Buscar
Resultados de la búsqueda
-
Journal article
Watts, Panizzi and Asher: the development of the Russian collections 1837-1869
"No doubt, for many readers it will come as a surprise to learn that, in terms of the completeness and richness of the collections, few libraries in Russia can compete with the Russian Department of the British Museum. In many respects... [it] should be placed higher than any library in...Thomas, Christine ; Henderson, Bob
-
Journal article
C. D. Ginsburg and the Shapira Affair: a nineteenth-century Dead Sea Scroll controversy
IN July 1883, Moses Wilhelm Shapira, a well-known Jerusalem dealer in antiquities and ancient manuscripts, offered to sell a scroll of Deuteronomy to the British Museum, one of his regular customers. Thus began one of the most celebrated incidents in the history of biblical scholarship, a saga that continues more...Reiner, Fred N.
-
Journal article
Panizzi, Grenville and the Grenville Library
ANTONIO PANIZZI arrived in England in May 1823 'with not quite a sovereign in his pocket, knowing no one, nor a word of the language' as he was later to write. The liberal attitudes of the English especially regarding political, intellectual and religious tolerance and freedom, so much appreciated by...Reidy, Denis V.
-
Journal article
Thomas Jefferys's map of Canada and the mapping of the Western part of North America, 1750-1768
THOMAS JEFFERYS (c. 1710-71), the major English engraver and map publisher of the mid-eighteenth century, is known particularly for the important maps of the eastern half of North America which he produced mainly from the early 1750s and into the 1760s. His maps of Virginia (1753), New Map of Nova...Winearls, Joan
-
Journal article
A supplementary list of Judaeo-Persian manuscripts
THE field of Judaeo-Persian studies is still underdeveloped, as most Judaeo-Persian texts continue to lie buried in uncatalogued collections of manuscripts scattered throughout the world. Although their importance was already recognized at the end of the nineteenth century, and despite the fact that they constitute one of the largest untapped...Moreen, Vera Basch
-
Journal article
The book cover designs of John Leighton, F.S.A.
THE chief aim of this article is to identify and describe the signed cover designs by John Leighton on books in the British Library. What follows is a summary of work in progress. This reveals the enormous creativity and versatility of Leighton's cover designs, of which over four hundred have...King, Edmund M. B.
-
Journal article
English plague regulations and Italian models: printed and manuscript items in the Yelverton Collection
AMONG the papers of Robert Beale, Clerk to the Privy Council during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, which form the nucleus of the Yelverton collection at the British Library, is a group of printed proclamations and orders of the Governor and other officials of Milan issued at the time...Basing, Patricia ; Rhodes, Dennis E.
-
Journal article
The Edwards of Halifax Bindery
THE story of the Edwards family of Halifax is the stuff of a Victorian three volume novel. William Edwards (baptized in 1722, died in 1808), a provincial publisher and bookseller, built up a firm which became influential in the book trade in England and abroad. William (1753-86), his first son,...Marks, P. J. M.
-
Journal article
Charles II's Hebrew books
THE collection of Hebrew books in the British Library (formerly the Library of the British Museum) is acknowledged to be one of the greatest in the world, and I do not have to expand on its importance, or on the wealth and variety of its manuscripts and printed books. I...Goldstein, David
-
Journal article
A Hebrew manuscript of Clavicula Salomonis, Part II
NOWADAYS it is almost a truism to say that there are more and deeper marks of mutual influences between many Christian and Jewish religious traditions of the medieval and early modern period than have long been acknowledged. This is especially true where magic is involved, a branch of knowledge whose...Rohrbacher-Sticker, Claudia
-
Journal article
Notes on the bibliography of Rainerius de Pisis
THE Pantheologia of Rainerius de Pisis, the Dominican who died in 1351, must be one of the longest books ever composed in the Middle Ages. Although the author was an Italian, it is noticeable that of the six editions printed in the fifteenth century the first five appeared in Germany,...Rhodes, Dennis E.
-
Journal article
The dating of Seiber/Adorno papers held by the British Library
THE welcome publication by Nick Chadwick of Matyas Seiber's comments on Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno's jazz research proposal (the 'Expose') of January 1936 and their correspondence during the subsequent writing of Adorno's essay 'On Jazz' ('Uber Jazz') provides valuable insight into their co-operation. Seiber's assistance was publicly acknowledged by Adorno both...Wilcock, Evelyn
-
Journal article
The Panizzi touch: Panizzi's successors as Principal Librarian
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
-
Journal article
John Field: the 'hidden manuscripts' and other sources in the British Library
JOHN Field's manuscripts, both epistolary and musical, are rare, a dozen letters, of which two are in the British Library, and twenty-two autograph manuscripts, of which only the Pastorale in A H.14, Nocturnes nos. 5, 6, and 14, and Concerto no. 7, are complete.Langley, Robin
-
Journal article
The printing history of the Constantinople Hebrew incunable of 1493: a mediterranean voyage of discovery
THE place is Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire; the date December 1493. Elia (Elijah), son of Benjamin ha-Levi, is writing the concluding lines to the almost complete edition of Jacob ben Asher's great early fourteenth-century religious compendium Arba'ah Turim ('The Four Rows'), a title referring to the four rows...Offenberg, Adri K.
-
Journal article
Adolphus Asher (1800-1853): Berlin bookseller, Anglophile, and friend to Panizzi
THE London weekly The Athenaeum of 1 October 1853 carried in its gossip column the following brief obituary: "Mr. Adolphus Asher, bookseller of Berlin, whose shop in the Linden Walk was the common rendezvous of literary natives and strangers in that capital, died at Venice on the 2nd of this...Paisey, David
-
Journal article
Consort and cupola: Prince Albert, Panizzi and the Reading Room of the British Museum
ON 25 October 1997 the round Reading Room of the British Museum closed its doors to readers for the last time. One hundred and forty years after it was opened Antonio Panizzi most visible achievement ceased to serve the function for which it was erected, as the chief means of...Wright, C. J.
-
Journal article
From Purcell to Wardour Street: a brief account of music manuscripts from the Library of Vincent Novello now in the British Library
In 1986 and 1987 Novello and Company presented to the British Library a substantial collection of scores written or collected by Novello, which had remained in the possession of the company, perhaps since its foundation. These scores joined an already large collection of Novello's material which had found its way...Banks, Chris
-
Journal article
Some newly discovered miniatures by Simon Marmion and his workshop
THE late D. H. Turner, Deputy Keeper in the British Library's Department of Manuscripts, besides having a deep interest in liturgical manuscripts, was also the inspiration for Renaissance Painting in Manuscripts: Treasures from the British Library. Opening in 1983 in Los Angeles and transferring subsequently to New York and London,...Kren, Thomas
-
Journal article
Early printing from Africa in the British Library
ALTHOUGH the date of the introduction of printing to Africa south of the Sahara ranges across the continent from the late eighteenth to late nineteenth century, its development usually followed a similar pattern and in many cases can be traced to the arrival of Christian missionaries. Indigenous literature was predominantly...Holden, Carol
-
Journal article
The story of my library
The distinguished Romanian Jewish linguist, literary historian and folklorist Moses Gaster (Bucharest, 1856-London, 1939) assembled an enormous library in his fields of interest and specialization: Hebraica and Judaica, Samaritana, and Romanian and related studies. Gaster's library was divided between a number of institutions over the course of nearly forty years,...Gaster, Moses
-
Journal article
A book of cantatas and arias bought in Florence, 1723
THE music manuscript recently acquired by the British Library and now held as Add. S . 71535 is a most valuable specimen of the Italian Baroque tradition so well represented in collections of this country. It could almost be considered an 'English music book'. On the front flyleaf (f. i),...Strohm, Reinhard
-
Journal article
The Kubla Khan manuscript and its first collector
COLERIDGE'S Kubla Khan, Or, A Vision in a Dream, first printed with Christabel and The Pains of-Sleep in 1816, has long been regarded as one of the great literary icons of the Romantic movement. Coleridge's famous account of its conception in the summer or autumn of 1797 - the lonely...Kelliher, Hilton
-
Journal article
A marginal sketch in BL, Additional Ms. 25690, the Cronica del Cid Campeador, and the legend of the 'Jura de Santa Gadea'
ADDITIONAL MS. 25690 is a copy of the Cronica del Cid, incomplete at the end and with some dislocation in the sequence of the text. This chronicle circulated in printed editions from 1512. The MS. is briefly described by Gayangos, who assigns it to the fifteenth century and is of...Hook, David
-
Journal article
The reconstruction of a burnt Cottonian manuscript: the case of Cotton Ms. Otho A. I
THE manuscript designated 'Otho A. I' in the library formed by Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631) was almost completely destroyed by fire in the early hours of Saturday 23 October 1731. The Cottonian Library, and with it the King's Library, had been removed from Cotton House, in Westminster, to Essex House,...Keynes, Simon
-
Journal article
The India Office manuscript of Maimonides's Guide: the earliest complete copy in the Judaeo-Arabic original
AMONG the rich holdings of the India Office Library there exists but a single manuscript in Hebrew characters, I.O.M. MS. 3679. However, this manuscript, a beautifully executed copy of Moses Maimonides's Dalalat al-Ha'irin (Guide of the Perplexed), is both aesthetically remarkable and of no little scholarly interest. It is the...Langermann, V. Tzvi
-
Journal article
Public relations, Panizzi-style
IN a collection of letters by and to Sir Anthony Panizzi, chiefly relating to the history of the British Museum, assembled and recently presented by the author to the British Library (Add. MSS. 70839-70854), are two letters written by Sir Anthony to the Irish essayist and politician John Wilson Croker...McCrimmon, Barbara
-
Journal article
Benjamin Franklin and the snake that would not die
ON 9 May 1754 an article was published in Benjamin Franklin's newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, calling for the British colonies on North America's eastern seaboard to unite against the threat of French aggression from the western interior. This rousing exhortation was echoed by an accompanying illustration depicting the British colonies...Cook, Karen Severud
-
Journal article
An early map on skin of the area later to become Indiana and Illinois
THE British Museum's Department of Ethnography, presently at the Museum of Mankind, London, has on permanent loan a large map made on skin (Plate VII and fig. 2). Centred on the long axis of a diagrammatically straightened Wabash River, when redrawn on a modern map it covers most of what...Lewis, G. Malcolm
-
Journal article
A new English keyboard manuscript of the seventeenth century: autograph music by Draghi and Purcell
MILLENNIAL fever seems to have infected even the sober arena of musicology and music manuscripts. We have heard the cry of 'Musicological Event of the Century' too frequently in recent years, trumpeting everything from the discovery of the autograph of Mozart's Fantasy and Sonata in C minor (K. 457 and...Hogwood, Christopher
-
Journal article
The works of Paolo Angelo
NOTHING seems to be recorded about the life of Paolo Angelo, except for the meagre scraps of information which his own books reveal. He was a humble priest of Venice, apparently a member of the Dominican Order, and he had a fanatical hatred of Luther and his doctrines, which he...Rhodes, Dennis E.
-
Journal article
Jaspar Gryffyth and his books
THE great collectors of manuscripts in Britain during the century following the dissolution of the monasteries, men such as Parker, Dee, Cotton, and Lumley, were figures, by and large, of some standing in church or state, with the means and opportunity to amass large numbers of manuscript books and other...Ovenden, Richard
-
Journal article
Mátyás Seiber's collaboration in Adorno's jazz project, 1936
IN 1982 the British Library acquired the papers of the Hungarian-born composer Matyas Seiber (1905-60) through the generosity of his widow, Mrs Lilla Seiber. This large collection contains not only sketches and scores of Seiber's musical works but also scripts for lectures and broadcast talks on a variety of musical...Chadwick, Nick
-
Journal article
Some drafts by Richard Steele for The Tatler, The Spectator, and The Guardian
WITH the transfer of the Blenheim Papers to the British Library in 1978, a large body of Sir Richard Steele's letters and literary manuscripts became more easily available for examination by scholars. They are now bound as Add. MSS. 61686-61688, most of the literary material being gathered in the last...Lindsay, Alexander
-
Journal article
'The art of dancing, demonstrated by characters and figures': French and English sources for court and theatre dance, 1700-1750
IN 1700 Raoul Auger Feuillet published in Paris Choregraphie ou Part de de'crire la dance, and revolutionized the art of dancing. His treatise made available, for the first time, a system of notation whereby dances could be recorded in symbols - allowing them to be recreated at other times and...Goff, Moira
-
Journal article
'A very common and usuall trade': the relationship between cartographic perceptions and 'fishing' in the Davis Strait circa 1500-1550
FROM the time it was certain that one could sail westwards from Europe and reach land on the other side of the ocean, three kinds of European travellers headed west into the northern Atlantic: those searching for a north-west passage to the spices and silks of the Orient through what...Seaver, Kirsten A.
-
Journal article
Yiddish manuscripts in the British Library
FEW Yiddish manuscripts predating the age of printing have survived the storms of Jewish and general history. The oldest extant dated Yiddish document is a rhymed inscription of a dozen words in the Worms Mahzor ('festival liturgy') of 1272, now in the Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem. By far...Prager, Leonard ; Hill, Brad Sabin
-
Journal article
A fragment of Ephraem the Syrian and the rare word asiantos vindicated
ADDITIONAL MS. 39583 is a miscellany of fragments collected by Robert Curzon, the writer of Travels to Monasteries in the Levant. One of the fragments, f. 14, is a single leaf written in Greek in about the tenth century in upright so-called 'Slavonic' uncials. On the facing page Curzon made...Pattie, T. S.
-
Journal article
An early eighteenth-century manuscript of harpsichord music: William Babell and Handel's 'Vo' far guerra'
ON 29 and 31 January 1717, the London music publishers John Walsh and John Hare advertised the Suits of the most Celebrated Lessons Collected and Fitted to the Harpsicord or Spinnet by Mr. Wm. Babell. As far as is known, the appearance of this imposing volume attracted no published comment...Pont, Graham
-
Journal article
Recent acquisitions: incunabula
IN the selection of incunabula - in the happy days when this was a fairly regular activity - the first and uppermost reason for acquisition was typographical. The British Library collection aims to represent the work of all printers who produced books in the fifteenth century, and to have samples...Hellinga, Lotte ; Davies, Martin
-
Journal article
Robert Beale and the Queen of Scots
IN 1953 the British Museum acquired the Yelverton manuscripts, now Add. MSS.48000-48196, from Brigadier R. H. Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe and his trustees. The papers of Robert Beale (1541-1601), Clerk to the Council of Elizabeth I, form the core of this collection of historical papers, which never left the custody of Beale's descendants,...Basing, Patricia
-
Journal article
A 'catalogue of Hebrew printers'
FOR most of this century, an unbound manuscript of nearly a thousand leaves lay in the offices of the Hebrew Section of the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books of the British Museum (later the Oriental Collections of the British Library). Despite its bulk, the manuscript remained unaccessioned, apparently...Hill, Brad Sabin
-
Journal article
Sir William Trumbull and the Marquis of Halifax
'I burn your letters at your request', wrote George Savile, the first Marquis of Halifax, to Sir William Trumbull on 22 March 1685/6. Indeed, the only letters between them to have survived are six from Halifax, written between 1686 and 1695, which are merely complimentary or deal with matters affecting...Brown, Mark N.
-
Journal article
Dry-point compilation notes in the Benedictional of St Æthelwold
THE Benedictional of St Æthelwold (Add. MS. 49598) is one of the great treasures of the British Library. Produced between 971 and 973 expressly at the request of Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester, by his chaplain Godeman, as the dedicatory poem near the beginning of the book makes clear, the manuscript...Schipper, W.
-
Journal article
Music Library: notable acquisitions 1985-1994
THE previous report of notable acquisitions of printed music, published in 1985, covered some twenty-two years, from 1964 to early 1985. The present survey covers a period of less than half this extent. Nevertheless it demonstrates that the Music Library, far from resting on its laurels, has continued to maintain...Turner, M.
-
Journal article
The Weckherlin Papers
THE Weckherlin Papers are part of the vast archive of the Trumbull family, which passed through the female line to the Marquesses of Downshire. It was kept at Easthampstead Park in Berkshire until it was deposited on loan with the Berkshire County Record Office at Reading in 1954. A large...Forster, Leonard
-
Journal article
New light on Malta during the Peace of Amiens, 1801-1803
SIR Charles William Pasley (1780-1861) is remembered today as a general in the British Army who earned distinction as a military engineer, writing manuals about field fortification, telegraphy, sapping, mining, pontooning, and how best to explode gunpowder under water for the salvage of wrecks. Pasley's distinction was recognized beyond the...Allen, D. F.
-
Journal article
Paine's Rights of Man, Swedenborgianism and freedom of the press in Sweden: a publishing enigma of 1792
A copy of the earliest Swedish translation of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, recently acquired by the British Library, illustrates the old tag that 'books have their fates'. The item is a slim octavo volume in plain grey board covers entitled Menniskans rattigheter and bearing the imprint Stockholm, tryckte hos...Hogg, Peter C.
-
Journal article
Three early Cavafy items in the British Library
THOUGH the British Library holdings of early Cavafy literature are meagre, the Library has recently had the good fortune to acquire, by donation, a copy of G. Vrisimitzakes, (To ergo tou K. P. Kavaphe, 'The Work of C.. P. Cavafy'). Published in Alexandria in 1917, this slim and unassuming volume...Michaelides, Chris
-
Journal article
The picture of the Crucifixion in the Floreffe Bible (London, BL, ADD. MS. 17738, f. 187r): typology as an expression of the history of salvation
THE stylistic and iconographic avant garde of the second half of the twelfth century is represented by the art of the Rhineland and Maasland regions. The imitation of classical antiquity by Nicholas of Verdun originated there, as did the application of the typological method that was so significant in the...Telesko, Werner
-
Journal article
'Lost or stolen or strayed': a survey of manuscripts formerly in the Cotton Library
THE manuscript collection that was founded by Sir Robert Cotton in the 1580s passed by inheritance first to his son, Thomas, and then to his grandson, John. In 1702, on the death of John and in accordance with the intentions of Sir Robert, it became national property, and fifty years...Tite, Colin G. C.
-
Journal article
Further notes on Samaritan typography
IN my recent study of Samaritan typefaces I was able to trace the history and development of some of the more important of these on the basis of the evidence then available to me. That study stimulated some interest among both historians of typography and librarians. Through the kindness of...Crown, Alan D.
-
Journal article
William Trumbull and art collecting in Jacobean England
THIS article is concerned with some of the papers of William Trumbull the Elder in the British Library, which relate to the visual arts in Jacobean England. As was suggested by Sonia Anderson and Leonard Forster in a recent issue of this journal, the Trumbull archive is remarkably rich for...Howarth, David
-
Journal article
The author portraits in the Bedford Psalter-Hours: Gower, Chaucer and Hoccleve
AN inscribed portrait of John Gower, literary champion of Lancastrian kingship, provides the key to the reading of the unique illustrative programme of the Duke of Bedford's Psalter-Hours, Add. MS. 42131, the only manuscript he is known to have commissioned in England. Two hundred and ninety of the 300 minor...Wright, Sylvia
-
Journal article
A letter from Cerrāḥ Muṣṭafā Pasha, Vālī of Tunis, to Sir William Trumbull (A.H. 1099/A.D. 1688)
THIRTY years ago, when I first studied the papers of Sir William Trumbull in the Berkshire County Record Office, it was a particular pleasure to discover that amongst the Downshire Manuscripts which derived from his years as English ambassador at the Porte were a number of Turkish documents. Through the...Heywood, Colin
-
Journal article
Public revisions or private responses? The oddities of BL, Arundel MS. 197, with special reference to Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God
ARUNDEL 197 is a curious manuscript. Dating from the third quarter of the fifteenth century, it is a small volume of seventy-three folios, measuring 192 x 132 mm, very plain, without decoration, and showing no signs of ownership from the medieval period. The volume once belonged to Henry Howard, Duke...Connolly, Margaret
-
Journal article
British foreign policy and international affairs during Sir William Trumbull's career
SIR William Trumbull served as envoy, and subsequently as Secretary of State, during a period of major change in Britain's international position. He was Ambassador Extraordinary to Louis XIV of France from 2 September 1685 to 12 October 1686, and then Resident Ambassador at Constantinople from November 1686 to October...Black, Jeremy
-
Journal article
'Party rage and faction' - the view from Fulham, Scotland Yard and the Temple: parliament in the letters of Thomas Bateman and John and Ralph Bridges to Sir William Trumbull, 1710-1714
NOT until as late as 1909, with the inauguration of the fifth series of Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, did Parliament employ its own staif to produce the daily reports of its proceedings. Before that date the work had been contracted out to various printers, who employed their own staff or shared...Jones, Clyve
-
Journal article
'The collection of Marat's bibliographer' at the British Library
'TELL me what you do and I shall tell you who you are.' We are reminded of this saying when considering the personality of Francois Chevremont, an enthusiastic collector, a scholar and the author of two works on Jean-Paul Marat. From 1845 onwards throughout fifty years of patient research, Chevremont...Cock, Jacques de
-
Journal article
The Apocalypse, British Library, Royal MS. 19 B. XV: a reassessment of its artistic context in early fourteenth century English manuscript illumination
THE Apocalypse, British Library, Royal MS. 19 B. XV, is traditionally attributed to the workshop which produced Queen Mary's Psalter, BL, Royal MS. 2 B. VII; indeed, the first sixteen folios have been assigned to the Queen Mary Artist himself. For example, Sandier has recently written that 'the gatherings by...Dennison, Lynda
-
Journal article
Ramon Miquel y Planas and his Biblioteca catalana: medievalism, publishing and bibliophilia in early twentieth-century Barcelona
RAMON Miquel y Planas (1874-1950) was the complete bookman. He published on the history of texts, binding, printing and bookplates; folklore and criticism of contemporary literature; preceptive works on publishing; and on the normalization of Catalan. His most enduring works, however, are his editions of medieval and Renaissance texts in...Taylor, Barry
-
Journal article
Twentieth century Italian imprints
PRINTING with movable type was introduced into Italy in 1465 by two Germans, Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, who printed the first Italian book, Lactantius's De Divinis Institutionibus at the Monastery of Subiaco near Rome. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, Italian printers had earned an unrivalled reputation for...Reidy, Denis
-
Journal article
Recent acquisitions: manuscripts: eighteenth-century papers
THIS article seeks to draw attention to three valuable collections recently acquired by the British Library. Each contains correspondence that throws much light on a prominent individual, in the first case William Pitt the Elder, first Earl of Chatham, in the other two George III. Taking these collections in chronological...Black, Jeremy
-
Journal article
'The honourable sisterhood': Queen Anne's maids of honour
WHEN Sir Charles Sedley asked a new arrival among the maids of honour at the Restoration court whether she intended to set up as 'a Beauty, a Miss [mistress], a Wit or a Politician', he was acknowledging, in his unregenerate way, that these posts could offer considerable scope for a...Harris, Frances
-
Journal article
Some classified catalogues of the Cottonian Library
COLIN Tite has recently drawn our attention to the many manuscript catalogues of the Cotton collection copied in the seventeenth century and has initiated a reconsideration of their role in our understanding of the formation and early history of the Cottonian Library. It is my intention here to consider a...Teviotdale, E. C.
-
Journal article
The role of the wax tablet in medieval literacy: a reconstruction in light of a recent find from York
MOST scholars are aware of the major role played by writing tablets as a vehicle for informal composition, learning exercises, note-taking, correspondence, accounting and document-production during Antiquity. Fewer, perhaps, are familiar with the extension and modification of their use throughout the Middle Ages (and indeed even until the nineteenth century...Brown, Michelle P.
-
Journal article
English bookbindings: additions to the collections 1975-1985
DURING the ten years from 1975 to 1985, the Library has been fortunate in obtaining through purchase or gift several particularly interesting English bookbindings dating from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.Marks, Philippa
-
Journal article
A glimpse above the clouds: the Japanese Court in 1859
THOSE of us seeing pictures of the recent enthronement of the 125th Emperor of Japan on television or in the newspapers might have been forgiven for thinking that we were seeing a Heian picture scroll come to life. The ceremonies serve to remind us of the great antiquity of the...Todd, Hamish
-
Journal article
The elder William Trumbull: a biographical sketch
THE papers of William Trumbull the elder (d. 1635) are celebrated among readers of this journal as the most expensive section of the most expensive archive purchased up to that time by the British Library. Their historical value is equally well known. A glance at the catalogue prepared by Peter...Anderson, Sonia P.
-
Journal article
An internecine administrative feud of the Commonwealth: Thomason Tract 669.f.20(18)
IN the Thomason collection of tracts from the Civil War and Interregnum held in the British Library there exists a single sheet, annotated 'A paper from ye first frutits office about payinge ye first fruits', printed for Thomas Baker, Deputy Remembrancer and Receiver of First Fruits and Tenths, in November...Carter, Patrick
-
Journal article
From copy to facsimile: a millennium of studying the Vatican Vergil
BOOKS do have their fate. When it was produced in Rome sometime around A.D. 400, presumably for a wealthy pagan aristocrat of the old school, the manuscript we know as the Vatican Vergil (Vat. lat. 3225) was a nice book for a gentleman's library, but not an extraordinary artistic accomplishment....Wright, David H.
-
Journal article
Images of the Ottoman Empire: the photograph albums presented by Sultan Abdülhamid II
ONE of the treasures of the British Library's Turkish collections is the magnificent set of fifty-one ornately bound albums, containing in all over 1,800 photographs (albumen prints), which the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II presented to the British Museum in 1893 and were received in 1894. (An almost identical set was...Waley, Muhammad Isa
-
Journal article
The Royal Library as a source for Sir Robert Cotton's collection: a preliminary list of acquisitions
PUBLIC Record Office, Augmentation Office, Misc. Books 160 (E. 315/160), ff. 107v-120r, contains an alphabetical list of 910 books, printed and manuscript, found in the Upper Library at Westminster Palace in 1542. At approximately the same time the inventory was compiled, so it would appear, a number was entered into...Carley, James P.
-
Journal article
Cotton's counsels: the contexts of Cottoni Posthuma
COTTON'S name is constantly alluded to in books on antiquarianism, history, genealogy, topography and law published in the first three decades of the seventeenth century. Invariably these references to 'my worthy friend', the honoured, the learned, the worshipful Sir Robert Cotton, are accompanied by expressions of gratitude for his generosity...Parry, Graham
-
Journal article
Books seen by Samuel Ward 'In Bibliotheca regia' circa 1614
As early as the 1530s the antiquary John Leland (1503?-1552) envisaged the establishment of some sort of royal library, designed as a repository for the manuscript collections being removed from their previous monastic homes. From the period in which Leland was gathering, there is one particularly valuable piece of evidence:...Carley, James P.
-
Journal article
Sir Robert Cotton's record of a royal bookshelf
OUR knowledge of the early history of the English royal library, conveniently sketched out by Warner and Gilson in 1921, has been considerably amplified in recent years. An edition of the vital Westminster library catalogue of 1542 is now in preparation and will be of major advantage to future students....Backhouse, Janet
-
Journal article
Sir Robert Cotton and the commemoration of famous men
THIS article is concerned with the interest Sir Robert Cotton took in the funerary monument as shown by a group of tombs and epitaphs which he had erected in All Saints, Conington, Huntingdonshire, probably circa 1613-15. The appearance and placing of these were influenced by Cotton's views on the use...Howarth, David
-
Journal article
The 'Tregian' manuscripts: a study of their compilation
BETWEEN 1609 and 1619, during his confinement in the Fleet Prison, in London, Francis Tregian the younger, a Cornish Roman Catholic recusant, has hitherto been thought to have compiled an important group of music anthologies. These comprise the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book: Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum Mus. MS. 168; British Library, Egerton...Thompson, Ruby Reid
-
Journal article
Count Lodovico Nogarola and the divorce of Catherine of Aragon
BORN of an ancient noble family of Verona, Count Lodovico Nogarola died in 1554: the year of his birth seems to be unrecorded. Of his many writings a large number remained unpublished. The short book with which the present article deals was evidently his first venture into print.Rhodes, Dennis E.
-
Journal article
The Swiss Civil War of 1712 in contemporary sources
IN 1991 the British Library mounted an exhibition, 'Switzerland 700', to coincide with the seventh centenary celebrations of the Swiss Confederation. One of the items on display was Die edle Friedens-Lust ('The noble joys of peace'), a poem commemorating the conclusion of a formal peace between the Abbot of St...Nattrass, Graham
-
Journal article
Sir William Musgrave and British biography
THE Gentleman's Magazine carried for 3 January 1800 the following obituary: 'At his house in Park-place, St. James's, Sir W[illia]m Musgrave, bart. V.P.R.S. and F.A.S., a trustee of the British Museum, formerly a commissioner of his Majesty's customs, and afterwards an auditor of the public accompts; in both which situations...Griffiths, Antony
-
Journal article
An archive of the 1989 Chinese Pro-Democracy Movement
A collection of photocopies of leaflets relating to the Spring 1989 Pro-Democracy Movement in China has been assembled in Oriental and India Office Collections. Most of the original leaflets were collected in Peking by Robin Munro, who was working for Amnesty International at the time and is now a member...Bond, Sherry
-
Journal article
Colin Mackenzie: collector extraordinary
ONE of the most wide ranging collections ever to reach the Library of the East India Company is formed by the manuscripts, translations, plans, and drawings of Colin Mackenzie, an officer of the Madras Engineers and, at the time of his death in 1821, Surveyor-General of India. Mackenzie spent a...Blake, David M.
-
Journal article
The British Museum Library and colonial copyright deposit
THE full story of colonial legal deposit has not yet been written and with the scattered and incomplete nature of the records may never be wholly recounted. What follows in this and in a subsequent article on 'The British Museum Library and the India Office' is an outline of the...Sternberg, Ilse
-
Journal article
Malay manuscript art: the British Library collections
MANUSCRIPTS written in the Malay language originate from throughout the Malay archipelago, the area occupied by the present-day nations of Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore and the southern, ethnically Malay, regions of Thailand and the Philippines. Malay manuscripts are usually written on imported paper of European, Chinese or Indian manufacture in...Gallop, Annabel Teh
-
Journal article
'Importunate cries of misery': the correspondence of Lucius Henry Hibbins and the Duke of Newcastle, 1741-58
DEEP in the papers of the Duke of Newcastle, the Whig 'ecclesiastical minister', lie the thirty or so letters written by the Rev. Dr Lucius Henry Hibbins to the Duke from 1741 onwards. It is a remarkable collection, spanning eighteen years, and one overlooked by historians who have considered Newcastle's...Gibson, William T.
-
Journal article
Two unrecorded incunables: Rouen, circa 1497, and Lyons, circa 1500
FOR a number of years, I have been re-examining the British Library's books printed in France between 1501 and 1520 for a typographical catalogue of the Library's French post-incunables. This catalogue is a revision of the unpublished manuscript of Col. Frank Isaac's Index to the British [Museum] Library's books printed...Shaw, David J.
-
Journal article
Camden, Cotton and the chronicles of the Norman Conquest of England
The collaboration between William Camden (1551-1623), the Clarenceux King of Arms, and his pupil Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631) in antiquarian studies is well known. Whereas Camden developed the principles on which the study of history should be based. Cotton provided the raw material by gathering together what, judged by quality...Houts, Elisabeth M. C. van
-
Journal article
Guglielmo Libri and the British Museum: a case of scandal averted
IN December 1845 Antonio Panizzi, Keeper of Printed Books in the British Museum, sat down at his desk to answer a letter from his friend, the distinguished professor at the Sorbonne and the College de France, Guglielmo Libri. His fellow expatriate, a bibliophile of note, had informed him of his...Maccioni, P. Alessandra
-
Journal article
Sir Robert Cotton, antiquarianism and estate administration: a Chancery Decree of 1627
THE Chancery Decree of 5 November 1627, found on Public Record Office, Chancery Decree Roll, C. 78/300/1, is a lengthy, but very interesting document, consisting of eleven membranes of a parchment roll. It illustrates an aspect of Sir Robert Cotton's antiquarian researches, which has been but little investigated. The document...Manning, Roger B.
-
Journal article
Isaac Bernard: Prague Jew, jeweller, mintmaster and spy
IN his 'Catalogus Brevior' (1709-24), the text of which now constitutes the first part of the existing Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts, Robert Harley's librarian, Humfrey Wanley hesitantly - and ambiguously - recorded that a Hebrew cabbalistic work, now Harleian MS. 1204, was 'ut accepi, a quodam Isaaco Bernard, Judaeo...Barber, Peter
-
Journal article
Kaempfer's album of famous sights of seventeenth-century Japan
WITHIN the covers of a large and weighty album bound in western style and preserved in The (Western) Manuscript Collections of the British Library (Add. MS. 5252; bearing Sloane's old classification 'Bibliothecae Sloanianae Min. 47') are to be found three groups of curiously varied material. The first consists of a...Brown, Yu-Ying
-
Journal article
The British Museum Library and the India Office
SOME five years after an encouraging approach to the Colonial Office concerning colonial copyright deposit, an active Trustee of the British Museum and a personal friend of Panizzi, Lord Elgin, was appointed as Viceroy of India. Winter Jones quickly reminded the Principal Librarian of 'a conversation Mr. Watts and myself...Sternberg, Ilse
-
Journal article
London, Bengal, the China trade and the unfrequented extremities of Asia: the East India Company's settlement in New Guinea, 1793-95
ON 25 October 1793 an Englishman, Captain John Hayes, hoisted the British flag at Dore Bay on the north-west coast of New Guinea, near present-day Manokwariin Irian Jaya. With appropriate ceremony a twenty-one gun salute was fired and Hayes, on behalf of the King and nation of Great Britain, took...Griffin, Andrew
-
Journal article
A catalogue of Sir Robert Cotton's printed books?
THE inventory of the goods and chattels of Sir Robert Cotton taken on 20 May 1631, two weeks after his death, records that the upper study at Cotton House, Westminster, was furnished, inter alia, with 'i iron prese & ix presses with printed bookes'. This brief reference draws attention to...Daniels, Morna
-
Journal article
The great gun at Agra
IN 1974 there appeared on the London art market two bound volumes of watercolours entitled 'Views by Seeta Ram from Moorshedabad to Patna. Vol. V and 'Views by Seeta Ram from Secundra to Agra. Vol. IX'. Each of these volumes contained twenty-three large watercolours, normally on paper watermarked 'John Dickinson...Losty, J. P.
-
Journal article
Egerton MSS. 302 and 303: a Spanish chronicle cycle and its history
IMPORTANT works of late medieval Spanish historiography are contained in the sixteenth-century manuscripts from the British Library which are the subject of this study. The reign of Enrique IV, from 1454 to 1474, is the subject of the Memorial de diversas hazañas by Mosen Diego de Valera, which occupies Egerton...Hook, David
-
Journal article
An autobiographical ballad by Matthew Prior
IN the most recent edition of Prior's works, the editors asserted their confidence that, while Prior was a parliamentary prisoner, he composed a poem reflecting some of the circumstances of his confinement and his first acquaintance with Elizabeth Cox, the mistress of his later years. However, the only vestige of...Wright, H. Bunker ; Wright, Deborah Kempf
-
Journal article
A binding by the Scales Binder, circa 1456-65
THE main centres of English bookbinding during the second half of the fifteenth century were London, Oxford and Cambridge. Although a fair number of plain leather bindings of this period have survived, fewer than a dozen binderies producing tooled leather bindings are known to have started work before 1475. Possibly...Foot, Mirjam M.