X-Nico

11 unusual facts about Bodleian Library


Amelia Jackson

After her death in 1925 her husband wrote a book on the life of Amelia Jackson which was privately printed and is now available in the Bodleian Library.

Amram ibn Salameh

A number of prayers by him are incorporated in a liturgy, a fragment of which is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, England.

Church's Ministry Among Jewish People

The society's historic archives are stored by the Bodleian Library in Oxford England.

Cornelis Ketel

In 1577 Ketel was commissioned to paint a series of 19 portraits for the Cathay Company, one of which is the famous (but very damaged) full-length of Martin Frobisher now in the Bodleian Library.

Federico Borromeo

In 1609 he founded the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, a college of writers, a seminary of savants, a school of fine arts, and, after the Bodleian at Oxford, the first genuinely public library in Europe.

Indian Empire Society

Correspondence and papers of the Society from 1930 to 1948 are held in the Bodleian Library's Special Collections and Western Manuscripts section.

Marc Drogin

Drogin became interested in the scripts of the Middle Ages in the 1970s, researched palaeography independently at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England, and wrote Medieval Calligraphy: Its History and Technique, which was published in 1980 by Allanheld, Osmun & Co.

Rahman Baba

There are over 25 original hand-written manuscripts of the Dīwān scattered in various libraries worldwide, including ten in the Pashto Academy in Peshawar, four in the British Library, three in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, as well as copies in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the University Library Aligath.

Reginald of Canterbury

The largest surviving version of his poems is in Bodleian Library manuscript Laud misc 40, which was probably a presentation copy to one of Reginald's correspondents, Baldwin, a monk of the cathedral chapter of Rochester Cathedral.

Roman de Troie

Benoît's sources for the narrative were the Latin rescensions of Dictys and Dares and some material from the all-but-lost Latin recension that is represented now in part of a single, fragmentary manuscript, the Rawlinson Excidium Troie in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Willem Schellinks

Schellinks' hand-written journal, written some years after his travels 1661-1665 and based on his now lost notes, is preserved in the Royal Library of Copenhagen; a transcription Schellinks had made is now owned by the Bodleian Library.


Apollonius of Perga

In the late 17th century, Edward Bernard discovered a version of De Rationis Sectione in the Bodleian Library.

Christopher Rawlinson

His portrait, engraved by Joseph Nutting, with those of other members of his family, is in the Bodleian Library (Bromley).

Codex Laud

The Codex Laud, or Laudianus, (catalogued as MS. Laud Misc. 678, Bodleian Library in Oxford) is an important sixteenth century manuscript associated with William Laud, an English archbishop who was the former owner of this ancient Mexican codex.

Codex Laudianus

It eventually came into the possession of William Laud, who donated to the Bodleian Library in Oxford in 1636, where it is located now (Cat. number: Laud. Gr. 35 1397, I,8).

Codex Tischendorfianus III

The codex was held at Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in Egypt and was found by Constantin von Tischendorf in 1853, who took away only the uncial text (Luke-John) — along with Codex Tischendorfianus IV — and brought it to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, where it is now located.

Dervorguilla Records

Much of the music was premiere performances of material discovered in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University, and included pieces by Matthew Locke, Jacob Obrecht, André Campra, Edmund Rubbra etc.

Dirk Obbink

This project is working to capture digitised images of Greek and Latin papyri held by the Ashmolean Museum (the Oxyrhynchus Papyri), and the Bodleian Library and the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples (the carbonized scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum), for the creation of an Oxford bank of digitised images of papyri.

Edmund Ludlow

Part of it, covering the years 1660–77, was discovered at Warwick Castle in 1970 and is now in the Bodleian Library.

Foebus abierat

The poem was rediscovered in 1960 by the medieval-lyric specialist Peter Dronke in a Bodleian manuscript dating ca. 1000 and copied at the monastery of Fleury on the Loire river.

Henry William Carless Davis

In 1913 he took the Chichele lectureship in foreign history and became a curator of the Bodleian Library in 1914.

Humfrey Wanley

There he worked as an assistant at the Bodleian Library until 1700, when he moved to London, where he gained temporary jobs as secretary to the SPCK and assistant to Hans Sloane (Sloane was secretary to the Royal Society, and Wanley was elected a Fellow of it in 1706), before landing a settled job with the Harleys which he held to the end of his life.

John Barkham

Barkham made a very extensive collection of coins, which he gave to William Laud; who presented them to the Bodleian library.

John Bearblock

A carefully executed copy of them, which is still extant, was subsequently presented to the Bodleian Library by John More in 1630; but the original sketches, having been given to St. John's College, were granted in 1616 to Sir Thomas Lake, and apparently lost.

Joseph Mendham

Joseph Mendham bequeathed manuscripts concerned with the Council of Trent to the Bodleian Library.

Peter Le Neve

Among his library's holdings was a volume of fragments that found its way into the collection of Richard Rawlinson and thence to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, that contains the so-called "Rawlinson Excidium Troie", a unique testimony to a Latin account of the Trojan War that was used by many medieval writers.

Rare Book Room

It includes most of the Shakespeare Quartos from the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the University of Edinburgh Library, and the National Library of Scotland, as well as the First Folio from the Folger Library.

Roger Dodsworth

The manuscripts were left to Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron, who by his will bequeathed them (160 volumes in all) to the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

Roman de la Rose Digital Library

The original library contained manuscripts from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the Morgan Library in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Royal Statistical Society

The RSS team reached the finals of University Challenge: The Professionals 2006, where they were beaten 230 to 125 by a team from the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Samuel Oppenheimer

Prince Eugene of Savoy brought him a large number of valuable Hebrew manuscripts from Turkey, which became the nucleus of the famous David Oppenheimer Library, now part of the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

Selden Map of China

The Selden Map of China (Bodleian Library, MS Selden Supra 105) is an early seventeenth-century map of East Asia formerly owned by the legal scholar and maritime theorist John Selden.

Simon Wilkin

Wilkin compiled an edition of Sir Thomas Browne (1836; reissued in 1852) for which he researched Browne's correspondence in the British Museum and Bodleian Library.

Wilfrid Le Gros Clark

Papers relating to Le Gros Clark, his grandfather Dr. Frederick Le Gros Clark and his brother Cyril Le Gros Clark (former Chief Secretary of Sarawak, who was murdered by the Japanese in 1945 after a period of detention at Batu Lintang camp in Borneo) are held at the Bodleian Library (Special Collections and Western Manuscripts) at Oxford University.

William Bedwell

Another manuscript, for a Dictionary of Persian, was in the possession of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and now resides at the Bodleian Library.

Winchester Troper

One can be found in Oxford, in the Bodleian Library (MS Bodley 775), the other in Corpus Christi, Cambridge (MS473), but were copied out at, and originally used at Winchester Cathedral.

Yongle Encyclopedia

Further, there are 41 books of the encyclopedia at the Library of Congress in the United States; 51 books in the United Kingdom held at the British Library, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, and Cambridge University Library; and 5 books held in various libraries in Germany.