"A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou..." When Edward Fitzgerald first published his translation of the poetry of Omar Khayyam in 1859 it had little impact on the literary world. But a chance find in a book...

Wilfred Owen is the poet of pity, the voice of the soldier maimed, blinded, traumatised and killed, not just in the Great War, but in all wars since, so resonant has his message become. Although he saw only five of his poems published in his lifetime...

A plain, blank stationer's notebook from the 1780s in the Bodleian Library contains some of the most famous juvenilia in all of English literature. Copied out in Jane Austen's youthful hand, "Volume the First", which takes its name from the inscripti...

The liturgical psalter is one of the most important medieval Christian books and the most frequently and richly illuminated of medieval liturgical manuscripts. In its simplest form the psalter included 150 psalms, preceded by a calendar and followed...

Published to mark the 200th anniversary of Dickens's birth, this book celebrates the greatest of English novelists by illustrating some of his abiding preoccupations. Prompted by quotations from the novels and other writings, each themed chapter expl...

Although Brian Aldiss cannot be pigeon-holed as a science fiction writer there is no doubt that he is a master of the art of conceiving other worlds. His fertile imagination has created intriguing and often shocking narratives which have become class...

Many important and valuable manuscripts, rare books, and artefacts related to Korea have been acquired by donations throughout the long history of the Bodleian Library and the museums of the University of Oxford. However, due to an early lack of spec...

The English poet John Gower (ca. 1340-1408) wrote important Latin poems witnessing the two crucial political events of his day: the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and in 1399 the deposition of Richard II, in the "Visio Anglie" ("A Vision of England") and "...

This new book from Bodleian Library Publishing tells the story of this remarkable achievement with outstanding images from the collections of The Bodleian and Folger Shakespeare Libraries. The book discusses the obstacles and achievements faced by...

No work has challenged its readers like Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell". His "Proverbs of Hell" have been culled for the slogans of student protest and become axioms of modern thought. Iconoclastic, bizarre, unprecedented, it is all of thes...