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2024
Journal article
Collecting Revolution: George Thomason and the ‘Thomason Tracts’
The approximately 24,000 pamphlets, manuscripts and newspapers collected by the London bookseller George Thomason are an invaluable source for the study of the political events of 1640 to 1663. This introduction surveys the articles, based on a conference held at the British Library, which are brought together in eBLJ 2023.Peacey, Jason
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2024
Journal article
Deconstruction and ‘Re-Volumization’: The Thomason Collection in the Past, Present, and Future
The Thomason Tracts that arrived at the British Museum as the gift of George III were in a rigorous chronological order, which was mirrored by Thomason’s own twelve-volume manuscript catalogue. Though Thomason boasted that by means of the catalogue even a single sheet could be found ‘instantly’, even more important...Mendle, Michael
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2024
Journal article
From The Queen’s College to Montagu House: The History of the Thomason Tracts after the Restoration
Although the Thomason collection is rightly regarded as one of the treasures of the British Library, its survival was by no means inevitable. This chapter revisits the convoluted history of its fortunes after Thomason ceased collecting in 1661, shedding new light upon his own hopes and expectations regarding its fate,...Stoker, David
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2024
Journal article
Scattered about the Streets: George Thomason’s Annotations and Ephemeral Print during the English Revolution
Thomason is rightly famous for his tendency to annotate individual pamphlets, and his notes have long been exploited by scholars in order to trace his connections with various authors, to contextualise individual items, and to enhance our appreciation of writers and the debates in which they participated. This chapter subjects...Peacey, Jason
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2024
Journal article
Milton’s Sonnet XIV and the poetry of George Thomason
It has long been recognised that Thomason was well connected, and that his friends included men like John Milton. This essay uses the sonnet that Milton wrote in honour of Thomason’s wife as the springboard for a discussion of a neglected aspect of the Thomason tracts: its poetry. It thus...Nevitt, Marcus
Thomason Tracts, George Thomason, Catharine Thomason, and John Milton
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2024
Journal article
The Politics and Meaning of Thomason’s Tracts
This article takes as its starting point the reputation of Thomason's collection as royalist in orientation. It examines whether Thomason’s collection reflects 1640s and 1650s press output more broadly - offering a quantitative account of this - and whether the items he chose to purchase, and those he did not,...Raymond, Joad
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2024
Journal article
The Thomason Tracts and Presbyterian Mobilization
This chapter uses the Thomason Tracts as a collection, as well as the partisan attitudes of Thomason himself, to assess the use of print in the bitter conflicts that divided parliamentarians in the 1640s. It compares the stress on division revealed in printed accounts of two particularly fraught episodes in...Hughes, Anne
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2024
Journal article
Search and Seize: Partisan Publishers and Press Controls in Thomason’s London
The Thomason collection is recognised as being vital for exploring the dramatic developments in print culture that accompanied the English Revolution, not least those that were made possible by the collapse of press censorship in 1641. Less widely appreciated is that it also sheds valuable light upon the attempts that...Como, David R.
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2024
Journal article
John Hammond and the Explosion of Print in 1641: Commercial and Political Opportunities
One of the great values of Thomason’s collection of civil war tracts and newsbooks is the opportunity that it affords for analysing the nature of the print trade during a key phase of the so-called ‘print revolution’. Given the so-called ‘explosion’ of cheap print that accompanied the descent into civil...Braddick, Michael J.
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2024
Journal article
George Thomason and London in the 1650s
Thomason’s involvement in public politics, which had been extensive during the 1640s, brought him considerable personal trouble following the execution of Charles I, an event that he clearly opposed. Like many others who had been active Presbyterians before 1649, he became an opponent of the republican regime, and this chapter...Vernon, Elliot