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2019
Journal article
A transnational history of a writer in four packages
The novel, short story and screenplay writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala died in 2013 and bequeathed her literary papers to the British Library in London. There they joined the Contemporary Collections which include the literary archives of Angela Carter, Harold Pinter, Shiva Naipaul and Hanif Kureishi. Prawer Jhabvala’s rich sixty-year contribution...McGonagle, Pauline
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2019
Journal article
An “authentic" performance?: the cultural politics of "folk" in Bengal and Bangladesh
Kabigāna is a verse-duelling/song-theatre genre practiced in West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh. Often deemed as obsolete and extinct–following from urban perceptions and the canons of literary history–the genre is found to grapple with the questions of ‘authenticity’ across its multiple spaces of performances- rural rituals, urban fairs/festivals, cinematic representations as...Basu, Priyanka
Kabigāna, cultural politics, authenticity, ritual, and folk performances
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2019
Journal article
Silsilah Raja-Raja Brunei: The Manuscript of Pengiran Kesuma Muhammad Hasyim
This article presents an edition of a manuscript of the Silsilah Raja-Raja Brunei, “Descent of the rulers of Brunei,” from the collection of Muzium Negara, Kuala Lumpur. The transliterated Malay text is accompanied by an English translation and a complete photographic record of the 14-page manuscript, with an introductory essay....Gallop, Annabel Teh
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2019
Journal article
Appraising, processing, and providing access to email in contemporary literary archives
The email of contemporary literary figures is ripe for research by scholars, and of broad interest to the general public, but can also present many challenges to cultural memory institutions that seek to appraise, process and provide access to this rich archival material. This article explores how five institutions across...Schneider, J. ; Adams, C. ; DeBauche, S. ; Echols, R. ; McKean, C. …
contemporary literary archives, machine learning, archival processing, natural language processing, and email preservation
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1975
Journal article
A manuscript of poems by Robert Sidney: some early impressions
IN January of this year the British Library, with the aid of generous grants from the Pilgrim Trust and the Radcliffe Trust, purchased from an unrevealed source through Messrs. Sotheby's an autograph manuscript, now numbered Additional MS. 58435, comprising sonnets, pastorals, songs, and epigrams composed by Robert Sidney (1563-1626), Earl...Kelliher, Hilton ; Duncan-Jones, Katherine
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1975
Journal article
The von Siebold Collection from Tokugawa Japan: 1. Dr Philipp Franz von Siebold's career in the Orient
BY 1867 the collection of Japanese printed books and manuscripts in the British Museum Numbered barely three hundred items whereas, for example, that of printed books alone in Hebrew ran to well over ten thousand. This relatively small collection of Japanese Materials in what were then two sections of the...Brown, Yu-Ying
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1975
Journal article
Some occasional aspects of Johann Hermann Schein
IN 1973 the Department of Printed Books of the British Library, Reference Division, acquired a collection of some ninety separate pieces of occasional verse in Latin and German, mainly epithalamia, published in Leipzig between 1608 and 1630. Amongst these are four relating to the composer Johann Hermann Schein (born 1586,...Paisey, David
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1975
Editorial
Foreword
SCHOLARLY YET READABLE' was the editor's prescription for The British Library Journal, for the first issue of which I am glad to write a foreword. Do not let us underestimate the skill required to make a publication of this kind both scholarly and readable, if by this we mean that...Eccles, Viscount
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1975
Journal article
The original reconnaissance map for the Battle of Quebec
THE original reconnaissance report prepared by Major, later Colonel, Patrick Mackellar for General Wolfe prior to the battle of Quebec on Abrahams Heights has been known to historians since it was printed by Lieut.-Col. C.V.F. Townshend in 1901 in the Military Life of Field-Marshal George First Marquess Townshend from Townshend...Hudson, J. P.
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1975
Journal article
An illuminator's sketchbook
ONLY a handful of the sketch- and model books compiled by artists during the Middle Ages have survived to the present day. In those which have come to light pictorial subject matter predominates, and it is often far from clear whether the book contains models for miniatures or whether it...Backhouse, Janet
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1977
Journal article
The Codex Sinaiticus
THE Codex Sinaiticus of the Greek Bible, even though it has lost over 300 leaves, is still the earliest complete New Testament, and is the earliest and best witness for some of the books of the Old Testament. It was written in the first half of the fourth century, when...Pattie, T. S.
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1976
Journal article
An unexpected effect of the change of calendar in 1752
IN 1752 in the backward country of Great Britain the calendar was eleven days out of phase with the sun. Midsummer Day (for the purpose of this article 22 June) fell on 11 June. That day could be described as 11/22 June. What happened in 1752 was that Britain caught...Pattie, T. S.
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1976
Journal article
The Wyndham Payne Crucifixion
IT is to an American that we owe the only comprehensive study of English medieval painting. Margaret Rickert's Painting in Britain: the Middle Ages saw its first edition in 1954, and a second eleven years later, in the series The Pelican History of Art. The first edition made public for...Turner, D. H.
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1975
Journal article
Notes: An Italian imprint identified; Work in progress: Catalogue of German Books,1601-1700, in the British Library, Reference Division; Work in progress: Catalogue of Polish Books to 1800 in the Slavonic and East European Branch of the Reference Division of the British Library
It is hoped in this section to include notes on items of interest which members of the staff and readers have come across in the course of their work in the Library, but which either do not warrant a full-length article or are peripheral to their discoverer's interests.Rhodes, D. E. ; Paisey, D.L. ; Swiderska, Hanna
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1976
Journal article
More light on sixteenth-century printing at Salamanca
No history of printing at Salamanca has yet been written. This may be partly due to the difficulties surrounding two of the principal incunable presses in the city, both of which are anonymous. In the first half of the sixteenth century, however, there are some extremely interesting links between one...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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1976
Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books.Dethan, L. Le R.
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1975
Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books
List of recent acquisitions for the Department of Printed Books.Brown, Sandra
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1975
Journal article
Some illustrated Jain manuscripts
THE Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books has recently acquired several illustrated Jain manuscripts of great interest. The earliest is the Uttarddhyayanasutra, one of the four Mulasutras of the Svetambara Canon. The scribe provided no colophon: but the miniatures, in the Early Western Indian style, fix the date of...Losty, Jeremiah P.
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1975
Journal article
Notes on the 1503 edition of Petrarch
THE first collected edition of Petrarch's Latin works to appear in Italy was printed at Venice by Simon de Luere for the publisher Andrea Torresano de Asula with two colophons dated respectively 27 March and 17 June 1501. There is no comment to be made on this edition, except to...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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1977
Journal article
The Malory manuscript
IN March 1976 the British Library purchased from the Warden and Fellows of Winchester College the famous manuscript of Sir Thomas Malory's English cycle of Arthurian tales, now numbered Additional MS. 59678. Almost immediately upon transfer to its new home the manuscript went on display in the Caxton quincentenary exhibition,...Hellinga, Lotte ; Kelliher, Hilton
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1975
Journal article
The ruling as a clue to the make-up of a medieval manuscript
ADDITIONAL MS. 47678,' acquired by the British Museum in 1952, is an early ninth century Cicero manuscript written at Tours in Carolingian minuscules. It was still complete when it was at the Abbey of Cluny but only 39 leaves survive out of the 140 or 150 that it probably once...Pattie, T. S.
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1975
Journal article
English Bookbindings added to the Department of Printed Books 1963 to 1974
THE most important acquisition of bookbindings during this period has unquestionably been that of the Henry Davis Collection. It is, indeed, far the most important gift of this nature that the Department has ever received, being almost the whole of one of the three great collections of bookbindings made in...Nixon, Howard M.
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1977
Journal article
A Shakespeare allusion of 1605 and its author
SURPRISINGLY few critical notices of Shakespeare have so far been recovered from sources dating from his own lifetime; fewer than a dozen are known to survive, and all of these originate from more or less professional literary circles. The most famous is the schoolmaster Francis Meres's comment in Palladis Tamia...Kelliher, Hilton
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1976
Journal article
Two missals printed for Wynkyn de Worde
The British Library has recently acquired two important and exceedingly rare editions of the Sarum Missal. These were produced in Paris in 1497 and 1511 for Wynkyn de Worde and others, and are fully described in the second and third sections of this article. The first section gives a brief...Rhodes, George D. ; Painter, Dennis E. ; Nixon, Howard M.
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1975
Journal article
Note: Rosichino and Pietro da Cortona: a correction with notes on the printer Fabio de Falco
Note: Rosichino and Pietro da Cortona: a correction with notes on the printer Fabio de Falco.Rhodes, Dennis E.
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1975
Journal article
An illustrated Persian text of Kalila and Dimna dated 707/1307-8
A MANUSCRIPT (Or. 13506) of Kalila and Dimna recently acquired by the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books (with the valuable assistance of the National Art Collections Fund, the Pilgrim Trust, and the Mark Fitch Fund) is of the highest importance as providing for study a unique example of...Waley, P. ; Titley, Norah M.
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1976
Journal article
Note: A hitherto unattributed German elegy on the death of Simon Dach, 1659
BY 1878, Sir Anthony Panizzi was dying. His biographer Edward Miller paints an affecting picture of his condition at that time: "Almost a complete cripple, half blind, he was but the wreck of the magnificent man he had once been. All he could manage was a short drive in the...Prescott, Andrew
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1975
Journal article
The Napier papers
IN 1956 the Department of Manuscripts incorporated in its collections a series of papers of various members of the Napier family which had been bequeathed by Miss Violet Bunbury Napier, youngest daughter of General William Craig Emilius Napier. They commence with those of the Hon. George Napier, 6th son of...Blake-Hill, Philip V.
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1975
Journal article
The Sir Arthur Phayre Collection of Burmese manuscripts
IN 1886 the British Museum acquired approximately eighty Burmese manuscripts, now located at Or. 3403-80. These manuscripts formed part of the collection of Sir Arthur Purves Phayre, one of the most distinguished of Burma's early administrators. Phayre's life spanned the formative years of British colonial rule in Burma. He left...Herbert, Patricia M.
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1976
Journal article
Oriental material in the reference division of the British Library
THE Oriental material housed in the three Library Departments of the old British Museum and the Science Reference Library which now constitute the Reference Division of the British Library is much larger and more comprehensive than is generally realized.It is by no means limited to printed books only but includes...Gaur, Albertine
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1976
Journal article
The von Siebold Collection from Tokugawa, Japan: 2. certain features of the Collection
IN December 1867, fourteen months after the death of Dr. Philipp Franz von Siebold, his eldest son Alexander approached the British Museum about the sale of an extensive range of Japanese materials which his father had acquired during the extraordinary career described in the previous article. Negotiations went on for...Brown, Yu-Ying
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1977
Journal article
The British bindings in the Henry Davis gift
WHEN Henry Davis, C.B.E. died on 10 January 1977 the majority of his magnificent collection of bookbindings joined those already on exhibition in the British Library. The Gift, which comprises approximately 800 decorated bookbindings and 260 reference books is too extensive and too varied to receive proper justice in a...Foot, Mirjam M.
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1976
Journal article
Illustrated German broadsides of the seventeenth century
THE seventeenth century was the great age of the illustrated broadside in Germany, where its suitability as an instrument of propaganda was exploited to the full. Engravings, varying in quality from crude to excellent, with images sometimes simple and direct, sometimes of the complex symbolism which is a Baroque commonplace,...Paisey, D. L.
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1976
Journal article
The French Revolution collections in the British Library
IN 1899 there was printed 'by order of the Trustees of the British Museum' a small edition of a modest guide entitled List of the contents of the three collections of books, pamphlets and journals in the British Museum relating to the French Revolution. Its compiler was G. K. Fortescue,...Brodhurst, Audrey C.
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1977
Journal article
Two Stanley Spencer letters from Salonika
THE most memorable experience which twentieth-century British painting can provide is a visit to Stanley Spencer's masterpiece, the Sandham Memorial Chapel at Burghclere, Hampshire. An inscription in the chapel explains that the paintings 'are the fulfilment of a design which he conceived whilst on active service' and these scenes of...Waley, D. P.
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1976
Journal article
Cowley and 'Orinda' autograph fair copies
ABRAHAM COWLEY'S elegy 'On the Death of Mr. Crashaw' was his tribute to a fellow poet with whom he had exchanged verses at Cambridge and whom he had later befriended in exile at Paris where, according to Anthony Wood, he presented the destitute Crashaw to Henrietta Maria. The elegy has...Kelliher, Hilton
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1977
Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions, Slavonic Division
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions, Slavonic Division.Swiderska, H.
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1976
Journal article
Correspondence from The Principal and Vice-Chancellor, University of St. Andrews
Correspondence from The Principal and Vice-Chancellor, University of St. Andrews.Watson, J. Steven
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1977
Journal article
Two sixteenth-century Italian devices
THE two devices here discussed have nothing in common except that they are both Italian of the sixteenth century, occur in books in the British Library, and have not been satisfactorily explained or identified hitherto. Much work remains to be done on Italian printers' and publishers' devices, and indeed there...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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1977
Journal article
Letters of Robert Briffault
ROBERT BRIFFAULT (1873-1948) was a prolific and influential writer in the years between the two world wars. He achieved international fame as a novelist, with the publication of Europa in 1935. It was a first novel, portraying the decadence of western European society. In its sequel, Europa in Limbo (1937),...Searle, Arthur
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1977
Journal article
The paved court theatre at Somerset House
B.L. LANSDOWNE MS. 1171 is a collection of careful drawings of early English stages equipped with various kinds of scenery. All but one have been identified, however tentatively, and among them are what have hitherto been accepted as the earliest detailed designs for an English scenic stage - that erected...Orrell, John
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1977
Journal article
The Cuttack Mission Press and Early Oriya printing
REFERENCES to early printing in the distinctive script of Oriya, the Indo-Aryan vernacular of Orissa, the region of India to the south-west of Bengal, are very scarce indeed.The attention of scholars has naturally enough tended to focus upon Bengal in the context of early printing in northern India, especially in...Shaw, Graham W.
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1977
Journal article
Deterioration in leather bookbindings - our present state of knowledge
DETERIORATION in leather and the mechanism by which deterioration proceeds has been a subject for investigation by the British Leather Manufacturers' Research Association over a number of years. Leather is widely used, not only for clothing, upholstery, and bookbinding, but in industry for machinery drive belts, hydraulic seals, etc. and...Haines, Betty M.
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1978
Journal article
Patrick Cary: a sequel
To place the recently acquired manuscript of Italian poems attributed to Patrick Cary more exactly in context and to dispel any doubts concerning his authorship I should like to bring together some scattered information. I should also like to discuss further sources regarding the last few years of his life.Willetts, Pamela
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1978
Journal article
Learning to read: Friedrich Gedike's primer of 1791
IN a culture still as firmly based as ours on written language, it is hardly possible to overestimate the importance to the individual and to society of the skill of reading. It gives a degree of power, through access to recorded information, from the simple signals of everyday life to...Paisey, David
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1978
Journal article
Notes on some manuscripts of Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes
IN one of the scrap-books of the notorious collector John Bagford (1650-1716), which are now part of the Harleian collection, is preserved a hitherto unnoticed leaf from a manuscript of Thomas Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes. It is a single parchment leaf (Fragment 90, MS. Harley 5977), mounted on a guard,...Green, R. F.
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1978
Journal article
Pietro Bembo's L'Histoire du Nouveau Monde
THE third volume of Giovanni Battista Ramusio's Delle Navigationi et Viaggi was first published in Venice by Giunti in 1556.' It included an account of the first Spanish descent to the River Amazon made during 1542. This account was written by Gonzalo Hernandez de Oviedo y Valdes (1478-1557), and sent...Norvell, Lyn
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1977
Journal article
Italian City and regional statutes 1473-1600, in the British Library
WITH the purchase in September 1974 of the printed statutes of Bologna, a book which was completed shortly after 28 February 1475, the British Library increases its holdings of the products of the first press in Bologna, that of Baldassare Azzoguidi, from fourteen to fifteen out of a total of...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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1977
Journal article
Foreign bookbindings added to the department of printed books from 1963 to 1974
IN volume 1, number 2 of The British Library Journal I discussed some of the English bindings acquired by the Department of Printed Books since 1962. This article followed others on acquisitions from 1941 to 1950, from 1952 to 1962, and in 1962, which appeared respectively in the British Museum...Nixon, Howard M.
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1979
Journal article
NOTE: William Godwin's 'Damon and Delia'
The British Library has recently acquired this early novel by William Godwin of which no copy was hitherto known to be extant. It is known that Godwin wrote three novels in 1783-4; his manuscript autobiographical notes, quoted by C. Kegan Paul in William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries (1876), record...Archibald, Jean
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1978
Journal article
A Khamsa of Nizami dated Herat, 1421
THE Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books has recently acquired a Persian manuscript (Or. 13802) dated Herat, 824 (1421), which is illustrated by miniatures of considerable interest and importance, both stylistically and historically. The work consists of 794 folios containing the five poems (Khamsa) of Nizami (d. 1203) written...Titley, Norah M.
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1979
Journal article
Innocence and experience in the poetry of Andrew Marvell
ANDREW MARVELL is the most enigmatic of English writers. Aubrey tells us that he was merry and cherry-cheeked, but that he would not drink in company, keeping, nevertheless, some bottles of wine in his lodgings 'to refresh his spirits and exalt his muse'. Nearly all the poems on which his...Lord, George De F.
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1979
Journal article
Joseph Timothy Haydn, of Dictionary of Dates fame: 'a long and laborious life, writing chiefly for the publishers'
'Is it for this', Robert Hurton's melancholy scholar asks, 'we rise so early all the year long, leaping (as he saith) out of our beds, when we hear the bell ring, as if we heard a thunderclap? If this be all the respect, reward, and honour we shall have ....Myers, Robin
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1978
Journal article
John Webber's South Sea drawings for the admiralty: a newly discovered catalogue among the papers of Sir Joseph Banks
THE Department of Manuscripts in the British Library, a treasure-house of many little-known works of art which one might not expect to find there, preserves more than 150 drawings and water-colours by the British artist John Webber (1750-93). The late Martin Hardie, a connoisseur of the British water-colour school, praised...Joppien, Rudiger
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1979
Journal article
Department of Printed Books: acquisitions, Slavonic Division
Department of Printed Books: acquisitions, Slavonic Division.Chrastek, D. B.
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1978
Journal article
Some notes on Andrew Marvell : Marvell before and after the continental tour 1642 and 1647
THE precise limits of Marvell's four-year tour of the Continent during the 1640s, attested in Milton's letter to Bradshaw of February 1653 and in poems such as 'Fleckno, an English Priest at Rome', have been the subject of much speculation. Thanks to Mrs Burdon's article in the previous number of...Kelliher, Hilton
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1978
Journal article
Pictorial printing in Chinese books: three examples from the seventeenth century
CHINA, the country of origin of both paper and the printed word, was also the first to print book illustrations. However, it is the Japanese achievement in this field that has captured the imagination of the outside world, as was so eloquently and reflectively demonstrated by my colleague David Chibbett,...Brown, Yu-Ying
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1977
Journal article
Brother and sister: new George Eliot letters
ON 20 July 1854 Mary Ann Evans, who two and a half years later was to assume the nom de plume George Eliot, left London for an excursion to Germany in the company of George Henry Lewes, and henceforward until his death they lived together as man and wife. She...Burnett, T. A. J.
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1980
Journal article
Books from Japanese circulating libraries in the British Library
Over the last ten years there has been in Japan a steady growth of interest in the circulating libraries known as kashihonya and in due course this bids fair to make a valuable contribution to the study of the rise of literacy in Japan in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). Some...Kornicki, P. F.
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1978
Journal article
Marvell after Cambridge
MARVELL'S movements on first leaving Cambridge have never been known to his biographers. Exactly when he left Trinity College is also in doubt, but it is clear that by September 1641 he had been absent for an unacceptable length of time. If it is a fact that he ran away...Burdon, Pauline
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1978
Journal article
David Hume, De Unione Tractatus Secundus
THE description of MS. Royal, 12 A.53 in the British Library catalogue states that 'it does not appear to have been printed'. Indeed it was not; but two letters in the Public Record Office indicate that it did very nearly achieve publication in France in 1610, some five years after...Lindley, David
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1978
Journal article
Department of Printed Books: acquisitions 1965-1975: English books 1641-1700
Department of Printed Books: acquisitions 1965-1975: English books 1641-1700Jannetta, M. J.
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1978
Journal article
Some early English editions of Voltaire
ON Friday 10 May 1726 it would seem that Voltaire left Calais in the Betty to cross the Channel by the regular service and to arrive the following morning, 30 April, at Gravesend. The shift from Gregorian to Julian calendars, only removed by England's adoption of New Style some twenty-six...Barber, G.
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1980
Journal article
The Ayrton Papers: music in London, 1786-1858
RECENTLY acquired papers of William Ayrton (1777-1858), musician and critic, sometime Director of the Italian opera at the King's Theatre, and editor of the Harmonicon, proved to be the residue of the collection of Ayrton's correspondence and papers presented by Miss Phyllis Ayrton, his great-granddaughter, in 1964. The new collection...Willetts, Pamela
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1979
Journal article
Reconstruction of a Liège psalter-hours
IN the sad history of crimes against books, British Library Add. MS. 28784 must be placed high on the list of scrapbooks headed by the Carmelite Missal, Add. MSS. 29704-29705. When acquired by the British Museum in 1871 Add. MS. 28784 was composed of a complete late fifteenth-century book of...Oliver, Judith
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1980
Journal article
A new account of Waterloo: a letter home from Private George Hemingway of the Thirty-third Regiment of Foot
ACCOUNTS by participants of the battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo are not numerous and most of those written by British ones were elicited some twenty years after the event by the questionnaire of the enterprising Captain Siborne. Surviving accounts of Waterloo written by private soldiers must be very rare...Waley, Daniel
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1977
Journal article
Additional Sheridan papers: Add.MSS. 58274-58277
A QUANTITY of political papers, mostly speech notes, and miscellanea of Richard Brinsley Sheridan have recently been added to the Department of Manuscripts' holdings of Sheridan family material. The new acquisition had once been part of the Sheridan papers preserved at Frampton Court, Dorset, and had been sold by auction...Smith, R. A. H.
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1981
Journal article
Paul Hirsch and his music library
ON 16 July 1946 the lovely garden of 10 Adams Road, Cambridge, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Hirsch, was the scene of a party given for the seventieth birthday of Edward Dent, who had been Professor of Music in the University from 1926 to 1941. It was a...King, Alec Hyatt
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1978
Journal article
An addition to the Faust literature: an unknown 'harrowing of hell' in the British Library, London
THE spread of material on the subject of Faust began in the sixteenth century with the existence of Faust as an historical figure, and with the appearance of a 'Faust-trilogy' (Faust-Buch of 1587, Wagner-Buch of 1593, Fausts Gaukeltasche of 1607). The subject entered English literature with an English version of...Henning, Dr. Hans
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1978
Journal article
The artist of the Leviathan title-page
FEW title-page designs, if any, can rival the success of that bluntly eloquent engraving which prefaces the first edition (1651) of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. Though it was re-used for two further editions in the author's own lifetime, successive reproductions have given it far wider currency since its reappearance in the...Brown, Keith
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1979
Journal article
Notes : The Laurence Nowell Manuscripts in the British Library
For centuries historians have asserted that the Laurence Nowell who transcribed old chronicles with William Lambarde, the sixteenth-century antiquary of Kent, was a churchman, the Dean of Lichfield. A careful reading of the facts in a 1571 Court of Requests case has recently disclosed that this belief is unfounded.Warnicke, Retha M.
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1979
Journal article
Notes: Richard Hodges and Stowe Manuscript 15
This note is intended to explain the relationship between Stowe Manuscript 15 and Richard Hodges, whose name appears on folio 12v with the date 1545. The manuscript is a small volume of ninety-two vellum folios containing diverse subjects dating from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. It was originally begun...Alsop, J. D.
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1981
Journal article
The Poppelauer catalogues of Hebraica and Judaica
THE Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books has been fortunate enough to acquire a unique and almost complete set of the Catalogues of Hebraica and Judaica issued by M. Poppelauer of Berlin between 1887 and 1929. Twenty-seven catalogues were issued, and the only (but important) one missing from the...Goldstein, David
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1979
Journal article
Some hitherto unpublished Panizziana from Italy
THE municipal library in the quiet and elegant city of Reggio Emilia is a hitherto unexplored treasure house of unpublished Panizzi material. It was at Reggio that Antonio Panizzi spent four years at the ginnasio and met Gaetano Fratuzzi, the retired Professor of Rhetoric and librarian at that library, who...Reidy, Denis V.
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1981
Journal article
A purchase of books in 1615
WHILE making a study of manuscript annotations and marks of provenance in English incunabula for the forthcoming volume of B.M.C. xi, I was pleasantly surprised to come upon a priced list of twenty-three books, transcribed below, in a copy of the English translation of Cicero's De Senectute printed by Caxton...Nickson, M. A. E.
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1979
Journal article
Antonio Panizzi and the British Museum
ANTONIO GENESIO MARIA PANIZZI was born on 16 September 1797 in the little town of Brescello in the Duchy of Modena in northern Italy. Though no more than the son of the local chemist, he had received a sound education, in Brescello itself, in Reggio, and at the University of...Miller, Edward
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1980
Journal article
Four Strasburg incunables incorrectly assigned to Anton Koberger of Nuremberg
Four incunables, undated and anonymous as to place and printer, have for many generations been assigned to the Nuremberg press of Anton Koberger, and have in fact been classed as his very earliest productions. 1. Johannes Nider, Manuale confessorum. fol.: a-e10 f8, 58 leaves. Hain, *11834; Goff, N-178; Proctor, 1961;...Needham, Paul
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1978
Journal article
Notes: Italian printed statutes: a correction
In my recent brief account of the printed Italian statutes in the British Library, I made one misleading statement when I failed to mention the statutes of the Duchy of Savoy, of which the Library has three editions printed before 1600. I wrote: 'It will be noted that certain important...Rhodes, D. E.
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1978
Journal article
Hilarius Cantiuncula and his book of poems
THE present brief investigation arose out of the discovery of an unfortunate error in the British Museum's Short-title Catalogue of Italian Books 1463-1600 (1958), where on page 327 we read the following entry: 'Hilarius, a writer of Latin verse in Germany. Cantiunculae hendecasyllaborum liber. Apud P. Petramsanctam: [Gualtiero Scotto:] Venetijs,...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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1981
Journal article
A reappraisal of the Bedford Hours
ALREADY well known to bibliophiles at the time of its purchase in February 1852, the Bedford Hours has ever since been justifiably regarded as one of the star attractions of the national collection. Some of its illustrations, especially the lively miniatures of Noah's Ark, have become famous through frequent reproduction...Backhouse, Janet
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1979
Journal article
Two eighteenth-century manuscripts on the geography of the Levant
A MANUSCRIPT on my bookshelves contains a collection of geographical and other notes relating to Greece and Asia Minor. It has no title, and is unsigned. It was written during a period of years beginning before 1739, probably before 1733, and continuing at least until 1749. Among its contents are...Salt, George
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1980
Journal article
Bookbinding practices of the Hering family, 1794-1844
THE English poet and essayist Robert Southey, describing, in the guise of a Spaniard, the manners and morals of his countrymen, noted in 1807, that 'there is, perhaps, no country in which the passion for collecting rarities is so prevalent as in England.' This passion was turned by large numbers...Marks, Judith Goldstein
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1979
Journal article
Department of Printed Books: German popular literature as seen in some recent antiquarian acquisitions
Systematic acquisition of foreign literature for the British Museum library began in 1834 with regular Government funding, and, particularly under Panizzi, the attention paid to current material was extended also to supplementing the existing holdings of older books on as wide a scale as possible. His declared aim to make...Paisey, D. L.
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1981
Journal article
Two new Italian printing centres of the sixteenth century
IN April 1980 the Department of Printed Books bought two extremely rare books, each of which adds a new town to our already very rich collection of sixteenth-century Italian imprints. While these books are not unrecorded, it is most unlikely that a copy of either of them has ever previously...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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1981
Journal article
The acquisitions system of the Department of Printed Books in the 1870s
PANIZZI'S years as Keeper (1837-56) were the revolutionary period in the history of the Department of Printed Books. After such a turbulent time consolidation was needed and this was provided first by John Winter Jones who was Keeper from 1856 to 1866. His successor was Thomas Watts, a man of...Harris, P. R.
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1979
Journal article
Panizzi and Madden
IN a publication celebrating Antonio Panizzi's centenary, an article on his dealings with his mortal enemy, Sir Frederic Madden, the Keeper of Manuscripts, might seem to strike a jarring note. They nevertheless make a tale well worth the telling. The epic feud between these two great public servants is a...Borrie, Michael
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1981
Journal article
An early thirteenth-century Low Countries booklist
IN British Library MS. Harley 2720, a copy of the Thebaid of Statius, at the bottom right hand corner of fol. 85v, the last page of the text, is a list of twenty-four or twenty-five titles of books or shorter works and four items associated with writing (wax, a seal,...Watson, Andrew G.
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1979
Journal article
Some uncollected letters of Andrew Marvell
EARLIER this year the British Library acquired an unpublished letter of Marvell to Sir Henry Thompson of Escrick, dated 16 December 1675. Sir Henry (c. 1627-84), the second of the five sons of Richard Thompson of Kilham and his wife Anne Thompson, nee Nelthorpe, was a successful wine merchant, knighted...Kelliher, Hilton
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1979
Journal article
Gladstone and Panizzi
THERE were several strands in Gladstone's relation with Panizzi, whom he came to call this very true, trusty, hearty friend. Panizzi made his English debut in the 1820s in Liverpool, where John Gladstone was a merchant prince, and he made it under the patronage of William Ewart the future Prime...Foot, M. R. D.
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1980
Journal article
The Department of Manuscripts' George Eliot Holdings
'MR. LEWES had set his mind on their going after our death to the British Museum', wrote George Eliot of the manuscripts of her works in a letter to William Blackwood. In G. H. Lewes's lifetime the autograph manuscripts of her works had been inscribed and presented by her to...Waley, Daniel
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1981
Journal article
The Lumley Library: a supplementary checklist
THE notes that follow relate to some eighty-nine printed books and manuscripts from the collection of John, Lord Lumley (1534-1609), on which new information has become available since the publication in 1956 by Sears Jayne and Francis Johnson of the 1609 Catalogue of the Lumley Library from a manuscript in...Selwyn, D. G.
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1982
Journal article
A new portrait of George Eliot?
FOR an author who was at once both lionized in some quarters, and despised in others, it is remarkable that descriptions of George Eliot's appearance are so much at variance. On one hand is the unkind, but memorable yet still unattributed line, 'Have you seen a horse, sir? Then you...Goldman, Paul
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1981
Journal article
A Shahnama from Transoxiana
THE Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books has recently acquired an unusual, and stylistically rare, illustrated copy of the Shahnama (Book of Kings) by Firdawsi (Or. 13859). The latter part of the manuscript, which might have included a colophon, is missing but the miniatures appear to be in the...Titley, Norah M.
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1982
Journal article
An unidentified Italian publisher's device: the knight on oxback
IN November 1891 the British Museum bought from Leo S. Olschki, the bookseller who was at that time established in Venice but later moved to Florence, a small liturgical work in 16mo format without imprint or date, and with the title printed in red as follows (abbreviations resolved): Diurnum Romanum:...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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1982
Journal article
The Blenheim Papers
THE papers of John, 1st Duke of Marlborough, his wife, Sarah, and his son-in-law, Charles 3rd Earl of Sunderland, as well as of other members of the Spencer, Churchill, and related families, formerly kept at Blenheim Palace, were acquired by the British Library in 1978. They were originally offered to...Hudson, J. P.
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1982
Journal article
Socinian books with the Raków imprint in the British Library
DURING the Reformation, Poland, with her religious tolerance, became known as an asylum haereticorum in which various trends in the New Faith peacefully coexisted with the official Catholic Church, and religious refugees from abroad found safety from persecution by both the Inquisition and Protestant theologians. One of the most distinguished...Swiderska, H.
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1980
Journal article
Joaquin Ibarra, 1725-1785: a tentative list of holdings in the reference division of the British Library
THREE printers in eighteenth-century Spain are commonly regarded as the leaders of the revival in printing standards in that country. Of the three, Joaquin Ibarra, Benito Monfort, and Antonio de Sancha, it is Ibarra who is generally considered to be pre-eminent.Whitehead, H. G.
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1982
Journal article
'This so-called autobiography': Anthony Trollope, 1812-1882
'THERE is perhaps no career of life so charming as that of a successful man of letters', Trollope declares in a happy moment, adding that 'it is in the consideration which he enjoys that the successful author finds his richest reward.' A good deal of the interest and fascination of...Brown, Sally
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1980
Journal article
Vignettes in early nineteenth-century London editions of Mozart's operas
ON 21 June 1737 the royal assent was given to a measure entitled: An Act to explain and amend so much of an Act, made in the Twelfth Year of the Reign of Queen Anne, intituled, An Act for reducing the Laws relating to Rogues, Vagabonds, sturdy Beggars, and Vagrants,...King, Alec Hyatt
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1981
Journal article
Some notes on seventeenth-century continental hospitals
SIR HANS SLOANE (1660-1753), the eminent Stuart and Georgian physician, was an avid collector of historical manuscripts, particularly those relating to all branches of medicine and the allied sciences. His collection, an original nucleus of the British Museum, remains one of the most important archives for research into the medical...Alsop, J. D.