Lyell Lectures

The Lyell Readership in Bibliography is an endowed annual lecture series given at the University of Oxford. Instituted in 1952 by a bequest from the solicitor, book collector and bibliographer, James Patrick Ronaldson Lyell.[1] After Lyell's death, Keeper of the Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, Richard William Hunt, writing of the Lyell bequest noted, "he was a self-taught bibliophile and scholar of extraordinary enthusiasm and discrimination, and one who deserves to be remembered not only by Oxford but by the whole bibliographical world."[2]

The series has continued down to the present day.[3][4]

Together with the Panizzi Lectures at the British Library and the Sandars Lectures at Cambridge University, it is considered one of the major British bibliographical lecture series.[5]

  1. ^ The Lyell Lectures.
  2. ^ R. W. Hunt, ‘The Lyell bequest’, Bodleian Library Record, 3 (1950–51), 68–72.
  3. ^ "The Lyell and McKenzie Lectures". Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Libraries. 2016. Retrieved 23 December 2016.
  4. ^ McKitterick, David. 1983. The Sandars and Lyell Lectures : A Checklist with an Introduction. New York: Jonathan A. Hill.
  5. ^ Bowman, J.H. (1 October 2012). British Librarianship and Information Work 2001–2005. Ashgate. p. 157. ISBN 978-1-4094-8506-3.