The Toller Lecture is an annual lecture at the University of Manchester's Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies (MANCASS). It is named after Thomas Northcote Toller, one of the editors of An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary.[1]
Notable lecturers have included Janet Bateley, the first Toller lecturer,[2] Rolf Bremmer,[3] George Brown, Michelle P. Brown,[4] Roberta Frank,[5] Helmut Gneuss,[6] Nicholas Howe, Joyce Hill,[7] Simon Keynes, Clare Lees,[8] Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe,[9] Paul Szarmach, Elaine Treharne,[10] Leslie Webster[11] and Barbara Yorke.[12] In the past, most Toller lectures were published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester; while a collection containing the revised and updated lectures from 1987 to 1997, together with new essays on Toller and the Toller Collection in the John Rylands Library, was published in 2003.[13] However, with the establishment of the John Rylands Research Institute, the decision was made to prioritise the Special Collections of the Library in a revamped Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, and Toller lectures were no longer published there. It was therefore decided to publish recent Toller lectures as a separate collection which appeared in 2017.[14]