Pets & their People Exhibition Launches Season of the Natural World Series

The Bodleian Libraries’ Season of the Natural World is a slate of exhibitions inspired by the world around us beginning with Pets & their People which is currently running through September 27. 

These exhibitions at the Weston Library in Oxford will celebrate the beauty of the natural world and explore the bond between humans and their environment.

Pets & their People explores the history and psychology behind our bond with animals. Highlights include never-before-seen cat drawings by author Patricia Highsmith, previously unexhibited photography of pet cemeteries by Daniel Meadows, and a first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which was Lewis Carroll's personal copy.

Opening on May 2 and on display for the rest of the year is Wonder of Birds. Organised around the seven topics of nest, egg, beak, song, feather, flight, and migration, this exhibition will look at birds through the lens of awe and loss. In collaboration with award-winning nature writer Robert MacFarlane and illustrator Jackie Morris, the exhibition will feature an original soundscape and archival material from one of the first influential female wildlife photographers.

From Winter 2026 until April 25, 2027, the Weston Library will also host Plain Things Wonders telling the story of how attention to ordinary things transforms understanding of the natural world. Marking 400 years since the publication of Francis Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum, it unfolds the history of citizen science, lay participation in natural observation, and how projects like Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) and Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selbourne (1789) discover wonder in plain things.