The Bodley Club

The Bodley Club

Founded	1894
Committee
President	Timothy Foot, Literae Humaniores
Treasurer	Frederick Money, History
Secretary	Joseph Hutchinson, Medicine
Cellarer	Naomi Gardom, History
Senior Member	Fra' John Eidinow

The Bodley Club is the speaker society of Merton College, Oxford.^[1] Founded in 1894 as a forum in which undergraduates delivered academic papers on literature, the Club has changed form over the years, and was reformed in the 1990s as a speaker society.^[2] All members of the College (undergraduate and graduate students, as well as lecturers and fellows) are now considered members, and the Club is managed by a committee of four members.

The Club began on 19 May 1894 (though it was not christened 'The Bodley Club' until June), at a meeting described in the Club minute-book as follows: 'After partaking of oranges and coffee, cigarettes and learned discourse, the meeting adjourned at about 12 p.m.'. The initial constitution contained a rule (Rule 7) which stated that 'a written paper is preferred, but any member may speak on any literary subject instead or may propose that any literary work be read at the meeting.' It was not long before this provision was required, as the minute-book reveals in its entry for 19 October 1894: 'Owing to unpardonable slackness on the part of members, the four months of vacation proved insufficient to collect coherent ideas on any particular subject...However an agreeable and instructive evening was passed in reading Tennyson's 'Maud'.' From early years the Club has maintained a troubled existence, and the Secretary noted on 1 November 1900 a motion of censure 'against a person or persons unknown who were responsible for the undoubted blackness which is creeping over the Bodley Club.' Nevertheless, the Club has continued in one form or another to the present day, and after a few years' lapse hosted several high-profile speakers in 2014, coinciding with the 750th Anniversary of Merton. These speakers included Rowan Williams, P.D. James, and Sir John Beddington.

Among the notable papers delivered to the Bodley Club in past years are those by Frederic Harrison,^[3] Harold Henry Joachim,^[4] Henry Hamilton Fyfe^[5] (brother of the Secretary, William), Northrop Frye,^[6] (Sir) Alister Clavering Hardy,^[7] and Ronald Knox.^[8]

More recent speeches have been delivered by Lord Kingsdown (former Governor of the Bank of England), Lord Wilson of Tillyorn (former Governor of Hong Kong), William Dalrymple (historian and author of The White Moghuls), and Lord Tugendhat (former Vice-President of the EEC Commission).

Several of the Club's first members (from the 1890s) went on to become significant figures, including Edmund Trelawney Backhouse, Herbert George Flaxman Spurrell, and William Hamilton Fyfe.

External Links

Official Webpage

References