From a lock of Shelley's hair to Shakespeare's First Folio: Ten treasures from the Bodleian's Marks of Genius

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

Marks of Genius: Masterpieces from the Collections of the Bodleian Libraries brings together works which show how ideas, people and moments of genius have left their mark on papyrus, parchment and paper. Here's ten treasures to tempt you before the exhibition closes on September 20.
A lock of Shelley’s hair

 
Percy and Mary Shelley are commemorated together in a bivalve locket containing a lock of Mary’s hair from 1816, and of Shelley’s from 1822, the last year of his life. Mary habitually collected locks of hair belonging to family and friends, keeping them in named and dated packets.


Shakespeare’s First Folio

The first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays was published in 1623, seven years after his death by two of his fellow actors. The first collected edition of any English playwright, it prints a total of thirty-six plays, many of which would otherwise have been lost to future generations. This is the copy of the First Folio that was acquired by the Bodleian soon after publication, in accordance with the agreement with the Stationers’ Company.

 
Magna Carta

Some seventeen Magna Cartas have survived, and their survival has ensured that Magna Carta is present in the imagination not only as a symbol of the rule of law, but also as a physical object which, much like the American Declaration of Independence, somehow embodies the spirit, or genius, of a nation.


Mendelssohn Schilflied (Reed Song)

Mendelssohn and his wife Cécile spent the winter of 1844-5 in the Frankfurt area, where Cécile had been born. While there Mendelssohn made a beautiful copy of a song he had composed in 1842: Schilflied (Reed Song). Not only did he write it out in his best hand, he also illustrated it with a meticulous watercolour which depicts the song’s opening line: ‘On the lake’s unruffled surface rests the moon’s fair beam.’


The Pencil of Nature

When William Henry Fox Talbot conducted his photographic experiments in the 1830s and 1840s, books were still produced using the centuries-old methods of movable type and relief and intaglio engraving on woodblocks or metal plates. In The Pencil of Nature, which appeared in instalments between 1844 and 1847, Talbot was anticipating the scaleable photographic techniques that would eventually replace traditional printing.


Flora Graeca

One of many superb watercolours of Eastern Mediterranean flora by the Austrian artist Ferdinand Bauer on a field trip to the Mediterranean with his employer his employer, the Oxford naturalist John Sibthorp. Bauer made initial sketches in pencil, using a colour code system of his own invention. Flora Graeca, was an immensely ambitious, multi-volume project which Sibthorp never lived to see.


The Gutenburg Bible

The first substantial book produced in the West using metal type, this epoch-making bible was the work of Johann Gutenberg (c. 1398-1468), a goldsmith from Mainz. Printing probably began in 1454, and was completed by March 1455. Fewer than fifty copies survive today, and the Bodleian’s copy is one of only seven complete examples in the British Isles.


Astronumicum Caesareum (Astronomy of the Caesars)

Peter Apian’s Astronomicum Caesareum is a masterpiece of printing. With it he aimed to overcome the arithmetical complexities inherent in the Ptolemaic geocentric representation of planetary movements by ‘a complete solution, as far as is possible, of the problem of predicting the positions of the heavenly bodies by mechanical means’.


The Romance of Alexander

One of the most sumptuous books of the Middle Ages, The Romance of Alexander contains a cycle of romances about Alexander the Great. Its exquisite illustrations were completed in Flanders in 1344 by the artist Jehan de Grise.


Jami, The Baharistan

This superb manuscript of poetic stories by the Persian poet and mystic Jami was commissioned by Akbar, the Emperor of Hindustan (1542-1605). The rhymed prose, written in a beautiful script by a celebrated scribe, Muhammed Hussein, is bordered with elaborate arabesque designs, and  illustrated by sixteen of the greatest Mughal court artists.

• Marks of genius runs at the Bodleian Library until September 21 2016. Find out more about the exhibition on the Bodleian website

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Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/literary-history/art536653-from-a-lock-of-shelleys-hair-to-shakespeares-first-folio-ten-treasures-from-the-bodleians-marks-of-genius