@bodleianlibs

A warm welcome to new and returning students! Head to www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk for info about how to use your , and how we are ensuring you can study and research safely.

Three free exhibitions and displays for the price of... none? Drop by the Weston Library, Oxford, for The ; : ; and Out of the Woods!

Our lovely shop, a lovely shop staff member, and a lovely book! Do drop by and browse. We can welcome up to five people in the shop at any time, and there’s a hand sanitisation station at the entrance. The shop is right next to the , where we have three free exhibitions/displays!

Advertising is Good for You! Drop into our free exhibition at the Weston Library. From shaving babies to magnetic corsets (the 'very thing' for ladies), discover the clever techniques behind nearly 100 years of .

The Weston Library reopens today, with a special, free exhibition of the work of pioneering , Helen Muspratt (1907 – 2001). Visit bit.ly/BodMuspratt The exhibition marks the recent and important gift of the photographic archive to the , including over 2,000 original prints and numerous surviving negatives! We welcome you to explore Helen's , and studio . Please read our safety and security FAQs on the visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk website before your visit.

Other gems from the Leopold Muller Memorial Library - Bodleian include the personal library of Leopold Zunz, who is considered to be the father of the critical study of Judaism Notice the autograph of Zunz in two of the images! Zunz’s library was part of Sir Moses Montefiore’s Library at East Cliff Lodge. Their later Librarian, Moses Gaster, was a well-know collector of manuscripts, including the www.genizah.bodleian.ox.ac.uk Selections were acquired by Manchester’s @thejohnrylands Library. Some of his personal papers are held also at the University College of London's Hebrew and Jewish Studies Library.

One of the Leopold Muller Memorial Library treasures is the Montefiore Archive, which in greater part consists of 350 letters written to financier and activist Sir Moses Montefiore between 1820 & 1885. It includes letters from the British Foreign Office lending support in efforts to defend Jews in peril around the globe. There is also a range of diaries and travel reports – the earliest dated 1827 – by Sir Moses, Lady Judith Montefiore and others, which are equally illuminating. The diary entries are very detailed; one can learn a lot about the Montefiores' daily rituals and their style of travel note-taking. The archive also contains extensive documentation of the ‘Damascus Affair’, in which Jews were falsely accused in 1840 of the ritual murder of a Capuchin monk; and on the ‘Mortara Case’: the abduction and forced conversion of a Jewish child in Rome. Sir Moses Montefiore was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1837 and made a Baronet in 1846, in appreciation of his international philanthropic and humanitarian activism. His coat of arms was later used also as a bookplate: In fact, not many know Montefiore was friends with Queen Victoria! She invited him to her Coronation ceremony at the Westminster Abbey, and they were neighbours in Ramsgate. The Montefiore Archive contains diary entries which describe how once Montefiore gave Queen Victoria a spare key to his East Cliff Lodge gardens at Ramsgate, which she would frequently visit!

The Leopold Muller Memorial Library (the Bodleian's Hebrew and Jewish Studies Library) is home to over 100,000 books, 1,000 periodicals, and almost 1,000,000 archival items. It holds the largest set of memorial volumes in Europe (). It’s also home to our friendly team! The library is based at the , built in 1893 as a ‘place of relaxation’ for staff of the former Clarendon Press. It used to comprise a gymnasium fully fitted with gymnastic apparatus, billiard rooms, and a tennis court. Now it’s mostly books. (We don’t mind.) Before it moved to central in 2014, it was housed in a beautiful Jacobean manor house (Yarnton Manor) four miles north of Oxford. The Muller Library was built around a single collection back in the early 1970s. It was initially called The Kressel Library.

Good morning! The team from the Bodleian's Leopold Muller Memorial Library are in charge of @BodleianLibs social accounts today! (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) Look out for Jewish treasures, stirring stories and a Jacobean manor... https://twitter.com/bodleianlibs https://www.facebook.com/bodleianlibraries/

Martin Lister (1639-1712) loved snails. His Historiae Conchyliorum was the first comprehensive study of conchology, consisting of over 1000 copperplates of shells and molluscs that he collected from around the world. However, engraving such a large number of plates was no small or inexpensive feat, and it was one that Lister did not accomplish alone, employing his daughters as the primary draftswomen. By the time they were teenagers, Susanna and Anna Lister’s initials appeared on the title page of the Historiae.

Happy ! "Ignore red" reads a note in the margin of this iconic dust jacket design, illustrated by himself. The publisher wrote this note for the printer, referring to the red of the sun, because printing a third colour would have been too expensive.

When that bittersweet day comes and you realise you no longer belong together, we can help you to move on. bit.ly/BodLoans