Magic, legends, magical beings and magical beasts have over the centuries inspired a wonderfully rich vein of imaginative writing. This exhibition, drawn from the fabulous Ashmolean and Bodleian collections, has been skilfully and eruditely curated to create an enchanted and enchanting experience. The fact that it is low-lit (to preserve the manuscripts) adds to this. Each part of the exhibition explores and explains a particular aspect of magic and its interpretation through words and pictures.

On display are a wide range of books, maps, artefacts, runic calendars, prints, sketches, illuminated manuscripts and hand-written drafts that between them explore alchemy, illusion, belief in and stories about the supernatural. These include work by 20th- and 21st-century writers J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Alan Garner, Susan Cooper and Philip Pullman along with their own original scripts, maps and illustrations. Libraries themselves have been described as enchanted locations and the act of reading as being imbued with magical transformational properties.

The exhibition celebrates this and the power of the word, as a magic in its own right. As if to underwrite this celebration, two substantial book cases have been included in the exhibition, filled with a huge range of books — books that have all used, stretched and celebrated the magic of the imagination. Each case displays a sign ‘Please do not climb’, perhaps lest a passionate reader felt he had to access the volumes on the topmost shelves. And each is provided with a convenient chair, on which one can sit to borrow and read the books.

There are also two audio stations, at which one can listen to extracts from books including The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Fellowship of the Ring and Northern Lights actually read by Philip Pullman himself.

Mapping the Multiverse shows how maps provide a route and reassuring parameters to travellers all. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote of Middle Earth, ‘I wisely started with a map and made the story fit’. On show is a C.S. Lewis map of Narnia, the original pencil outline still visible under the more confident ink, along with Philip Pullman’s map of Lyra’s Oxford, where the Botley Road disintegrates into a flowery mead: a magical transformation devoutly to be wished.

The Arthurian legends are also included and Arthur and the wizard Merlin, magical in their own right, have also provided the model for others including Tolkien’s grey pilgrim Gandalf. The exhibition also explores Magical Beasts including exponations of occasions where human beings are not the masters of creation’s hierarchy as with Lewis’s commanding lion Aslan. These are displayed in two cases containing exquisitely illustrated and illuminated manuscripts and books including a 12th century Latin Herbal which describes how to go about harvesting a shrieking Mandrake, complete with helpfully graphic illustrations. Along with a mid 15th century illustration of a mild mannered, bi-pedal merman, recumbent on a convenient rock, each of his legs encased in delicate green scales.

The four Ripley Scrowles on show are very large 15th- and 16th-century copies of the now lost originals.

In the 15th century, George Ripley recorded his attempts to expound and illuminate his belief that by combining chemical and magical processes alchemists would be able to prepare a universal elixir: the Philosopher’s Stone. This would contain wide-ranging and extraordinary powers: the ability to transmute base metal into gold or confer longevity and immortality on to the possessor, as described in J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter book.

Illustrated here and from the one of scrowles, are two Alchemical Lions perched above a beaming sun and symbolic griffin, who in turn clasps a magical orb. And in another a frog is given a pivotal role in the hierarchy of the creation of the elixir.

Wise men or wizards possess the ability to alter circumstances actually or by illusion. Shown here are two Victorian illusory wizards, one with great gravity releases three birds in a puff of smoke, whilst the other produces a white rabbit from a bell jar thanks to the flaps on the page of the book which when lifted effect the illusion.

This is a truly fabulous exhibition and one that definitely merits several visits.

 

Bodleian Library
Until October 27
More details: 01865 277162