The Home University Library of Modern Knowledge was a series of popular non-fiction books from the first half of the twentieth century that ran to over 200 volumes. The authors were eminent scholars in their fields and included Isaiah Berlin, Harold J. Laski, Hilaire Belloc, Bertrand Russell and John Masefield.
The first book in the series was Parliament: Its History, Constitution and Practice by Courtenay Ilbert, published in 1911 by Williams and Norgate in London and Henry Holt and Company in New York. [1] The general editors were H.A.L. Fisher and Gilbert Murray. The idea for the series came from George Herbert Perris who was the assistant editor. [2]
In 1928 the series was bought for £10,700 by Thornton Butterworth from Williams and Norgate. Oxford University Press were the under-bidder. Oxford had another chance to buy the series when the offices of Thornton Butterworth were destroyed in The Blitz in 1940. Eyre & Spottiswoode took most of the Thornton Butterworth business but Oxford were able to acquire the Home University Library for only £4750. G.N Clark replaced H.A.L. Fisher as one of the editors. By 1940, the series was becoming a little stale. It was nearly 30 years old and a number of titles in the series were selling only 100s each year. Despite this, total sales of Home University Library volumes were one million volumes over 80 titles in the first two years following the acquisition by Oxford. The series helped the university reach a wider audience and as a non-fiction series was complementary to The World's Classics which reprinted great works of literary fiction. [2] [3]
In 1966, [4] the series was renamed OPUS (Oxford Paperback University Series). [2] New titles continue to be published under that name by Oxford University Press.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first edition in 1884, traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, and provides ongoing descriptions of English language usage in its variations around the world.
The Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) was published on 23 September 2004 in 60 volumes and online, with 50,113 biographical articles covering 54,922 lives.
Frederic William Maitland was an English historian and jurist who is regarded as the modern father of English legal history. From 1884 until his death in 1906, he was reader in English law, then Downing Professor of the Laws of England at the University of Cambridge.
A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series can be organized in different ways, such as written by the same author, or marketed as a group by their publisher.
Ernest Percival Rhys was a Welsh-English writer, best known for his role as founding editor of the Everyman's Library series of affordable classics. He wrote essays, stories, poetry, novels and plays.
John Beverley Nichols was an English writer, playwright and public speaker. He wrote more than 60 books and plays.
Sir Thomas Graham Jackson, 1st Baronet was one of the most distinguished British architects of his generation. He is best remembered for his work at Oxford, including the Oxford Military College at Cowley, the university's Examination Schools, most of Hertford College, much of Brasenose College, ranges at Trinity College and Somerville College, the City of Oxford High School for Boys, and the Acland Nursing Home.
Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzeff, or Rostovtsev, was a Russian historian whose career straddled the 19th and 20th centuries and who produced important works on ancient Roman and Greek history. He was a member of the Russian Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.
Sir Brian Howard Harrison is a British historian and academic. From 1996 to 2004, he was Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. From 2000 to 2004, he was also the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Oxford World's Classics is an imprint of Oxford University Press. First established in 1901 by Grant Richards and purchased by OUP in 1906, this imprint publishes primarily dramatic and classic literature for students and the general public. Its competitors include Penguin Classics, Everyman's Library, and the Modern Library. Most titles include critical apparatus – usually, an introduction, bibliography, chronology, and explanatory notes – as is the case with Penguin Classics.
Richard Ithamar Aaron,, was a Welsh philosopher who became an authority on the work of John Locke. He also wrote a history of philosophy in the Welsh language.
Translators and scholars have translated the main works attributed to Homer, the Iliad and Odyssey, from the Homeric Greek into English, since the 16th and 17th centuries. Translations are ordered chronologically by date of first publication, with first lines provided to illustrate the style of the translation.
Henry William Carless Davis was a British historian, editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, and Oxford Regius Professor of Modern History.
Robert Henry Charles, was an Irish Anglican theologian, biblical scholar, professor, and translator from Northern Ireland. He is known particularly for his English translations of numerous apocryphal and pseudepigraphal Ancient Hebrew writings, including the Book of Jubilees (1895), the Apocalypse of Baruch (1896), the Ascension of Isaiah (1900), the Book of Enoch (1906), and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (1908), which have been widely used. He wrote the articles in the eleventh edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) attributed to the initials "R. H. C."
Kate Norgate was a British historian. She was one of the first women to achieve academic success in this sphere, and is best known for her history of England under the Angevin kings and for coining the name Angevin Empire to describe their domains. She was self-educated in the Victorian era when higher education was generally denied to women. Her obituary in The Times described her as "the most learned woman historian of the pre-academic period."
Paget Jackson Toynbee, FBA was a British Dante scholar. Robert Hollander has described Toynbee as 'the most influential Dantean scholar of his time'.
George Joseph Gustave Masson, was an English-born educational writer with a French father and an English mother.
Williams and Norgate were publishers and book importers in London and Edinburgh. They specialized in both British and foreign scholarly and scientific literature.
George Herbert Perris (1866–1920) was the originator of the Home University Library of Modern Knowledge, a series of popular non-fiction books from the first half of the twentieth century that ran to over 200 volumes.
This is a bibliography of published works on the history of Wales. It includes published books, journals, and educational and academic history-related websites; it does not include self-published works, blogs or user-edited sites. Works may cover aspects of Welsh history inclusively or exclusively.