About

The Oxford Bibliographical Society, founded in 1922, exists to promote a shared interest in bibliographical matters generally, whether relating to manuscripts, printed books, or the arts and trades connected with them. It does this by arranging a series of lectures on a wide range of topics running through the course of the academic year, by the publication of monographs, and by a day’s visit each summer to places possessing notable bibliographical resources (such places including universities, ancient public schools, cathedrals, country houses – and, recently, Windsor Castle). Visits to college and university libraries and their supporting services within Oxford also take place from time to time. The Society has, and is actively extending, relations with societies and institutions pursuing similar aims and purposes both within the United Kingdom and abroad.  An Annual General Meeting of members is held in Oxford each summer term, a lecture of broad interest being the centre piece of such occasions. Members of the Society are entitled both to attend all lectures and to receive a copy of each monograph published, without payment beyond the annual membership fee.  

Recent lectures have included: ‘Archbishop Laud’s Latin Manuscripts from Mainz’, ‘Digital Austen: Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts Online’, ‘What the Preliminaries can tell us about Early Modern Spanish Books’, ‘Legacies of the Book: Early Missionary Printing in Asia and the Americas’, ‘Printing in the shadow of Aldus: The Book as a work of art in the twenty-first century’.  The most recent monograph published is that of Professor T.F.Earle, Portuguese Writers and English Readers: Books by Portuguese Writers written before 1640 in the Libraries of Oxford and Cambridge.  The publication of several further monographs is in course of preparation.