William of Malmesbury's Carolingian sources

In his great history of England, the Gesta regum Anglorum, completed in 1125, William of Malmesbury included digressions on continental affairs. One of these, on the Merovingian and Carolingian monarchs, provides an interesting study of William's historical method. His Frankish sources are difficult to identify, but we are helped by the survival of the late twelfth-century English MS. Oxford, Bodleian Library Lat. class d.39. This book contains, inter alia, a collection of chronicles and short pieces on Frankish history. We attempt to show that it was copied from a MS. made by or for William, and that his own notes were recopied into its margins. Moreover, it seems probable that he himself compiled the collection of chronicles in it. This discovery enables us to identify most of William's Frankish materials, to draw important conclusions about his manipulation of them, and so advance our knowledge of twelfth-century historiography generally.     

William of Malmesbury's Carolingian sources

In his great history of England, the Gesta regum Anglorum, completed in 1125, William of Malmesbury included digressions on continental affairs. One of these, on the Merovingian and Carolingian monarchs, provides an interesting study of William's historical method. His Frankish sources are difficult to identify, but we are helped by the survival of the late twelfth-century English MS. Oxford, Bodleian Library Lat. class d.39. This book contains, inter alia, a collection of chronicles and short pieces on Frankish history. We attempt to show that it was copied from a MS. made by or for William, and that his own notes were recopied into its margins. Moreover, it seems probable that he himself compiled the collection of chronicles in it. This discovery enables us to identify most of William's Frankish materials, to draw important conclusions about his manipulation of them, and so advance our knowledge of twelfth-century historiography generally.     

Lewis Harcourt's Journal of the 1914 War Crisis

Lewis Harcourt, who was Colonial Secretary in Britain's Liberal government, from 1908 to 1915, kept a political journal for many years, some earlier parts of which have already been published. Reproduced below is the whole neat version of the journal from 26 July 1914, when Harcourt first mentions the events of the ‘July Crisis’, until 4 August, when Britain declared war on Germany. Originals of the entries are kept at the Bodleian Library, Oxford in file Ms. Eng. c. 8269 of the ‘Further Papers of Lewis Harcourt’, which only came to light in 2008. Historians can be grateful that Harcourt kept such a record of ministerial discussions during the July Crisis, because no official records were taken of Cabinet meetings before 1916, apart from short reports by the Prime Minister to the King. There are some diary entries, letters and memoranda from those involved, but the only source with comparative detail to Harcourt's is the diary kept by the education minister, Jack Pease, which has already been published.     

A little known atlas by Vesconte Maggiolo, 1518

ABSTRACT

The rediscovery of the Selden Map of China (MS Selden Supra 105) in the Bodleian Library in 2008 provides an opportunity to reassess the history of Chinese cartography and debates about maritime dimensions of the Ming Empire. The map depicts a network of Chinese shipping routes, reaching from Japan to Aceh, Sumatra, and suggests previously unknown map-making techniques. In this article I draw attention to the map's unique components, notably its portrayal of shipping routes and vegetation, consider its sources, and suggest a possible patron and location of composition.     

Folk Narrative Research in Wales at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: The Influence of John Rhŷs (1840–1916)

Although published at the beginning of the twentieth century, John Rh?s's work on folklore remains an important source for the study of Welsh folk narrative. There exists, however, no overall assessment of his contribution, his concept of folk narrative, his sources, or his interpretation of his material either in terms of Welsh culture or in the wider context of folklore theory, then and now. This paper is intended as a platform from which some of those concerns can be addressed by bringing together primary material relating to Rh?s's folklore interests. Some of his letters at The National Library of Wales, plus material in the Archives of The Folklore Society and in the collection of the Bodleian and Taylorian Libraries at Oxford, can help to clarify Rh?s's interest in folk studies. These sources also indicate how his interest in language, archaeology, and folklore overlapped, and how these interests affected his attitudes to folklore and its uses.     

“sche hungryd ryth sor aftyr Goddys word”: Female Piety and the Legacy of the Pastoral Programme in the Late Medieval English Sermons of Bodleian Library MS Greaves 54

The pastoral programme guiding the content of most Middle English sermons had a gendered side effect: it encouraged treating female parishioners as individual souls rather than emphasising the subordinate status of women. A close study of Bodleian Library MS Greaves 54, a fifteenth‐century pastoral manual containing two sequences of Middle English sermons, shows how these sermons reached out to women through gender‐inclusive language, pastoral directives that regarded women as distinct from men, and didactic narratives that both encouraged female participation in devotional activities as well as highlighting women as exemplars for all Christians. Thus Greaves 54 models how Middle English sermons could have appealed to ordinary women and affected their piety, even to the extent of encouraging the extreme devotional behaviour of Margery Kempe.     

Hair in the Disraeli Papers: A Victorian Harvest

The Hughenden Collection of Disraeli Papers at the Bodleian Library in Oxford comprises over 50,000 items relating to the life and work of Benjamin Disraeli and his family. This article tracks hair through the Hughenden Collection in order to explore the collecting habits of Mary Anne Disraeli. It argues that reading Mary Anne Disraeli's story through hair – both hair as object, held in an archive and hair as represented in archival text – reveals aspects of that story occluded by reading only those archival texts with self-evident documentary value. It thus makes the case for a holistic reading of the Disraeli archive, and Victorian collections of personal papers more generally, by taking Mary Anne Disraeli as its central case study. In so doing it also illuminates her story, and points to the necessity of reading the stories of forgotten women through archival silences and absences. Section I reviews recent scholarship on hair in nineteenth-century Britain in order to contextualize Mary Anne Disraeli's case. Section II anatomizes the Hughenden hair collection in order to illuminate Mary Anne's history, her impulses as a collector, and the extent to which her activities complicate scholarly narratives about the sentimental commodification of Victorian hair. Section III gestures towards recent work on the archive and material culture to tease out the consequences of her example for our reading of the archive and our understanding of the texture of Victorian ‘thing culture’ more generally.     

新发现的王鹏运早年词稿《四印斋词卷》

国家图书馆所藏《四印斋词卷》为清季词坛领袖王鹏运的早年词稿;该书保存了大量王氏早年词作,但从未进入过研究者视野。据查,该书共录词一百二十九首,其中六十余首未见于王鹏运已刊词集,且有三十六首仅见于此。通过《四印斋词卷》可以更清楚地了解王鹏运的早年学词道路和交游情况;据该书自序可知,王氏词有七稿九集,独缺甲稿,只是因故没有选出而已。     

国家图书馆藏鲁迅手稿散页保存袋的材质安全性能研究

国家图书馆古籍馆自2013年起对馆藏大量鲁迅手稿散页的保存袋进行材质安全性评估及相关研究,通过模拟试验测定不同材质保存袋内装手工纸、打印纸纸页在老化前后发生的理化性质变化,分析老化过程中不同材质的保存袋对内装纸页产生哪些影响,藉此评价保存袋材质的安全性能。研究结果表明,目前所用的硫酸纸袋和其他保存袋都不利于该类文献的保存,应考虑采用合适的无酸保护纸袋。