London, Day 4, June 21, 2007

This morning, bright and early, we set off for Oxford on the bus. I went with my dear friend De., and our other two friends, husband and wife (she a fellow student, he along for the ride) D and M. On the bus we had a nice chat about our lives, art, competitive bicycle racing, child rearing, etc.

Once in Oxford, we had breakfast, finally. We had something we had never heard of, "breakfast baps", soft rolls with eggs, tomatoes, and mushrooms in them. Very nice.

Here are the other three:

Don't they look satisfied?

Outside of the station, there was a farmers' market going on:

By the way, if you click on the pictures, you can see them in all their glory. It's worth it when fresh produce is involved.

Our first visit was to Oxford University Press (everyone's favorite, right?).

Our first visit, and perhaps the most entertaining and wonder-inducing part of the day, was a guided tour of the OUP Museum. Here it is:


This gentleman, Martin, was our guide. To say he was wonderful would be a gross understatement. He is obviously an actor. His speaking voice is the stuff of legend. Anyway, it was a remarkable tour. Here he is showing us a spoon that the used to pick up the molten lead with which to make more type.


Some tools of the trade.

Tools and samples of books. Aren't the books amazing looking? Why don't our books today look more like this? I concede that there are some pretty cool books today, but when you think of how they made them... well, what can I say?

A beatiful original press, ready to go into action, with a page of paper all ready to go and a page of type ready to be pressed into it.

And here is the end of the process. The page of type is being pressed on to the paper, where it will make an inked impression, and a raised, reverse braille-type physical impression as well.


This was a very interesting artefact. Ordinarily, if an object of interest to the museum goes up for auction, the budget of the museum does not permit the Oxford staff the luxury of bidding. In this case, it was different. There was a small auction of Lewis Carroll memorabilia, and our host, Martin, decided to bid for it and won. I think he mentioned the sum of about 6,000 pounds, which, for "The Mouse's Tale" is not too bad, if you think about it. The photo is not too clear, but on the right is the actual type and on the left is a perfect printing made from this type of the clever little ditty.

Here is another very interesting little collection. When James Murray accepted the post of editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, he literally did not know what he was letting himself in for. No sooner had he accepted than he received several tons (I think) of these strips of paper, each one of which contained one word and an example of its usage. They were all written by different people in different hands, of course, and are in themselves original artefacts. I believe there are five million of them in the vaults of the museum. This is just one box.

= = = = $ $ $ $ = = = =

After our tour of the Museum, we had several presentations on different OUP initiatives: the Oxford English Dictionary, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Oxford Scholarship Online. This last was very interesting to me, because I had not yet heard of it. It is a subscription or outright purchase product, and is basically a searchable repository of almost 1,500 OUP scholarly books. The site is very beautiful, and I recommend clicking through. These were all very interesting, of course, because the products themselves are of such superior quality. I love the OED. As a girl of 14 in boarding school in West Yorkshire, my favorite thing to do before going to bed at night in my dorm was to lie on my bed in my pajamas and read my little Pocket Oxford English Dictionary. This pleasure was to be eclipsed only by the fun of memorizing endless lists of German words and their accompanying articles.

Next, a gentleman by the name of Michael Popham came over to the OUP to talk to us about a partnering between OUP and Google. This project has as its goal the digitization of the entire 19th century collection of out-of-copyright materials in Oxford University's library. Many of the details of the agreement between the two entities were confidential, so Michael could not answer all of our questions, but he did give us a fascinating overview of the process of digitizing such a dauntingly large body of materials.

This is Michael Popham, while we were all walking from the OUP building toward the Bodleian Library. Clearly a nice guy, even if he is working with Google (just kidding!).


The Eagle and Child is also known as the Bird and Baby, and apparently was a haunt of "the Inklings", a group of writers that included Lewis Carroll and J.R.R. Tolkien. I had to take a picture, of course.

One of the colleges, covere in vines.


Everyone gets around on their bicycles here, and long rows of parked bikes like this one are a common site all over Oxford.
Here's a morbid little piece of history. This cross in the middle of the square marks one of the spots on which the good people of Oxford used to burn their bishops on the stake. Though not exactly uplifting, I felt it should be documented.

A turret on the corner of a building in Oxford. I don't even know if this was a college, but all the buildings look like this. Imagine living in such a place!

Having arrived at the Bodleian Library, once inside the quad, I turned around and took pictures of all sides.





This is Vanessa Corrick, Head of Readers Services at the Bodleian. She gave us a tour of the library, and it was a highlight of the day. We saw the new library and the old. We saw the wonderfully low-tech conveyor mechanism that transports books to and from the stacks. We saw the reading rooms and walked through an underground passage. We visited the stacks... unfortunately inside no pictures were allowed, so the images will have to reside in my head.

Well, that's it for today, folks. See you all tomorrow. Love to friends and family. A special kiss to Matthew in New York, as a tribute to your fond memories of Oxford. ;-)