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 (1871–1948), the series has continued down to the present day.^[1] 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.^[2]

Lectures

• 1952–1953 Neil Ripley Ker: English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest
• 1954–1955 Walter Wilson Greg: Some Aspects and Problems of London Publishing between 1550 and 1650
• 1956–1957 Stanley Arthur Morison: Aspects of Authority and Freedom in Relation to Greco–Latin Script, Inscription, and Type
• 1959–1960 Fredson T. Bowers: Bibliography and Textual Criticism
• 1960–1961 Henry Graham Pollard: The Medieval Book Trade in Oxford
• 1961–1962 Philip Hofer: The Artist and the Book in France
• 1962–1963 A.N.L. Munby: Three Nineteenth-Century Collectors of Manuscripts
• 1963–1964 Jacques Guignard: L'Art de le Reliure en France et l'Action des Bibliophiles: Quelques Aspects de la Question
• 1964–1965 William Beattie: Some Aspects of the History of the Advocates' Library
• 1965–1966 Simon Harcourt Nowell-Smith: International Copyright Law and the Publisher in the Reign of Queen Victoria
• 1966–1967 Anthony Ian Doyle: Some English Scribes and Scriptoria of the Later Middle Ages
• 1967–1968 Harry Graham Carter: A View of Early Typography up to about 1600
• 1968–1969 Cornelis Reedijk [nl]: The Labours of Hercules: Some Observations on the History of Erasmus's Opera Omnia
• 1969–1970 William Burton Todd: Scholarly Texts: Variable Techniques and Designs
• 1970–1971 Otto Ernst Pächt: The Art of Drawing within the Realm of Medieval Illumination
• 1971–1972 Wytze Hellinga: The Bibliography of Early Printing in the Low Countries between 1767 and 1874
• 1972–1973 André Masson: Le Catalogue Figuratif: A Pictorial Guide to the Contents of European Libraries from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century
• 1973–1974 Alan W. Tyson: Beethoven: Studies in the Genesis of his Music 1803–9
• 1974–1975 T. A. M. Bishop: The Script of Corbie
• 1975–1976 David F. Foxon: Pope and the Early Eighteenth-Century Book Trade
• 1976–1977 T. Julian Brown: The Insular System of Scripts, c.600–c.850
• 1977–1978 Mme Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer: La Famille Fournier et la Fonderie Typographique en France au XVIIIe Siècle
• 1978–1979 Howard Millar Nixon: English Decorated Bookbindings
• 1979–1980 Monsignor José Ruysschaert: Recherches Vaticanes sur la Miniature Italienne du Quinzième Siecle
• 1980–1981 Ian Gilbert Philip: The Bodleian Library in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
• 1981–1982 Berthold Wolpe: The Quest for Beauchesne: Contributions to the History of Elizabethan Calligraphy and Print-Making
• 1982–1983 Jonathan J.G. Alexander: Creation and Transmission: Methods of Work of Manuscript Illuminators in the Middle Ages
• 1983–1984 Robert Shackleton: The Bibliographical History of Montesquieu
• 1984–1985 Gordon Norton Ray: The Art Deco Book in France
• 1985–1986 Edwin Wolf: Books, Bookmen, and Booksellers in Colonial Philadelphia
• 1986–1987 Mary Pollard: Dublin Trade in Books 1550 to 1800
• 1987–1988 D.F. McKenzie: Bibliography and History: Seventeenth-Century England
• 1988–1989 Donald H. Reiman: The Study of Modern Manuscripts: Public, Confidential, and Private
• 1989–1990 Elizabeth L. Eisenstein: Grub Street Abroad: Aspects of the French Cosmopolitan Press from the Age of Louis XIV to the French Revolution
• 1990–1991 A. R. A. Hobson: Two Renaissance Book-Collectors: Jean Grolier and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Their Libraries and Bookbindings
• 1991–1992 R.H. Rouse: Book-Producers and Pook-Production in Paris: Family, Shop, and Neighbourhood on the Rue Neuve Notre-Dame, 1200–1500
• 1992–1993 Bernhard Fabian: English Authors and German Publishers in the Eighteenth Century
• 1993–1994 Joseph Burney Trapp: Illustrations of Petrarch from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century
• 1994–1995 Henri-Jean Martin: Du Manuscrit au Livre Imprimé: Mise en Page et Mise en Texte des Textes Littéraires Français de la Fin due XVe Siècle au Milieu du XVIIe Siècle
• 1995–1996 Peter Beal: In Praise of Scribes: Manuscripts and Their Makers in Seventeenth-Century England
• 1996–1997 Robert Darnton: Policing Literature in Eighteenth-Century Paris
• 1998–1999 Malcolm B. Parkes: Their Hands before Our Eyes: A Closer Look at Scribes
• 1999–2000 David McKitterick: Set in Print: The Fortunes of an Idea, c.1450–1800
• 2000–2001 Rodney Malcolm Thomson: Books and Learning in Twelfth-Century England: The Ending of 'Alter Orbis'
• 2001–2002 Bruce Bryning Redford: Designing the Life of Johnson
• 2002–2003 Nigel G. Wilson: The World of Books in Byzantium
• 2003–2004 Kathleen L. Scott: Suppleatur per Ymaginacionem: Exceptional Images in Later Medieval English Manuscripts
• 2004–2005 Reinhard Wittmann [de]: Literary Life and Book-Market in Germany under the Swastika 1933–1945
• 2005–2006 Leslie Howsam: Historical Knowledge and British Publishers, 1850–1950: Discipline and Narrative
• 2006–2007 Mirella Ferrari: The Scriptorium and Library of Bobbio
• 2007–2008 Kristian Jensen: Collecting Incunabula: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Market — Rediscovering and Re-Creating the Earliest Printed Books in the Eighteenth Century
• 2008–2009 Christopher F.R. de Hamel: Fragments in Book Bindings
• 2009–2010 Ian Maclean: The Business of Scholarship: The Trade in Latin Books in the Age of Confessions, 1560–1630
• 2010–2011 David Parker: Describing the New Testament
• 2011–2012 Lukas Erne: Shakespeare and the Book Trade
• 2012–2013 Richard Beadle: Late Medieval English Autograph Writings and Their Uses
• 2013–2014 H.R. Woudhuysen: 'Almost Identical': Copying Books in England, 1600–1900
• 2014–2015 Michael Suarez, sj: The Reach of Bibliography
• 2015–2016 Teresa Webber: Public Reading and its Books: Monastic Ideals and Practice in England c. 1000–c. 1300
• 2016–2017 Paul Nelles: The Vatican Library in the Counter-Reformation^[3]
• 2017–2018 David Pearson: Book Ownership in Stuart England
• 2018–2019 Richard Sharpe: Libraries and Books in Medieval England: The Role of Libraries in a Changing Book Economy (recordings here)
• 2019–2020 Marc Smith Writing models from manuscript to print: France, England and Europe, c.1400–1800 (recordings here)
• 2020–2021 Paul Needham: The Genesis, Life, and Afterlife of the Gutenberg Bible (link to recorded versions here)
• 2021–2022 Susan Rankin: From Memory to Written Record: English Liturgical Books and Musical Notations, 900–1150 (first lecture available here)