Friday was our trip to Oxford. Also quite an early start. We went to two libraries: The Bodleian and Christ Church, both of which are well older than the United States.
The Bodleian Library was technically opened in the 1300s in Oxford, but was reopened in the 1600s by Bodley, who invested lots and lots of money to have it available for Oxford students. The original library, opened by Duke Humfrey, had no heat and no lights because the flames always had the chance to burn the books down. There were only around 20 books in total then because the printing press hadn’t been invented and the books all had to be handwritten. The English Reformation led the library’s directors to burn most of the books because they were too Catholic, basically, and the newly founded Church of England did not like that. (Oxford still has 5 of those original manuscripts!!!!)
Once Bodley reopened the library, there were about 2,500 more books added and portraits of significant people in Oxford’s history put up on the walls. He then made an agreement with the state that the library should get a copy of every single book written in England to help make the library more full and aid the students. That agreement is still in place today. The library has had to expand a bunch of times to make room for all of its new books. There’s a total of something like 13 million books that belong to Oxford currently.
There were also a bunch of places in there that the Harry Potter crew filmed for the movies. It was super cool, basically.
Next we went to Christ Church (after buying an “Oxford University” sweatshirt, of course.) This library was amazing. I didn’t get to take many notes, but basically the building opened in the 1200s as a church and then a few hundred years later as a college of Oxford. The special collections there were incredibly fascinating. Our librarian/tour guide showed us things that most people on the planet don’t get to see, like this Bible that belonged to Queen Elizabeth I in the 1540s:
Or this score that was made for people all standing around a table (Sorry for bad quality):
Finally, we stopped in the office of our librarian/tour guide and learned that he had the same office that Lewis Carroll used to work in! We were shown some original Carroll drawings as well as the tree where he used to imagine the Cheshire Cat and the place where he first met Alice. Fantastic visit.
British Studies 2019 