast cover

The Bodleian Libraries (BODcasts)

Oxford University•www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Education
The Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford is the largest university library system in the United Kingdom. It includes the principal University library - the Bodleian Library - which has been a legal deposit library for 400 years; as well as 28 other libraries across Oxford including major research libraries and faculty, department and institute libraries. Together, the Libraries hold more than 12 million printed items, over 80,000 e-journals and outstanding special collections including rare books and manuscripts, classical papyri, maps, music, art and printed ephemera. Members of the public can explore the collections via the Bodleian’s online image portal at digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk or by visiting the exhibition galleries in the Bodleian's Weston Library. For more information, visit www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
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Episodes

Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley - Joint journal entry

Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Shelley and Mary eloped at 4.15 am on 28 July 1814, accompanied by Mary's step-sister Jane Clairmont. They were pursued by Mrs Godwin (Claire's mother), who caught up with them the following day at Calais, but failed to persuade them to return. On 2 August Shelley, Mary and Claire reached Paris, where they purchased this notebook. Shelley wrote up their dramatic flight from England, the stormy crossing (during which he began 'to reason upon death') and the...

Dec 02, 2010•5 min

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Letter to William Godwin

Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Using false names, Shelley sent copies of The Necessity of the Atheism to 'men of thought and learning', including bishops and clergymen. Here, writing as 'Jennings Stukeley', he sends 'a tract' to William Godwin, expressing his hope that, if correct, it will 'festinate' the impact of Political Justice. This unusual word, meaning to hasten, is typical of the learned pose Shelley adopts. He makes no mention of his youth, and when sending a copy of The Neces...

Dec 02, 2010•2 min

William Godwin: Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Godwin's memoir of Mary Wollstonecraft has been called the first modern biography. At the time, however, its frankness and emotional candour provoked general outrage. Godwin did not hesitate to include the most painful and scandalous episodes in Mary's life: her brutal, drunken father; her affair with Gilbert Imlay and the birth of their illegitimate daughter, Fanny; her two suicide attempts; her unconventional religious faith; the ghastly details of her d...

Dec 02, 2010•8 min

Mary Wollstonecraft Three notes to William Godwin

Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. Even after their marriage Godwin and Wollstonecraft preferred to live independently during the day, and communicate by correspondence. They regularly exchanged anything from long, carefully composed letters to short notes dashed off on scraps of paper. Shown here are Mary's last three notes to Godwin, written while she was waiting impatiently for the delivery of her child ('the animal'), and seeking reassurance from the midwife, Mrs Blenkinsop. In her fina...

Dec 02, 2010•2 min

Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Part of the Shelley's Ghost Exhibition. In her most famous work Mary Wollstonecraft argued that if women were educated in the same way as men they would perform as well. And that society was wasting its assets by failing to educate them and to offer them the opportunity to work in the same areas as menMen are as much corrupted by being tyrants as women by being subject to them, she pointed out. Women should be trained for the professions and could run businesses and farms.

Dec 02, 2010•4 min

Pre-1500 Printed Books

The earliest printers spread from Mainz in Germany where Gutenberg first had his printing house to Venice, Rome, Paris, and the Netherlands. Examples from all of these centres of 15th-century printing are found in Bodleian collections.

Mar 05, 2010•12 min

BODcast: P.D. James in conversation with Colin Dexter (short)

Special footage celebrating the launch of Talking about Detective Fiction by PD James, the latest Bodleian Library publication. PD James is donating all royalties from the hardback edition to the Bodleian and hopes it will encourage further philanthropy.

Sep 30, 2009•5 min

BODcast: P.D. James in conversation with Colin Dexter (long)

Special footage celebrating the launch of Talking about Detective Fiction by PD James, the latest Bodleian Library publication. PD James is donating all royalties from the hardback edition to the Bodleian and hopes it will encourage further philanthropy.

Sep 30, 2009•13 min

Magna Carta and Wind In The Willows

A short history of how the Bodleian library stores original copies of the Magna Carta and the original Wind in the Willows letters.

Sep 11, 2008•2 min

Samson Agonistes

The Biblical hero Samson bewailing his political and personal state.

Apr 29, 2008•3 min

Aeropagitica

Milton's defense of the freedom of the press written to Parliament.

Apr 29, 2008•3 min

Magna Carta at Oxford

Richard Sharpe explains that the seventeen surviving manuscripts on the Magna Carta are engrossments, not copies: official documents from Royal Chancery bearing the ruler's seal. Prof. Sharpe also reveals why so many examples of the Magna Carta survive.

Apr 29, 2008•21 min
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