Distributed Presses

The Bodleian Library's newly published How To Be a Good Wife and How To Be a Good Husband were featured in a Valentine's Day article in the Chicago Tribune. The article excerpts maxims from each book and notes in its introduction:

In 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the British throne for the American divorcee he loved. Romance apparently was in the air that year, because that's when a pair of "Do's and Don'ts" books were published to help English husbands and wives figure out how to make their marriages work.

History does not tell us if the books turned up among the former king's wedding presents, but we can benefit from the advice ourselves, thanks to the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.

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Posted to Bodleian Library | Books for the News | Reference and Writing | Reviews

How To Be a Good Wife, newly published by the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, was featured today on the blog Jezebel. Jezebel excerpted some of the most apt pieces of advice from the book, including:

Husbands are not terribly difficult to manage. Certainly, they are not nearly as difficult as they imagine in their own hearts. If your husband is of the awkward class, you either picked a bad one or you don't know the elementary rules of 'husband management.'

The companion volume to How To Be A Good Wife is How To Be a Good Husband, also published by the Bodleian LIbrary.

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Katie Haegele reviewed Bodleian Library's The First English Dictionary, 1604 in the Philadelphia Inquirer on July 25th, 2007.

She also interviewed John Simpson, chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, who also edited Cawdrey's dictionary and wrote its introduction. Simpson and Haegele discuss the relative obscurity of Cawdrey's dictionary, the standardization of the English language, and the importance of alphabetical ordering.

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Posted to Bodleian Library | Reference and Writing | Reviews

Julia Keller recently reviewed Bodleian Library's The First English Dictionary, 1604 in the Chicago Tribune. She writes that "few books are as delightful as this compendium. . . ."

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Posted to Bodleian Library | History | Literature | Reference and Writing | Reviews

Scott McLemee recently reviewed Bodleian Library's The First English Dictionary, 1604 on Inside Higher Ed. McLemee provides some biographical details on Robert Cawdrey, the original author, and assesses the historical context in which the dictionary was produced.

He goes on to praise Cawdrey and his dictionary on a number of accounts. McLemee praises Cawdrey's pioneering spirit:

At the risk of being overly present-minded, there's a sense in which Cawdrey was a pioneer in dealing with the effects of his era's information explosion. Thanks to the printing press, the English language was undergoing a kind of mutation in the 16th century.

He also praises the format and its accessibility:

Apart from its importance to the history of lexicography, this pioneering reference work remains interesting as an early effort to strike a balance between innovation and accessibility in language use.

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Read the NBCC's Blog Entry "The Devil's Dictionary" on McLemee's Review

Read McLemee's response to the NBCC Entry on Puritan Sexuality

Read a brief Entry on Bookninja

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Posted to Bodleian Library | History | Reference and Writing | Reviews

Florence Fabricant, writing in the December 27th, 2006 edition of the New York Times offers a brief review of Bodleian Library's Ralph Ayres' Cookery Book, the cookbook of an 18th Century dining hall master from New College, Oxford:

This slender volume reproduces the pages of the original, interpsersing them with botanical illustrations. It offers some dishes that are quite appealing: quince marmalade, rasberry jam, veal rolled with bacon into ovals and roasted on a spit "as with larks" and gingerbread glazed with dark ale.

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Posted to Bodleian Library | History | Medieval and Renaissance

Juliette Rossant recently praised Ralph Ayres' Cookery Book on the Superchef Blog:

Ask not what would make a busy, doubtlessly hard-working chef in early 18th Century Oxford, England, write down his favorite recipes. Just thank the stars he did. The handsome book which one "Ralph Ayres" created is a charming and beautiful little book, fascinating as much for what he cooks as how he writes. Ralph Ayers' Cookery Book: With an Introduction and Glossary by Jane Jakeman (Bodleian Library 2006, distributed by the University of Chicago Press) is the kind of book, once buried in the Bodleian Library, that brings to life the social history of New College, Oxford.

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Posted to Bodleian Library | History | Reviews