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." [1] The lectures are held in Oxford at the Centre for the Study of the Book (Bodleian Libraries). [2] 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. [3]
The Bodleian Library is the main research library of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1602 by Sir Thomas Bodley, it is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second-largest library in Britain after the British Library. Under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, it is one of six legal deposit libraries for works published in the United Kingdom, and under Irish law it is entitled to request a copy of each book published in the Republic of Ireland. Known to Oxford scholars as "Bodley" or "the Bod", it operates principally as a reference library and, in general, documents may not be removed from the reading rooms.
Sir Walter Wilson Greg, known professionally as W. W. Greg, was one of the leading bibliographers and Shakespeare scholars of the 20th century.
Falconer Madan was Librarian of the Bodleian Library of Oxford University.
Michael O'Neill was an English poet and scholar, specialising in the Romantic period and post-war poetry. He published four volumes of original poetry; his academic writing was praised as "beautifully and lucidly written".
Fredson Thayer Bowers (1905–1991) was an American bibliographer and scholar of textual editing.
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 Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) formed in 1991 in the United States on the initiative of scholars Jonathan Rose, Simon Eliot, and others.
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 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. 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."
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.
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".
David Fairweather Foxon, FBA was an English bibliographer. Noted for his study of books and literature in 18th-century England, he was the Reader in Textual Criticism at the University of Oxford from 1968 to 1982.
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.
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.
Peter D. McDonald was born in Cape Town in 1964 and educated in South Africa and England. He is a Fellow of St. Hugh's College and Professor of English and Related Literature at the University of Oxford.