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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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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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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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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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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This article presents three hitherto unpublished listings of books in the library of Henry Oldenburg (c.1619-1677), the first Secretary of the Royal Society.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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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
Henry VIII and British Library, Royal MS. 2 A. XVI: Marginalia in King Henry's Psalter
The book which Henry VIII most heavily annotated is the manuscript Psalter Royal MS 2 A XVI held in the British Library. This note records and comments on one previously overlooked feature - the omission of numerous verses from Psalm 77. It also records the findings of a more detailed...Christie-Miller, Ian
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'Handsomely bound in cloth': UK Book Cover Designs 1840-1880
A review of the many varied cover designs made for cloth trade bindings, with reference to signed cover designs, together with a review of online resources for the further study of these.King, Edmund M. B.
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The British Library, Europeana 1914-1918 and the Memorialization of the Great War
Europeana 1914-1918 digitised a wealth of material in various formats (stories, films and historical material, manuscripts and printed items), all of which are directly related to World War I. A feature of the collection is that it brings together the holdings of cultural institutions (among them the British Library) and...Jenkins, Jeremy
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Journal article
Sloane's Portuguese Books
This article aims to systematize and briefly analyse the collection of books printed at Portuguese presses which once belonged to Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753). Portuguese books (or Portuguese printing) are here defined as early books and other materials printed in Portugal (including overseas territories during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth...Costa, Júlio
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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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The First Manuals of English History: Two Late Thirteenth-Century Genealogical Rolls of the Kings of England in the Royal Collection
The reign of Edward I (1272-1307) witnessed the creation of numerous genealogical rolls of the kings of England from Egbert to the reigning king, initially in Latin (for instance BL, Add. MS. 30079), but then more often in Anglo-Norman. As Thomas Wright first intuited in 1872, these much innovative aide-mémoire...Laborderie, Olivier de
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Journal article
Henry of Blois's Gift Lists in Add. MS. 29436: Why the Discrepancies?
Folios 46v-48r of Add. MS. 29436 contain two lists of the gifts donated by Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester (1129 – 71) to his cathedral church. The shorter list post-dates Bishop Henry's death, the longer list probably belongs to the last decade of his life. This article examines the...Munns, John
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Philip Harris: Accomplished Librarian and Acclaimed Historian of the British Museum Library
An appreciation of the life and work of the author of A History of the British Museum Library, 1753-1973 (London, 1998).Phillips, Andrew
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The Reading Room in Literature
A survey of references to the Reading Rooms of the British Museum Library from its foundation in 1753 to the 1960s, with some personal memories.Harris, P. R.
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A New Witness to Henry of Avranches's Vita Sancti Oswaldi in London, British Library, Cotton MS. Faustina B. VII
Cotton MS. Faustina B. VII. contains a previously unexamined piece of parchment inscribed with several verses taken from Henry of Avranches’ Vita Sancti Oswaldi, composed c. 1230. The article highlights the value of this textual witness in relation to the transmission of the Vita and discusses the function of the...Ispir, Cristian N.
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An Overlooked Connection of Anne Boleyn's Maid of Honour, Elizabeth Holland, with BL, King's MS. 9
BL, King's MS. 9 is one of only three Books of Hours with a connection to Henry VIII's second wife, the controversial Anne Boleyn. This prayer book provides an intimate insight into Henry VIII's courtship of Anne, but its historical significance does not end here. It has been hitherto overlooked...Zupanec, Sylwia Sobczak
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The Bibliographical History of The Spectator
The bibliographical history of The Spectator 1712-2016 is a list of all complete editions and extracts in English (published in England, Scotland, Ireland, and the American colonies – later the United States of America) and French. It is intended to be comprehensive, but it may be that some extracts have...Bernard, Stephen
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Journal article
A Collection of Georg Rhau's Music Editions and Some Previously Unnoticed Works
Georg Rhau (1488–1548) was an important figure in the Reformation, the beginning of which is celebrated in this quincentenary year. Rhau published for the famous German theologian, author and teacher Martin Luther (1483–1546) and his circle a substantial body of works, many of which enjoyed considerable popularity. A close friend...Charteris, Richard
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The Catholicon Anglicum (British Library, Add. MS. 89074): An Analysis of the Physical Evidence of its Production and Binding
On 27 February 2014, the British Library acquired the only known complete surviving copy of the Catholicon Anglicum, one of the earliest Middle English-Latin dictionaries, and thereby secured for the nation a key source for the study of English language and lexicography. The manuscript had been in the possession of...Freeman, James
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Scribes, Kings, and a Roll Chronicle: Dating and Provenance of British Library, Add. MS. 30029
Created in a period of political transition, as England moved from the end of Henry III’s reign towards that of Edward I, British Library Add. MS. 30079 is an important witness to the historical events of the late thirteenth century. This manuscript was one of the first chronicle rolls written...Bellato, Giulia
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Journal article
The Annotated Amleth: Belleforest in the British Library
The account of Amleth in François de Belleforest’s Le Cinquiesme Livre des Histoires Tragiques is a recognized source for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The British Library copy of the Lyon 1576 edition (C.8.a.5) bears various manuscript annotations which reveal an early reader’s approach to Belleforest’s text: one possible author of these annotations...Casson, John
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Tambimuttu: Re-Inventing the Art of Poetry Illustration
M. J. T. Tambimuttu, the much maligned Ceylonese editor of Poetry London and Editions Poetry London, was in fact consistently admired at home and abroad during the Second World War. Both his periodical and books were held in high esteem by his peers for their aesthetic innovations: his judicious commissions...Boselli, Sandra
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'The Most Bogus Ideas': Science, Religion and Creationism in the John Maynard Smith Archive
The science and religion question is one of continued interest in academia and in the non-academic public. In terms of biology, discussions almost inevitably revolve around evolution and (human) origins, contrasting Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection to the Biblical account of creation and origins in...Piel, Helen
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Disembodied: Additional MS. 8785 and the Tradition of Human Organ Depictions in Medieval Art and Medicine
While Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum – a popular medieval encyclopaedia describing the properties of ‘things’ – has attracted the attention of scholars for centuries, far less well known is the British Library’s unique copy in the Mantuan dialect. This manuscript, Additional MS. 8785, was translated by Vivaldo Belcalzer, an...McCall, Taylor
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Journal article
The Theodore Psalter and the Rebuilding of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem
The Byzantine decorated psalters form a particularly rich source of knowledge about cultural life. One such manuscript is the Theodore Psalter (London, BL Add. MS 19352), which was made in Constantinople in 1066. It is one of a group of psalters that have been studied in various contexts, including that...Hennessy, Cecily
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Journal article
From West Country Farmers to W. H. Ireland, the Shakespeare Forger: The Previous Owners of Thomas Tusser's Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1599), BL, C.122.bb.40
This article examines the provenance of a rare sixteenth-century copy of Thomas Tusser’s Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie (Edinburgh, 1599), an agricultural manual that, unlike previous guides, was aimed at tenant farmers at the lower end of the social order. These rural farmers had relatively modest levels of literacy...Smith, Maddy
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Nautical Charts, Texts, and Transmission: The Case of Conte di Ottomano Freducci and Fra Mauro
The article addresses an unstudied nautical chart made by Conte di Ottomano Freducci in 1529 (British Library Add. MS. 11548) which is unusual for its long and non-traditional legends (descriptive texts). Following a discussion of what we know about Freducci and a survey of all his surviving works, I supply...Duzer, Chet Van
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A Fragmentary Draft as the Groundwork for Bloodthirsty 'Sir Cauline' in Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: British Library, Add. MS. 39547, f. 157v
This article takes a novel approach to Thomas Percy's draft on 'Sir Cauline' in his ballad collection Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which is stored in the British Library (Add. MS. 39547, f. 157v). Very little attention has heretofore been paid to the conflation of the draft with the romance...Mihara, Minoru
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The Watermarks on the Northumberland Manuscript and Hand D: Research Findings and Reflections on the Shakespeare Authorship Question
Key manuscript documents relevant to the Shakespeare Authorship Question are examined for the watermarks on the paper. Manuscripts of ten contemporaries are examined, revealing that variations of a generic watermark of a pot were used by the paper manufacturers. Elements of this watermark are analysed and examples compared. This process...Casson, John
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Provenance Confirmed for the Dismembered Breviary of the Cathedral of Agen (1297-1313): Add. MS. 42132
The Breviary of the cathedral of Agen, one of the most monumental witnesses of illumination in the South-West of France around 1300, has been dismembered and is currently preserved in four different places. The Southern French origin of these fragments is beyond doubt, but the recent history of the manuscript...Nadal, Émilie
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The Riverside Mansions and Tombs of Agra: New Evidence from a Panoramic Scroll Recently Acquired by The British Library
The riverfront at Agra once formed one of the great sights of Mughal India. As well as the fort and the Taj Mahal, both banks of the River Yamuna were lined with great mansions, palatial garden houses and imperial gardens. When the Mughal capital was moved the Delhi in 1648,...Koch, Ebba ; Losty, J. P.
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The Shorthand of Robert Willis, Physician-in-Extraordinary to King George III
The shorthand used by Robert Willis in documents within the Library’s Willis Papers collection is identified as a system similar to William Fordyce Mavor’s late eighteenth-century Universal Stenography but departing from it in some key respects. Transcriptions are provided of BL, Add. MS. 41734 – Willis’s memorandum of events between...Underhill, Timothy ; Peters, Timothy
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J. G. Ballard’s ‘Crash! A Science Theatre Presentation for the ICA’: The context of a lost document recovered
In the spring of 1968, J. G. Ballard drafted an eight-page outline for a multi-media 'science theatre presentation' called 'Crash!' It was to be performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). Although the event was teasingly promoted in a full-page feature in the Sunday Mirror newspaper ('A Star Role...Beckett, Chris
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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
The Date and Context of Robert of Torigni's Chronica in London, British Library, Cotton MS. Domitian A. VIII, ff. 71r-94v
This article establishes a precise date and context for British Library, Cotton MS. Domitian A. VIII, ff. 71r-94v, a copy of Robert of Torigni’s Chronica that was despatched from Mont-Saint-Michel to the Norman abbey of Le Bec during the early 1180s. Based on a palaeographical and codicological examination of MS....Pohl, Benjamin
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Journal article
Black English in Britain in the Eighteenth Century
In eighteenth-century Britain, several works of imaginative literature by white authors included black characters speaking the form of English, largely a British West Indian creole, which would have been heard in everyday real life from members of the growing black population; samples are presented in chronological order.Paisey, David
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Journal article
Willie King: One of Angus Wilson's 'Old Men at the Zoo'
From 1937 until 1955, when he left to write full-time, Angus Wilson worked in the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum. His 1961 novel, The Old Men at the Zoo, was a roman à clef based on many of the people he had known there. The character of...Wright, C. J.
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Eight Twelfth-Century Charters from the Norman Abbey of Saint-Étienne de Caen, c.1120–1204 (London, British Library, Add. Chs. 67574–67581) – A Catalogue and Commentary
This article provides the first comprehensive study and edition of eight original charters from the Abbey of Saint-Étienne de Caen in Lower Normandy (founded by William the Conqueror in 1063), kept today in the British Library (Add. Chs. 67574–67581). These charters form part of a larger diplomatic corpus that once...Pohl, Benjamin
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Journal article
Forewarned and Forearmed: Contents of BL, Cotton MS. Titus A. XXV, ff. 94-105
Cotton MS. Titus A. XXV is a composite codex of several unrelated booklets, one of which has gone largely unnoticed and unexplored. The single gathering of ff. 94-105, preserves a fifteenth-century copy of political prophecy, five short pieces of prophetic and devotional material, and one of the three surviving examples...Geldof, M R
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Journal article
The Letters of Shen Fuzong to Thomas Hyde, 1687-88
The earliest surviving direct correspondence of a learned nature between a Chinese person and an Englishman comprises several letters sent between May 1687 and February 1688 by a young Christian convert from Nanjing, Michael Shen Fuzong (c. 1658-1691), to the Oxonian oriental scholar and librarian Thomas Hyde (1636-1704). This correspondence...Poole, William
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Journal article
Parody Playbills: The Politics of the Playbill in Britain in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Recent scholarship on the British culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has explored the theatricality of politics and the politics of theatre. This essay examines the parody, mock or spoof theatre playbill – an ephemeral text often used for political purposes – during general elections, in Britain in the...Gregory, James
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Journal article
Embedded Marginalia in the Psalter and Hours of Humphrey de Bohun (British Library, Egerton MS. 3277)
The phrase 'embedded marginalia' refers to images on the pages of medieval manuscripts that are beyond the text block in both a physical and conceptual sense but integrated nevertheless in the form and meaning of the page as a whole. This study is focused on the many examples of embedded...Sandler, Lucy Freeman