Loggia exhibition October 2019

Somerville in 140 objects

To celebrate Somerville’s 140th anniversary, the college has produced a book of our history, as told through 140 objects in the collections.

There will be a birthday (and launch) party on Sunday 20th October from 2-5 pm, and several of the objects are now on display in various locations around college – do check out the main exhibition in Green Hall, but also feel free to drop into the library to have a look at our small display of library (sort of!) related objects. Whilst you are in the library, you might also want to check out our current Book of the Month, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (put together by Susan Purver, Assistant Librarian).

To partner this, there is a display in the large case by the window on the gift of the John Stuart Mill Library to Somerville, put together by Assistant Archivist Katherine O’Donnell, and featuring such items as the correspondence surrounding the gift, the Somerville Council minutes and Mill’s annotated copy of Emerson’s Essays.

The Library display of Somerville 140 features: the college bookplates and block from which the original ones were printed; a keep cup; Madeleine Shaw Lefevre’s copy of Mary Somerville’s Mechanism of the heavens, alongside the minute from Council on naming the college after Somerville; the college photo from 1891 featuring (among others) Miss Maitland, Miss Penrose and Cornelia Sorabji; and, an illustration from the contemporary journal The Graphic depicting the early buildings of Somerville Hall, as the college was then known.

The book is on sale from the Lodge.