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Journal article
The Identification of a Print Study for a Woodcut in Hieronymus Köler’s Album Amicorum in the British Library
A coloured woodcut portrait of Mikolaj [Nicholas] Krzysztof Radziwill (known as Sierotka, 'The Orphan') (1549-1616) is included in the album amicorum compiled c. 1563 by Hieronymus Köler of Nuremberg (BL, Egerton MS. 1184). An uncoloured version of the portrait also occurs in a volume of Greek poems by Martinus Crusius,...Letkiewicz, Ewa
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Beyond the Template: Aesthetics and Meaning in the Images of the Roman d'Alexandre en prose in Harley MS. 4979
The Roman d’Alexandre en prose is the translation into Old French of a Latin text known as the Historia de preliis. The processes of language conversion and transcription during the Middle Ages allowed patrons and manuscript-making ateliers to adapt and bring classical works up to date with medieval tastes and...Pérez-Simon, Maud
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The Library Catalogues of Sir Hans Sloane: Their Authors, Organization, and Functions
This article undertakes a detailed examination of the library catalogues of Sir Hans Sloane, whose collections formed the basis of the British Museum and thus of the British Library. These are now held in the British Library: Sloane MS 3972B, Sloane MS 3972C, Sloane MS 3972D and an interleaved copy...Blakeway, Amy
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Journal article
Sir Thomas Jewell Bennett (1852-1925)
An account of the personal papers of Sir Thomas Jewell Bennett (1852-1925), editor/principal proprietor of the Times of India and Conservative MP for Sevenoaks. They form an interesting source for politics and other issues in British India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.O'Brien, John
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'One of the Most Remarkable Things in London': A Visit to the Lord Treasurer's Library in 1713 by Samuel Molyneux
Between December 1712 and April 1713 Samuel Molyneux (1689-1728) witnessed at first hand some of the finest antiquarian collections in London, Oxford and Cambridge. For the benefit of his learned uncle he described what he saw in seven meticulously written letters, later transcribed into a copy-book and now held in...Holden, Paul
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Journal article
Mad Dogs and Scotsmen: A Plain Tale from the Military Collections of the India Office Records Section of the British Library
The Military Collections of the India Office Records of the British Library document the experiences of four Gordon Highlanders sent to the Institut Pasteur in Paris for treatment for rabies in the summer of 1896.Mulvihill, Margaret
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Journal article
Codicological Clues to the Patronage of Stowe MS. 39:A Fifteenth-Century Illustrated Nun's Book in Middle English
Stowe MS. 39 is well-known for its Middle English texts (The Abbey of the Holy Ghost, and The Desert of Religion) and illustrations. An examination of its physical make-up leads towards the identification of its original patroness, a Yorkshire nun.Kidd, Peter
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Journal article
The Progress of the Text: The Papers of J. G. Ballard at the British Library
The article provides an overview of the archive of J. G. Ballard, acquired by the British Library in 2010. The successive drafts of Ballard’s novels, in manuscript and typescript, comprise the majority of the archive, with the exception of Ballard’s first novel (The Wind from Nowhere) and The Unlimited Dream...Beckett, Chris
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Journal article
The Harleys as Collectors
To understand the nature and origins of the Harleian collection it is necessary to go back well beyond the date usually given for its foundation (the early 18th century), beyond the first evidence of Robert Harley’s collecting in the 1680s, to the time of his father and even his grandparents;...Harris, Frances
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From the Bombast of Vachel Lindsay to the Compass of Noise: The Papers of Bob Cobbing at the British Library
The article introduces the paper archive of Bob Cobbing (1920-2002) at the British Library, and contextualizes his influential contribution to British poetry – as an avant-garde performance poet, printer and publisher – over the course of more than fifty years. The archive evidences the continuity between Cobbing’s formative experience as...Beckett, Chris
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Journal article
The First British Performances of Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ Symphony: The Philharmonic Society and Sir George Smart
The Philharmonic Society of London commissioned a new symphony from Beethoven in 1823. After some delay, still not entirely explained, it received a manuscript score of the Ninth Symphony late in 1824. The Society immediately set about preparations for a private ‘trial’ performance of the work, and for its inclusion...Searle, Arthur
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Journal article
Confronting Cook
A pronged fishing spear, a twisted bark shield with a handle and a length of timber used to propel spears. Those famous explorers James Cook and Joseph Banks picked them up from a beach after the first skirmish between Australian Aborigines and British voyagers. These objects, probably those now in...Smith, Keith Vincent
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Journal article
The Lady Eccles Oscar Wilde Collection
This article looks at the generous bequest made in 2003 by Mary Viscountess Eccles of her extensive collection of books, manuscripts and ephemera relating to Oscar Wilde. Containing works pertaining to Wilde, his friends and family and the literary and artistic world of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Great Britain,...Lloyd, Andrea
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Journal article
Witnesses to Medieval Medical Practice in the Harley Collection
The new Wellcome Trust funded catalogue of medieval medical manuscripts in the Harley collection brings to light some of the critical documents for understanding how medicine was actually practised in fifteenth-century England. Thomas Fayreford and John Crophill both kept notes of their cures in manuscripts they owned, while the anonymous...Jones, Peter Murray
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Journal article
From the 'Bibliographical Nightmare'to a Critical Bibliography. Tesori politici in the British Library, and Elsewherein Britain
This is the first critical bibliography of one of the most intricate bibliographical cases of early-modern Europe: the Tesori politici (1589-1618). For the first time, printers involved in the publication, dedicatees, and many authors of the various texts have been identified; the complete content of the various editions, reprints, and...Testa, Simone
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Hugh James Rose, James Murray and The Foreign Quarterly Review
The identity of the author of the famous article, 'Foreign Views of the Catholic Question', which appeared in The Foreign Quarterly Review in April 1829, gave rise to much contemporary debate. It has traditionally been attributed to the high church cleric Hugh James Rose. However, neither its contents or style...Wright, C. J.
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Beyond Photography: An Introduction to William Henry Fox Talbot’s Notebooks in the Talbot Collection at the British Library
William Henry Fox Talbot is now primarily remembered as the pioneer of photography. This was reinforced by the disposition of his papers, notably the separation of photographs and the few notebooks which document his photographic innovations from the rest of his archive mostly concerned with other scholarly activities beyond photography....Brusius, Mirjam
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Journal article
A Mirror for Deaf Ears?A Medieval Mystery
Speculum medicine (The Mirror of Medicine) is the title of several works attested in manuscripts of the High Middle Ages. The present study deals with two of them that share some material, although their exact relationship is not clear at present. The shorter and certainly older text is a compilation,...Fischer, Klaus-Dietrich
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‘Swifte and Secrete Writing’ in Seventeenth-Century England, and Samuel Shelton’s Brachygraphy
In the autumn of 2006 the British acquired S. Shelton's Brachygraphy of 1672, the only copy now known to be extant. This article sets Shelton's invention in the general context of seventeenth-century shorthand and considers its importance in understanding contemporary attitudes to the new fashion of short-writing both then and...Henderson, Frances
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Journal article
'A Poet Given to Compulsive Self-Revision': Reflections on Walt Whitman, Hypertext, and the 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass
A discussion of the iconic first (1855) edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, of which the British Library holds a rare early copy, and its place in the author's literary development. Following the sesquicentenial anniversary of the work's publication, the experience of reading this celebrated volume in print is...Hayes, Dorian
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Journal article
A. W. Franks and Armorial Bookbindings: Including a List of British Armorial Bookbindings Contained within the Franks Collection
A list of the British armorial bookbindings collected by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks (1826-1897) purchased by the British Museum Library in 1900; the circumstances of its acquisition and subsequent cataloguing and an account of the previously unrecorded material associated with it.Marks, P. J. M.
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The Keyes Papers at the British Library
This article describes the papers and career of Roger Keyes (1872-1945), one of the most important naval figures of the first part of the twentieth century. The papers cover his long career from pre-World War One submarine service, through active service in World War One, the tense inter-war years, his...John-McAlister, Michael St
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Tambimuttu and the Poetry London Papers at the British Library: Reputation and Evidence
The papers of the most influential literary magazine of the 1940s, Poetry London (1939-51), and the associated papers its Sri Lankan editor, M. J. T. Tambimuttu, were long considered lost until they came to light in 2005, when they were passed to the British Library. The papers of author Richard...Beckett, Chris
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Panizzi, Gladstone, Garibaldi and the Neapolitan Prisoners
This article tells how Antonio Panizzi of the British Museum Library worked with William Ewart Gladstone in the pursuit of Liberal causes in the reactionary Kingdom of Naples, ruled by Ferdinand II, in the 1850s. Their collaboration culminated in the release of 66 political prisoners from the island of Santo...Reidy, Denis V.
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Journal article
Henry Fox's Drafts of Lord Hardwicke's Speech in the Lords' Debate on the Bill on Clandestine Marriages, 6 June 1753: A Striving for Accuracy
Before Hansard, the records of debates in the Commons and Lords were personal ones taken by members or visitors to Parliament. The problem facing historians is the accuracy of these accounts for all necessarily reflected the agenda and views of the compiler. Two drafts in the BL's Holland House papers...Jones, Clyve
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Journal article
John Locke, Thomas Sydenham, and the Authorship of Two Medical Essays
Two medical essays in the hand of John Locke survive amongst the Shaftesbury Papers in the National Archives (National Archives PRO 30/24/47/2, ff. 31r-38v and ff. 49r-56r). Since the 1960s their authorship has been disputed. Some scholars have attributed them to the London physician Thomas Sydenham, others have attributed them...Anstey, Peter ; Burrows, John
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Journal article
Wolfenbüttel HAB Cod. Guelf. 51. 9. Aug. 4º and BL, Harley MS. 3542: Complementary Witnesses to Ralph Hoby's 1437 Treatise on Astronomical Medicine
Two manuscript copies of a 1437 treatise on medical astronomy are by Ralph Hoby, Franciscan of Hereford and Oxford: Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek Cod. Guelf. 51. 9. Aug. 4º, ff. 123-33 (W), and London , British Library Harley MS. 3542, ff. 103-10 (H). The text in W occurs in a...Voigts, Linda Ehrsam
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Journal article
Most Secret and Confidential': The Pressed Copy Nelson Letters at the British Library
This article reports the contents of nine volumes of the correspondence of Lord Nelson in press copy letter books (BL. Add. MSS 34952-34960). Of these 1099 letters, written from 1796 to 1805, 593 are unpublished. Largely private or personal letters to family, friends and naval colleagues and official letters concerning...White, Colin
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Journal article
Robert Harley, Christmas and the House of Lords’ Protest on the Attainder of Sir John Fenwick, 23 December 1696: The Mechanism of a Procedure Partly Exposed*
On 23 December 1696 the House of Lords passed the bill of attainder for treason on the jacobite Sir John Fenwick. Many of the lords on the minority side of the division entered a written protest against the vote into the journals of the House. Because the vote had been...Jones, Clyve
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Journal article
A Fresh Look at Harley MS. 1413: ‘A Book … fairly written in the German or Switz language’
Although described extensively in the British Museum's printed catalogue of Harleian manuscripts Harl. MS. 1413, a 16th-century manuscript containing Books VII-X of an illustrated German warfare treatise, has remained unidentified and virtually unnoticed since the catalogue was published soon after the beginning of the 19th century. In this article the...Porter, Pamela
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Journal article
A Late Renaissance Music Manuscript Unmasked
In the early seventeenth century, the Augsburg church of St Anna owned one of the largest collections of music editions and manuscripts in southern Germany. Most of these materials, a considerable number of which are now lost, were obtained during the tenure at St Anna of the prominent German composer...Charteris, Richard
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Journal article
A Collection of German Occasional Verse, 1701-1743, Mostly from East Frisia
An introduction to some of the noteworthy features of a recently-acquired collection of occasional verse from the former German principality of East Frisia. The collection forms a fascinating resource for the study of this material, its writers and printers, and the society in which its subjects lived. A listing of...Reed, Susan
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Journal article
Effigies ad Regem Angliae and the Representation of Kingship in Thirteenth-Century English Royal Culture
The Effigies ad Regem Angliae is an unusual manuscript depicting images of the Kings of England from Edward the Confessor to Edward I. A deluxe volume, with its brief Anglo-Norman texts and its narrative scenes, it is unlike any other illustrated English historical work produced in this period. The images...Collard, Judith
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Journal article
Political Verse in Late Georgian Britain: Poems Referring to William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806)
Political verse has been part of political discourse in England since before the invention of printing. It was probably past its peak by the early nineteenth century but still played a significant role in the dissemination of ideas, and provides important evidence regarding contemporary attitudes. This annotated check-list of poems...Johnson, Miles ; Harvey, A.D.
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Journal article
Lord Nelson, HMS Victory and Sardinia - A Forgotten Episode?
This article describes the circumstances of Nelson's gift of a solid silver crucifix and two candlestick holders to the church of Santa Maria Maddalena, La Maddalena, Sardinia, in 1804.Reidy, Denis V.
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The Harleian Medical Manuscripts
The article offers an overview of the contents and chronological and geographical range of the medieval medical manuscripts in the Harleian collection which has recently been the object of a full cataloguing project sponsored by the Wellcome Trust. It also provides information regarding the provenance of the manuscripts highlighting the...Nuvoloni, Laura
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Journal article
God in All Things: The Religious Outlook of Russia's Last Empress
A set of manuscript letters in the British Library (Add. MS. 46721) which consist of the correspondence between Aleksandra Feodorovna, the last Empress of Russia, and the English Bishop William Boyd Carpenter are used with other sources to illuminate the Empress's very personal ideas on religion. These were of considerable...Ashton, Janet
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Early Eastern Algonquian Language Books in the British Library
A history of printing in the Eastern Algonquian groups of languages of North America, with a check-list of thirty-eight items in the British Library collection printed between 1634 and 1851. The majority of speakers of these languages were traditionally located around the Great Lakes, the north-eastern coast of the United...Edwards, Adrian S.
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The Ingenious Mr Dummer: Rationalizing the Royal Navy in Late Seventeenth-Century England
Edmund Dummer (1651-1713) joined the Royal Navy in 1668 and rose to become its Surveyor from 1692 to 1698. His period of service coincided with the 'Scientific Revolution' and efforts made by early Fellows of the Royal Society to apply scientific principles to the processes of navigation and ship design....Fox, Celina
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Journal article
A Wesleyan Musical Legacy
This article describes the contents of the manuscript music collection Add. 69859 assembled by Ms Rosalind Eleanor Esther Glenn (1834-1909) and presented to the British Library by the firm of Novello & Co. The principal composers represented are Jonathan Battishill (1738-1801) and Samuel Wesley (1766-1837). The album includes several autographs...Pont, Graham
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Journal article
Leandro Fernández de Moratín's La Mogigata: The Significance of the Holland Manuscript in the Light of Comments from Elizabeth, Lady Holland's Spanish Journal (BL, Add. MS. 51931)
A comparative study of several manuscripts of Leandro Moratin's La mogigata, with particular reference to that presented by the author in the summer of 1804 to Elizabeth, Lady Holland. Drawing on revelations in the original manuscript of her journal (BL, Add. MS. 51931), which is much fuller than the edition...Kitts, Sally Ann
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Journal article
Sir Frederic Madden and the Battle of the Brass Rubbings
In 1844, brass-rubbings made by Lewis Pryce Madden in the west of England were acquired for the British Museum at the behest of his brother Sir Frederic Madden, Keeper of Manuscripts. No record of them survives in the current catalogues of either the British Museum or the British Library. The...Wright, C. J.
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Journal article
Confiscated Nazi Books in the British Library
The British Library possesses eleven or twelve thousand books seized from German libraries and institutions between June 1944, when Anglo-American forces invaded western Europe, and 1947. Nearly half the confiscated books came from a single library, that of the German Army's Kriegsschule (known in the British Library as the Hanover...Harvey, A.D.
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Journal article
George Ellis of Ellis Caymanas: A Caribbean Link to Scott and the Bronte Sisters
A biography and genealogical account of George Ellis (1753-1815), Jamaican land-owner, Whig politician and man of letters, friend of Sir Walter Scott, Richard Heber and George Canning. It is also possible that via Scott he was the inspiration for Emily Bronte's choice of the nom de plume Ellis Bell.Gawthrop, Humphrey
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Journal article
A Franciscan Bible Illuminated in the Style of William de Brailes
The decoration in Harley MS 2813, a Bible hitherto unpublished except for an inaccurate three-line description in the Harley Catalogue, is here attributed to the famous 13th-century Oxford illuminator William de Brailes. In addition to biblical texts it contains a selection of masses which show that it was probably made...Kidd, Peter
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Journal article
A Knight Hospitaller's Nostalgia for Italy during the 1790s
With the intention of making better known some manuscripts acquired by the British Library in 1987, this article introduces travel journals written by a French Knight Hospitaller of St John in the late eighteenth century and focuses on Goujon de Thuisy's nostalgia for Italy and its past during the 1790s.Allen, David Frank
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Journal article
The Development of the Pre-1801 Scandinavian Printed Collections in the British Library
Early in 1770 a Swedish journal published a brief account by a visitor of the public galleries of the British Museum. Describing the Harley rooms, he remarked that copies of the Harleian manuscript catalogue published by the Museum in 1759 had been sent to Uppsala University Library and to the...Hogg, Peter C.
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Journal article
A Fragment of the Library of Theodore Haak (1605-1690)
In 1703, as part of his ongoing donations to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Hans Sloane (1660-1753) sent from his London collection some 95 volumes exclusively in German or Dutch. This article demonstrates that these books were in fact not, like his other gifts, duplicates from Sloane's library, but form...Poole, William
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Journal article
Sarah Jones and the Jacob-Jessey Church: The Relation of a Gentlewoman
Sarah Jones was a leading member of the semi-separatist Jacob-Jessey Church, in trouble with High Commission in 1632. She is here identified as Sarah Hayes, daughter of Thomas Hayes, an Alderman and Mayor of London (1614-15). She married Thomas Jones of Lambeth in 1606 and was the author of two...Wright, Stephen
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Journal article
New evidence about Sir Geoffrey Luttrell's raid on Sempringham Priory, 1312
We know more about Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, commissioner of the Luttrell Psalter (BL, Add. MS. 42130), than about the patrons of many other medieval manuscripts. Unfortunately for the many admirers of the Psalter, not all of what we know about Geoffrey casts him in a positive light. In particular, scholars...Coleman, Joyce
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Journal article
Tupaia's Sketchbook
A group of watercolours in the British Library painted during the Pacific Ocean voyage of HM Bark Endeavour has long been attributed to the 'Artist of the Chief Mourner', sometimes identified as Joseph Banks. This article identifies the true artist as an indigenous Polynesian, Tupaia.Smith, Keith Vincent
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Journal article
Robert Fulton: A Letter to Lord Nelson
Among the thousands of documents preserved in the British Library's holdings of the papers of Horatio Nelson is a brief note, dated 4 September 1805, from one Robert Francis, writing from 13 Sackville Street, Piccadilly; the writer sought an interview with Lord Nelson concerning the former's naval inventions, while the...Smith, R. A. H.
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Journal article
Thomas Smith, Humfrey Wanley, and the 'Little-Known Country' of the Cotton Library
Although there were many handwritten, often informal catalogues of Sir Robert Cotton's manuscripts and books during his lifetime and in the years afterwards, the desire for an official printed catalogue which could be circulated in the public realm did not really bear fruit until the late 1600s. And when two...Joy, Eileen A.
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Journal article
The British Library's Sado mining scrolls
AMONG the nearly eleven hundred works acquired by the British Museum from the collection of Philipp Franz von Siebold in 1868 were three hand-painted scrolls depicting mining activities on the Japanese island of Sado. The scrolls belong to a genre of manuscripts known as Kinzan emaki (Illustrated scrolls of gold...Todd, Hamish
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Journal article
Writing-Tables and Table-Books
On the occasion of the British Library's purchase from the collection of Colonel W. A. Potter of the only known copy of a set of writing tables (or pocket notebook) issued by John Hammond and published in 1618, this paper describes this new acquisition and and surveys references to writing...Woudhuysen, H.R.
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Journal article
Emigration, Abolition and the Atlantic World in the Revolutionary Era
The upheavals of the French Revolution not only affected France and Europe, but heralded crucial consequences for the Caribbean. Revolution in Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti) led to the collapse of slavery and the creation of Haiti as an independent republic. 'Jacobin' slaves fleeing the island carried word of Revolution to British...Shaw, Matthew J.
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Journal article
The Codex Alexandrinus and the Alexandrian Greek Types
THE Codex Alexandrinus is one of the three great Greek manuscripts of the Bible, and was probably written during the first half of the fifth century. Apart from some minor imperfections where damage or loss has occurred, it contains the complete text of the Greek Bible, including the Apocrypha, and...Bowman, J. H.
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Journal article
Little Red Riding-Hood
The history of the tale of Little Red Riding-Hood from Charles Perrault's manuscript of 1695, via illustrated editions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the present day.Daniels, Morna
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Journal article
Recent Acquisitions: a Rare Work by Jacobus Tevius
Jacobus Tevius (Diogo de Tieve) is a key figure in the Portuguese Renaissance. This note describes the contents of his Epodon siue Ia(m)bicorum carminum libri tres [...] Ad Sebastianum primum, inuictissimum Lusitaniae Regem (Lisbon: Francisco Correia, 1565) and examines the author's contacts with courtly and scholarly circles in sixteenth-century Portugal...Taylor, Barry
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Journal article
Using a Collection to Discover Reading Practices: The British Library Geneva Bibles and a History of their Early Modern Readers
This paper uses the British Library's entire collection of Geneva Bibles, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to investigate their early modern readership. A survey of both the paratextual material of the vast range of editions in the collection, and of the marks which men and women from this...Molekamp, Femke
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Journal article
A History of Edward Gibbon's Six Autobiographical Manuscripts
Edward Gibbon finished writing the last page of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and added his colophon, 'Lausanne, 27 June 1787'. After laying down his pen, he walked among his acacias, and 'a sober melancholy' was spread over his mind by the idea that,...Gawthrop, John
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Journal article
The English reception of Hugh of Saint-Victor's Chronicle
Explicit evidence for the reception of Hugh of Saint-Victor's Chronicle, a twelfth-century Biblical, historical and geographical compendium, has previously been limited to mainland Europe, predominantly France, Germany and Italy. This list can now be extended to include the British Isles, based on the identification of a further seven manuscripts of...Harrison, Julian
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Journal article
William Plate, an Unknown Acquaintance of Karl Marx at the British Museum: A Biographical Sketch
Though much has been written on Marx's association with the British Museum, the circumstances of his admission to that institution have remained undocumented. A recent find in the British Museum Archives throws some light on the subject, and reveals for the first time the name of the remarkable gentleman who...Henderson, Bob
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Journal article
The Library of Henry Oldenburg
This article presents three hitherto unpublished listings of books in the library of Henry Oldenburg (c.1619-1677), the first Secretary of the Royal Society. The main list is a catalogue of his collection, first drawn up in 1670 and augmented in 1677 by his friend John Pell, who surveyed the library...Malcolm, Noel
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Journal article
George Chowdharay-Best: a bibliography
Until his death in April 2000, George Chowdharay-Best was a familiar figure in the reading rooms of the British Library. For many years he was on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary, rising to be a Senior Assistant Editor. While most of his scholarly work was subsumed in this...Beedell, A. V. ; Harvey, A.D.
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Journal article
French newspapers and ephemera from the 1848 revolution
THE British Library has exceptionally fine holdings relating to the French Revolution of 1789. The three collections purchased from or on the recommendation of John Wilson Croker comprise 48,579 pieces and have been briefly listed with some indication of subject, but not all have been catalogued. The 'R' set, the...Daniels, Morna
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Journal article
Caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Paris Commune
This article identifies and illustrates some little-known collections of caricatures on the subject of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Paris Commune of 1871.Daniels, Morna
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Journal article
'A Flute of Arcady': autograph poems of Tennyson's friend, Arthur Henry Hallam
Although Arthur Henry Hallam is granted a column and a half in the pages of the Dictionary of National Biography, he remains a tenuous shade in the national memory. He achieved no conventional academic distinction or position of political or social prominence, he left little that may be called ground-breaking...Evans, Roger
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Journal article
Cuttings from an unknown copy of the Magna Glossatura in a Wycliffite Bible (British Library, Arundel MS. 104)
Three historiated initials from a Latin manuscript have been pasted as marginal illustrations in the Psalter section of an early fifteenth-century English Bible which is now Arundel MS. 104 in the British Library. The manuscript, to which the initials belonged originally, is unknown or lost. On the basis of stylistic...Panayotova, Stella
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Journal article
Six Unpublished Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria
In the morass of papers left by that diligent servant of the House of Stuart, Sir Edward Nicholas, Secretary of State to Charles I and Charles II, is a small cache of six letters written by, or at the command of, Queen Henrietta Maria. Five of them are addressed to...Beddard, R. A.
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Journal article
The Potter Almanacs
On the occasion of the British Library's purchase of fourteen items from Colonel W. A. Potter's collection of rare English almanacs, this paper places these new acquisitions on the context of the genre of popular ephemeral publications of the 16th and 17th centuries.Capp, Bernard
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Journal article
Francisco Muñoz y San Clemente and his 'Reflections on the English Settlements on New Holland'
The significance of Francisco Muñoz y San Clemente's 'Reflexiones sobre los establecimientos Ingleses de la Nueva-Holanda' lies in the influence it had in causing the politico-scientific expedition to the Pacific led by Alexandro Malaspina to include in its itinerary a visit to the new English colony in New South Wales...King, Robert J.
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Journal article
A New Parallel to the Prayer 'De tenebris' in the Book of Nunnaminster (British Library, Harl. MS.2965, f.28rv)
This article studies and edits the text of the prayer 'De tenebris' as preserved in the Book of Nunnaminster (BL, Harl. MS. 2965).Raw, Barbara
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'Everything Curious': Samuel Hieronymus Grimm and Sir Richard Kaye
The British Library's Manuscript Collections contain a wealth of British topographical drawings which reflect the collecting instincts of antiquarians with a passion for recording, in word and image, the urban and rural landscapes around them. One such collector was the ecclesiastic and baronet Sir Richard Kaye, who recorded his thoughts...Dolman, Brett
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Journal article
Sir Robert Kennaway Douglas and his contemporaries
SIR Robert Kennaway Douglas (1838-1913) was the first Keeper of the British Museum's new Department of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts when it was created in 1892. Despite his fame as the compiler of the first published catalogues of the Museum's Chinese as well as Japanese collections, memories of the...Brown, Yu-Ying
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Journal article
Four unpublished paintings from Dunhuang in the Oriental Collections of the British Library
THE Stein collection in the British Library is essentially a manuscript collection numbering thousands of scrolls of Buddhist sutra texts and other documents, the great majority originating from Cave 17 at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas at Mogao near Dunhuang in Gansu Province, built in the mid-ninth century as...Whitfield, Roderick
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Journal article
Jacobites under the Beds: Bishop Francis Atterbury, the Earl of Sunderland and the Westminster School Dormitory case of 1721
In British Library, Harleian MS. 7190 there is a list of names which at first glance seems puzzling, even to an historian of early eighteenth-century Britain. The initial clue to its identification comes from the words 'For the Bp of Rochester' and ' Ag[ain]st' at the foot of the two...Jones, Clyve
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Journal article
The Tale of Charles Perrault and Puss in Boots
The publication in 1697 of Charles Perrault's Histoires ou contes du temps passe, better known by their subtitle of Contes de ma mere L'Oye, was to prove a seminal event in the history of children's literature. Often assumed subsequently to be folk tales, these stories were, in fact, the product...Daniels, Morna
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Journal article
Tyrwhitt's Urry's Chaucer's Works: the Tracks of Editorial History
The British Library owns six copies of John Urry's 1721 edition of Chaucer's Works, three of which are catalogued as containing manuscript notes. Of these three catalogue entries, two ascribe annotations to particular people, and one, 642.m.i (the second copy listed in the British Library catalogue), is described as containing...Kelen, Sarah A.
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Journal article
New light on Richard Steele
Richard Steele (1672-1729) has been studied so extensively that new factual information on the essayist and playwright is generally a consequence of accidental discovery. The following evidence was unearthed in the course of unrelated research amongst the archival records of Augustan and Georgian Britain.Alsop, J. D.
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Journal article
England's Populist Pindars
During the Regency of 1811-1820 English readers were regularly and abundantly supplied with racy narrative poems that digested and satirized the news of the day, poems with such titles as The Royal Brood, The Cork Rump, A Peep at the Pavilion, The Disappointed Duke, and The German Sausages. Many of...Jackson, H. J.
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Journal article
Dryden attributions and texts from Harley MS. 6054
In a footnote to the long and scholarly biography with which in 1800 Edmond Malone prefaced his edition of Dryden's prose he drew attention to a couplet preserved in a manuscript verse-miscellany in the British Museum Library.Kelliher, Hilton
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Journal article
Photographs in the British Library of documents and manuscripts from Sir Aurel Stein's fourth Central Asian expedition
ON 1 September 1995, shortly before I returned to China from a visit to the British Library on a British Academy K. C. Wong Fellowship, a box containing photographs of documents and manuscripts from Sir Aurel Stein's fourth Central Asian expedition(1930-1) was rediscovered in the Oriental and India Office Collections...Jiqing, Wang
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Journal article
The British Museum Library and the development of the international exchange of official documents
In 1867 the United States Congress empowered the Smithsonian Institution to negotiate complete reciprocal exchanges of official publications with foreign governments. The impetus to such international exchanges was eventually embodied in two Brussels Conventions of 1886, although the United Kingdom was not a signatory. This article traces how, despite this,...Sternberg, Ilse
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Journal article
'Rise and shine!': the birth of the glossy magazine
BOTH as a field of study and as a reflective resource for the investigation of other topics, popular magazines are a sorely neglected medium. Few librarians want to keep them and an even smaller number of academics use them. Students of print culture oscillate in their affiliations between the poles...Reed, David
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Journal article
Post-war Philippine fiction in English
PHILIPPINE fiction in English is one of the many consequences of Spain's cession of the islands to the United States after the war of 1898. The coming of the Americans introduced a new language and a new culture to the people. During the early part of the twentieth century Spanish...Sarvia, Illa
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Journal article
Further Sources for the Swiss Civil War of 1712 in the British Library's Collections
The British Library's early collections are extremely rich in ephemeral, popular and small-scale printed works from many parts of the German-speaking world, not least from Switzerland, a point illustrated by an article by the present author which appeared in the Spring 1993 issue under the title 'The Swiss Civil War...Nattrass, Graham
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Journal article
A Korean Buddhist illuminated manuscript
DURING the selection of manuscripts for loan to the 'Arts of Korea' Gallery which opened in the British Museum in July 1997, a richly decorated Korean Buddhist sutra copied in gold pigment around 1390 was identified, conserved and prepared for display. The manuscript seems to have received little attention since...McKillop, Beth
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Journal article
Closely observed China: from William Alexander's sketches to his published work
WHEN Lord Macartney led the first British Embassy to China from 1792 to 1794, he and his entourage travelled largely by boat, even after their arrival in China. They proceeded up the coast in their flotilla and disembarked at the mouth of the Bei river, to transfer to smaller, flat-bottomed...Wood, Frances
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Journal article
The Covenant of the League of Nations
1995 saw the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the founding of the United Nations. Those in attendance had much with which to congratulate themselves: despite the inevitable controversies, the successes of the United Nations, and particularly those of its humanitarian agencies, represented a significant improvement on the work of its predecessor,...Ridgley, Gillian
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Journal article
The Tyson Collection
IN 1961 an article appeared in a musical journal proving that two piano trios usually accepted without question as Haydn's were in fact by Ignaz Pleyel. The author was Alan Tyson, who for the next thirty years was to play a leading role in scholarly research into music of the...Neighbour, O. W.
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Journal article
James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps and the British Museum Library
IN an address on the Halliwell-Phillipps collection delivered before the Pennsylvania Library Club, at the Friends' Library, Philadelphia, on Monday, 14 January 1895, Albert H. Smyth, Professor of the English Language and Literature, Central High School, Philadelphia, no librarian and therefore 'rather reminiscent than doctrinaire', raised the curtain thus: "For...Spevack, Marvin
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Journal article
The Perfect Scribe and an early engraved Esther scroll
THE origins of the tradition of decorating Esther scrolls for Purim are shrouded in mystery. Esther scrolls, also known by the Hebrew term Megillot (sing.: Megillah,''scroll") are copies of the Biblical book of Esther, transcribed on parchment scrolls to be read publicly on the feast of Purim, the anniversary of...Frojmovic, Eva
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Journal article
Patronage and Connection: The Career of the Rev. William Talbot (1720-1811), Chancellor of Salisbury
William Talbot, Chancellor of Salisbury Cathedral from 1771 to 1811, has been unknown to history, other than by his entry in Alumni Cantabrigienses which records that he was a native of Odel, Bedfordshire, educated at Oakham School, served as a sizar at Clare College, Cambridge from 1738, and having graduated...Gibson, William T.
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Journal article
The photographs from Stein's fourth expedition: a footnote
WHEN Wang Jiqing prepared his report on the photographs of the missing artefacts from Sir Aurel Stein's Fourth Central Asian Expedition, it was generally believed that the original negatives, from which the 'improved' versions were made at the Thomason College at Roorkee, had been lost. By coincidence, the recent detailed...Falconer, John
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Journal article
Kenneth B. Gardner (1924-1995)
It is fitting that this issue of the British Library Journal, devoted to the East Asian collections, should open with an appreciation of the late Kenneth Gardner. Prior to his retirement in 1986, Ken had held distinguished posts for thirty-one years in the British Museum and British Library, including the...Brown, Yu-Ying
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Journal article
An unrecognized novelist: Frances Jacson (1754-1842)
ACCORDING to its General Catalogue the British Library possesses among its holdings of late eighteenth-century/early nineteenth-century novels seven by the minor writer Alethea Lewis. On their acquisition they were entered by title only as of uncertain authorship, but subsequently all were attributed to her. In reality, Alethea Lewis is the...Percy, Joan
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Journal article
The Garendon cartularies in BL, Landsowne 415
THE period of maximum productivity of extant cartularies occurred in the second half of the thirteenth century, so that part of the interest of the Garendon texts in the Lansdowne volume lies in their compilation in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. Their broadly topographical arrangement conforms to the...Postles, David
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Journal article
The rediscovery of Margery Kempe: a footnote
THE year 1934 was truly an annus mirabilis for English literary studies, when over the space of three months during the summer and autumn unique manuscripts of three major works were brought to light. In July came the announcement by Walter Oakeshott of his discovery in the Fellows Library at...Kelliher, Hilton
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Journal article
An old Spanish tale from Add. Ms. 14040, flf. 113r-114v: 'Exenplo que acaesçio en tierra de Damasco a la buena duenna climeçia que avia veynte annos e la mecia en cuna'
THE main body of Add. MS. 14040 contains three translations into Castilian: Ramon Lull's 'Libre del gentil e los tres savis' (ff. 1-85V) in a version by Gonçalo Sanches de Useda and his 'Coment del dictat' (ff. 86r-iiir) from the Catalan, and an extract from the Flores Sancti Bernardi, probably...Taylor, Barry