The Bibliographical Press at the Bodleian

Dr Alexandra Franklin, FSA, Co-ordinator, Centre for the Study of the Book, Department of Special Collections, Bodleian Libraries, and and Richard Lawrence, Superintendent of the Bodleian Bibliographical Press

The Bibliographical Press at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, maintains eight printing presses, one risograph machine, and a large quantity of type across two sites, to support teaching, experiments in printing and public engagement. The Bodleian also lends presses to venues across Oxford.

The room in the Schola Musicae, Old Bodleian Library, aspires to the level of clutter and untidiness of a jobbing printer’s workshop. It contains four hand-operated platen presses, one proofing press and one rolling press, as well as five composing frames and quantities of metal and wood type. A selection of teaching specimens is kept in the room, though recently some eighteenth-century woodcut blocks were removed to be stored with Bodleian Special Collections (See the article by Henry Woudhuysen). The workshop is normally used for courses and classes, but is open to drop-in visitors during city-wide events. In 2024-25, 360 people visited in one afternoon for Oxford Open Doors on Sunday, 15 September 2024 and there were 992 visitors during five afternoons of opening for Oxfordshire ArtWeeks in May 2025, when members of the Make a Book and Letterpress courses showed their works.

The ‘Broad Street Press’ is a small functioning workshop space maintained by the Bibliographical Press in the front window of the Weston Library facing Broad Street in Oxford. This area, near to the two exhibition rooms and the café, is dedicated to drop-in keepsake printing. Public visitors to the Weston Library take an active part in operating one of the two presses kept here. The Bodleian’s public engagement team has recruited over thirty volunteers through Oxford Gardens, Libraries and Museums (GLAM) to supervise keepsake printing. This area conceals a secret: beneath a specially-adapted wooden composing frame is space to store the very post-hand-press-period risograph machine (stencil duplicator) that completes the equipment of the Bodleian Bibliographical Press.

Developing the teaching team

Mezzotint practice at the Bibliographical Press

The Bibliographical Press offers evening letterpress, linocut and ‘Make A Book’ courses which meet on Tuesday and Thursday nights, as well as the practical printing module for postgraduates in English literature. Students from the Ruskin School of Art, which is the University of Oxford’s fine arts department, use the Bibliographical Press workshop each Tuesday during term time. One-off sessions for other higher education groups take place across the year.

To support teaching at the Bibliographical Press, a goal during 2024-25 has been to develop depth in the teaching team which now numbers three teachers of letterpress printing, two teachers of linocut, and two able assistants. A Ruskin School graduate, Alice Hackney, who used the workshop to complete her degree show exhibition piece, has been an assistant teacher of printing for the previous year and will lead the autumn letterpress course from October 2025.

Supporting higher education

The Bodleian’s Bibliography Room was founded in the middle of the twentieth century to offer Oxford postgraduates in English a better understanding of printing methods during the hand-press period. Continuing that model, courses in practical instruction in composition and printing are now offered to up to 12 students in each of two terms, for six weeks in the Michaelmas (Autumn) and Hilary (Winter) terms. The students work collaboratively to produce a booklet. This year Bodleian manuscripts inspired both publications.

  • The Present Want of Doggs, , 8 pages, 8°, with drypoint frontispiece printed on the rolling press (Michaelmas Term, 2024). From a letter by William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, a manuscript found in Edmond Malone’s copy of the first Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays, Bodleian Arch. G c.8. A digital facsimile of the letter can be seen at Digital Bodleian. The letter was written in Pembroke’s capacity as Lord Chamberlain, commanding bailiffs and constables to find more dogs for the sport of bear-baiting.

  • The Fair Cassandra: A Novel in Twelve Chapters, by Jane Austen. 16 pages, 8°, printed work-and-turn (Hilary Term, 2025). This humorous and lively story is in the autograph manuscript ‘Volume the First,’ a notebook of Austen’s juvenilia, Bodleian MS. Don. e. 7. A digital facsimile of the manuscript can be seen online.

Other higher-education groups, from Oxford and beyond, arrange bespoke sessions with the Bibliographical Press. In the past year there were 22 such sessions with students from the English, History, and Languages faculties and from several colleges. These included:

  • A ‘Tristram Shandy’ workshop combines paper-marbling and printing for undergraduates studying English literature.

  • The Oxford Libraries Trainees learn printing as part of their year of professional library experience.

  • Mezzotint and wood-engraving workshops for the Society of Bibliophiles, a student society.

The Bibliographical Press table at the Zine Fair in the Weston Library, 2025

Community engagement with Bodleian collections

The risograph machine was acquired several years ago from Freelance Offset on behalf of Bodleian Education. It is heavily used by the Ruskin School of Art students and plays an important role in the annual Zine Fair.

The third annual Zine Fair in 2025 saw in-depth participation from students of art and design from both the Ruskin School (the University of Oxford’s Fine Arts department) and Brookes University Fine Arts, Graphic Design, and Publishing courses. Students from these courses made visits to the Weston Library to view the collections of artists’ books and publishers’ archives, and created their own zines as coursework, to show at the fair. On February 22, 2025 there were 554 visitors to the Zine Fair in the Weston Library.

To find out more about the Bibliographical Press at the Bodleian Libraries, visit the Bibliographical Press web page.

Alexandra Franklin is a librarian in the Bodleian Department of Special Collections. She co-ordinates the Bodleian Centre for the Study of the Book and manages the Bibliographical Press.

Richard Lawrence, printer, is Superintendent of the Bodleian Bibliographical Press, demonstrating and teaching historical printing methods at the Bodleian workshop and elsewhere.

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