The Lyell Readership in Bibliography is an endowed annual lecture series given at the University of Oxford. Instituted in 1952 by a bequest from the solicitor, book collector and bibliographer, James Patrick Ronaldson Lyell. [1] After Lyell's death, Keeper of the Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, Richard William Hunt, writing of the Lyell bequest noted, "he was a self-taught bibliophile and scholar of extraordinary enthusiasm and discrimination, and one who deserves to be remembered not only by Oxford but by the whole bibliographical world." [2]
The series has continued down to the present day. [3]
Together with the Panizzi Lectures at the British Library and the Sandars Lectures at Cambridge University, it is considered one of the major British bibliographical lecture series. [4]
Edward Gordon Duff, known as Gordon Duff, was a British bibliographer and librarian known for his works on early English printing.
David Pearson is an English librarian who served as the Director of Culture, Heritage and Libraries at the City of London Corporation between 2009 and 2017; his brief covered London Metropolitan Archives, Guildhall Library, City Business Library, Guildhall Art Gallery, and other institutions. He retired in early 2017 to focus on his work in book history and is now a Senior Member of Darwin College, Cambridge ; Honorary Senior Research Associate of the Department of Information Studies, University College London ; and Distinguished Senior Fellow of the School of Advanced Study, University of London. A member of the Faculty of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, he teaches regularly at the London Rare Book School.
The Panizzi Lectures are a series of annual lectures given at the British Library by "eminent scholars of the book" and named after the librarian Anthony Panizzi. They are considered one of the major British bibliographical lecture series alongside the Sandars Lectures at the University of Cambridge and the Lyell Lectures at Oxford University.
The Sandars Readership in Bibliography is an annual lecture series given at Cambridge University. Instituted in 1895 at the behest of Samuel Sandars of Trinity College (1837–1894), who left a £2000 bequest to the University, the series has continued to the present day. Together with the Panizzi Lectures at the British Library and the Lyell Lectures at Oxford University, it is considered one of the major British bibliographical lecture series.
The McKenzie Lectures are a series of annual public lectures delivered by "a distinguished scholar on the history of the book, scholarly editing, or bibliography and the sociology of texts." The lectures are held in Oxford at the Centre for the Study of the Book. The series was inaugurated in 1996, in honour of Donald Francis McKenzie (1931–1999), upon his retirement as Professor of Bibliography and Textual Criticism, University of Oxford.
Christopher Francis Rivers de Hamel is a British academic librarian and expert on mediaeval manuscripts. He is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and former Fellow Librarian of the Parker Library. His book Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts is the winner of the Duff Cooper Prize for 2016 and the Wolfson History Prize for 2017.
Johan Peter Gumbert, known in print as J.P. Gumbert, was a Dutch academic who specialised in medieval European manuscripts. From 1979 to 2001 he was Professor, and then Professor Emeritus, of Western Palaeography and Codicology at Leiden University.
The Triennial E. A. Lowe Lectures are an ongoing series of lectures held at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, in memory of the noted palaeographer E. A. Lowe who was an Honorary Fellow of the College from 1954 until his death in 1969. They are delivered by prominent palaeographers, with each scholar giving a trio of lectures on a topic within the field. Oxford University Press sometimes publishes revised versions of the lectures. Lecturers have included N. G. Wilson, A. C. de la Mare, Anthony Grafton, and Michael Lapidge.
Kathleen L. Scott is a codicologist specialising in 15th-century English manuscripts. An independent scholar, she is associated with the University of Massachusetts.
Books in the United Kingdom have been studied from a variety of cultural, economic, political, and social angles since the formation of the Bibliographical Society in 1892 and since the History of books became an acknowledged academic discipline in the 1980s. Books are understood as "written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers".
Mary Teresa Josephine Webber, is a British palaeographer, medievalist, and academic. She has been a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge since 1997 and Professor of Palaeography at the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge since 2018. Webber studied Modern History as an undergraduate at Somerville College, Oxford.
Albinia Catherine de la Mare,, known in print as A.C. de la Mare and informally as "Tilly", was an English librarian and palaeographer who specialised in Italian Renaissance manuscripts.
The Selden Carol Book is a medieval carol manuscript held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Along with the Trinity Carol Roll, with which it shares five contemporaneous carols and texts, it is one of the main sources for 15th century English carols, and like the Trinity Roll contains the music as the well as the texts. The inclusion of Deo Gracias Anglia referencing Henry V's victory at Agincourt in 1415 gives an indication of the date of composition of the carols.
Walter Newton Henry Harding (1883-1973) was a ragtime pianist, collector of rare books, primarily relating to music, and major donor to the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford.
Rev. Nathaniel Crynes (1685/6-1745), was an English antiquary, physician and Fellow of St John's College, Oxford.
Donald Francis McKenzie, FBA was a New Zealand bibliographer and literary scholar. He was professor of bibliography and textual criticism at the University of Oxford from 1989 to 1996.
Paul Needham is an American academic librarian. From 1998 to 2020, he worked at the Scheide Library at Princeton University. A Guggenheim Fellow and Bibliographical Society Gold Medallist, Needham has delivered the Sandars Readership in Bibliography at the University of Cambridge, the A. S. W. Rosenbach Lectures in Bibliography at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Lyell Lectures at the University of Oxford. His focus is on incunabula, the earliest printed books in Europe.
James Patrick Ronaldson Lyell (1871–1948) was a solicitor, author, book collector, and bibliographer. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and at University College London.
The A.S.W. Rosenbach Lectures are an endowed lectureship in bibliography established in 1928 by rare-book and manuscript dealer A. S. W. Rosenbach at the University of Pennsylvania.
Michael F. Suarez, S.J. is Professor of English and Director of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. He is editor-in-chief of the largest digital humanities project in the world: Oxford Scholarly Editions Online. He is a Jesuit priest.