#bodleian

24 March 2025 | The Bodleian Library, Oxford 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

A wonderful visit with Richard Lawrence at the Bodleian Library’s Bibliographical Press, where peering out windows set in 24” thick 400 year-old stone walls is enough to send a mind spinning centuries back in time.

And I gather from your book that Oxford’s Bodleian Library didn’t have any Shakespeare plays before the First Folio because its founder, Thomas Bodley (1545-1613), thought having plays would bring it into disrepute.

Yes, absolutely. The Bodleian Library in Oxford had a deal with the Stationers’ Company that they could have a copy of any book published. But they didn’t take the play books, because Thomas Bodley was explicit in excluding them saying that everybody would laugh at his new library if it was filled with plays.

One of the things the First Folio was trying to do when it was first printed—and it was a bit of an uphill struggle—was to reframe drama as serious literature. It does that by printing it in a format that looks like a Bible rather than like a pamphlet. This isn’t convincing, necessarily, to everybody, but the Bodleian Library do take the First Folio. The format perhaps already makes it looks a bit more respectable than other versions.

Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Libraries @BodleianLibs, was born #onthisday in 1545.⁣⁠ ⁣⁠ Bodley is credited with rescuing the original university library, which was effectively closed when the Dean of Christ Church removed all books and manuscripts from it in an effort to purge the English Church of all traces of Catholicism in 1550. In 1598, Bodley refurnished the old library to house a new collection of nearly 2,500 books, some of which were given by Bodley himself. A librarian was appointed shortly thereafter, and the library opened to scholars on 8 November 1602.⁣⁠ ⁣⁠ The Bodleian Library is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and is now the second largest in Britain with over 12 million printed items. This picture shows the interior of the Divinity School, the oldest teaching and examination room used for the study of Theology. It was built between 1424-88. ⁠

Has reading helped you to survive periods of lockdown and isolation during COVID-19? The new autumn exhibition for the Bodleian Libraries, Melancholy: A New Anatomy, revisits Robert Burton’s 1621 book, The Anatomy of Melancholy, to mark the 400th anniversary of its publication. The exhibition is being curated by researchers from the University of Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry and will consider the different ways in which Burton, like healthcare professionals today, offered practical ways of caring for our mental health and wellbeing.

There is now strong interest in the power of reading and writing as therapy for melancholy, or 'depressive disorder' as it is now known. The impact of methods such as bibliotherapy (therapeutic reading) and scriptotherapy (therapeutic writing) is being scientifically researched as part of the range of modern mental healthcare methods but has a long history. In Burton's monumental book, the curative effect of both reading and writing are explored.

In preparation for the exhibition we would like to hear about the books you read to ease the difficulties of life during COVID-19. We will be using some of these titles to create a crowdsourced therapeutic reading list to share with visitors to the exhibition.

This survey is open to all and all contributions will be anonymous. The survey should take no more than 5 minutes to complete and will close on 10 September 2021.