Qualla: Bodleian Library https://qualla.com/bodleian-library en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/n/bodleian-library-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Bodleian Library https://qualla.com/bodleian-library Bodleian Library: Introduction https://qualla.com/bodleian-library/ Photo credit Steve Daniels, CC BY-SA 2.0. Every new reader at the Bodleian must agree to a formal declaration before being granted access. They swear not to bring fire or flame into the library, not to kindle any kind, and to obey all rules. The Admissions Office keeps translations in more than a hundred languages so that readers can swear it in their first tongue. The Latin original, written when libraries were unheated because fires were that dangerous, did not yet forbid tobacco smoking. Almost everything else about the Bodleian is also older than it has any reasonable right to be.

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Image: Steve Daniels | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/n/bodleian-library-wp/gcpn-bodleian-library-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Bodleian Library: The Library That Almost Died https://qualla.com/bodleian-library/ Photo credit Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0. There had been a library at Oxford since the 14th century, founded under the will of Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, with a small collection of chained books above the University Church of St Mary the Virgin. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester - brother of Henry V - donated a magni...

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Image: Diliff | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/n/bodleian-library-wp/gcpn-bodleian-library-the-library-that-almost-died.mp3 0:06 2 full Bodleian Library: An Ark to Save Learning https://qualla.com/bodleian-library/ Photo credit Christopher Hilton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Bodley was a diplomat with a collector's appetite and a centralizer's instinct. By June 1603 he was sourcing manuscripts from Turkey. The first Chinese book arrived the same year, despite the fact that no one at Oxford could read it. In 1605, Francis Bacon presented a copy of The...

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Image: Christopher Hilton | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/n/bodleian-library-wp/gcpn-bodleian-library-an-ark-to-save-learning.mp3 0:06 3 full Bodleian Library: Five Buildings, Five Centuries https://qualla.com/bodleian-library/ Photo credit Peter K Burian, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Bodleian is not one building but five, clustered around Broad Street and Radcliffe Square. The 15th-century Duke Humfrey's Library still occupies its space above the Divinity School. The 17th-century Schools Quadrangle was built from 1613 to 1619 with a central tower called t...

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Image: Peter K Burian | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/n/bodleian-library-wp/gcpn-bodleian-library-five-buildings-five-centuries.mp3 0:06 4 full Bodleian Library: What the Stacks Hold https://qualla.com/bodleian-library/ Photo credit Whatlep, CC BY-SA 2.0. The treasures are dizzying once you start counting. Four of the seventeen surviving copies of Magna Carta. One of only 21 complete Gutenberg Bibles. The First Folio of Shakespeare. A first edition of Don Quixote. The only surviving manuscript of the Song of Roland in Old French. ...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/n/bodleian-library-wp/gcpn-bodleian-library-what-the-stacks-hold.mp3 0:06 5 full Bodleian Library: Hogwarts, the Hospital Wing, and the Mendip Cleft https://qualla.com/bodleian-library/ Photo credit K.H. Vickers, Public domain. The Bodleian's architecture is so persuasively old that filmmakers cannot leave it alone. The Divinity School plays the Hogwarts hospital wing in the Harry Potter films, and also the room where Professor McGonagall teaches the students to dance. Duke Humfrey's Library is the Hogw...

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Image: K.H. Vickers | Public domain

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/n/bodleian-library-wp/gcpn-bodleian-library-hogwarts-the-hospital-wing-and-the-mendip-cleft.mp3 0:06 6 full