The Curious Case of Professor Dobson’s Book

I’ve recently acquired a copy of Þorgils saga ok Hafliða, edited by Ursula Brown from 1952. The narrative of a feud between two great chieftains in Iceland, at the beginning of the twelfth century in Icelandic, with notes and commentary to help the reader. This is volume three of seven of the Oxford English Monograph series while JRR Tolkien was one of the general editors.





Why is this significant you may ask? I bought it from a dealer in Australia who informed me that it belonged to one Professor T.P. Dobson. I did a little research and found out that he was a language professor at Monash University in Melbourne. I discovered this by finding a 1964 calendar from the university with Dobson’s information in it. You can see that University's crest here on page eleven. And Mr. Dobson's info on page 38.
https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/p ... /1964-calendar-part-1.pdf

An interesting, albeit tertiary association copy, I thought. Tolkien was a language professor, Dobson was a language professor or lecturer at least. The price was fine, so I went ahead and bit the bullet and paid it and the shipping cost to the United States. Then things got really interesting when the volume showed up in the mail and I removed to the dust jacket to look at the boards.




The front board bears a crest that I was unfamiliar with and was completely different from the crest for Monash University. Although based on my research at the time, professor Dobson had no connection with any English school.

As a teacher of History, I knew a little about English heraldry and I recognized the lion, fleur-de-lie and Tudor Roses were all used by the English, nothing really Australian in the images used. I then enlisted the help of Trotter and together we did some detective work on which English schools actually used this type of heraldry together. We started with the crest of Henry VI.



One of the last Kings of England from the Lancaster/York Houses during the War of the Roses, which eventually saw Henry VII the first of the Tudor Monarchs on the English throne. Before the war, Henry the VI awarded a crest to Eton College, which looked like this.



Very similar to the one on the book, but not quite the same. This led us to the actual crest seen on the boards and that came from King’s College (sister school to Eton) in Cambridge. Which matches exactly the one on the book.



So, the puzzle of the crest was solved, but the question still remains; how did Professor Dobson acquire a copy of Porgils Saga OK Haflida? I eventually came to see that he got his MA in Cambridge and our most plausible theory was that he was awarded it by the college while there.

I am working on a longer article on the entire Oxford English Monograph series but that will have to wait for another day.