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Journal article
New light on Richard Steele
Richard Steele (1672-1729) has been studied so extensively that new factual information on the essayist and playwright is generally a consequence of accidental discovery. The following evidence was unearthed in the course of unrelated research amongst the archival records of Augustan and Georgian Britain.Alsop, J. D.
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England's Populist Pindars
During the Regency of 1811-1820 English readers were regularly and abundantly supplied with racy narrative poems that digested and satirized the news of the day, poems with such titles as The Royal Brood, The Cork Rump, A Peep at the Pavilion, The Disappointed Duke, and The German Sausages. Many of...Jackson, H. J.
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Journal article
Dryden attributions and texts from Harley MS. 6054
In a footnote to the long and scholarly biography with which in 1800 Edmond Malone prefaced his edition of Dryden's prose he drew attention to a couplet preserved in a manuscript verse-miscellany in the British Museum Library.Kelliher, Hilton
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Photographs in the British Library of documents and manuscripts from Sir Aurel Stein's fourth Central Asian expedition
ON 1 September 1995, shortly before I returned to China from a visit to the British Library on a British Academy K. C. Wong Fellowship, a box containing photographs of documents and manuscripts from Sir Aurel Stein's fourth Central Asian expedition(1930-1) was rediscovered in the Oriental and India Office Collections...Jiqing, Wang
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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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'Rise and shine!': the birth of the glossy magazine
BOTH as a field of study and as a reflective resource for the investigation of other topics, popular magazines are a sorely neglected medium. Few librarians want to keep them and an even smaller number of academics use them. Students of print culture oscillate in their affiliations between the poles...Reed, David
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Journal article
Post-war Philippine fiction in English
PHILIPPINE fiction in English is one of the many consequences of Spain's cession of the islands to the United States after the war of 1898. The coming of the Americans introduced a new language and a new culture to the people. During the early part of the twentieth century Spanish...Sarvia, Illa
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Journal article
Further Sources for the Swiss Civil War of 1712 in the British Library's Collections
The British Library's early collections are extremely rich in ephemeral, popular and small-scale printed works from many parts of the German-speaking world, not least from Switzerland, a point illustrated by an article by the present author which appeared in the Spring 1993 issue under the title 'The Swiss Civil War...Nattrass, Graham
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Journal article
A Korean Buddhist illuminated manuscript
DURING the selection of manuscripts for loan to the 'Arts of Korea' Gallery which opened in the British Museum in July 1997, a richly decorated Korean Buddhist sutra copied in gold pigment around 1390 was identified, conserved and prepared for display. The manuscript seems to have received little attention since...McKillop, Beth
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Journal article
Closely observed China: from William Alexander's sketches to his published work
WHEN Lord Macartney led the first British Embassy to China from 1792 to 1794, he and his entourage travelled largely by boat, even after their arrival in China. They proceeded up the coast in their flotilla and disembarked at the mouth of the Bei river, to transfer to smaller, flat-bottomed...Wood, Frances
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Journal article
The Covenant of the League of Nations
1995 saw the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the founding of the United Nations. Those in attendance had much with which to congratulate themselves: despite the inevitable controversies, the successes of the United Nations, and particularly those of its humanitarian agencies, represented a significant improvement on the work of its predecessor,...Ridgley, Gillian
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Journal article
The Tyson Collection
IN 1961 an article appeared in a musical journal proving that two piano trios usually accepted without question as Haydn's were in fact by Ignaz Pleyel. The author was Alan Tyson, who for the next thirty years was to play a leading role in scholarly research into music of the...Neighbour, O. W.
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Journal article
James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps and the British Museum Library
IN an address on the Halliwell-Phillipps collection delivered before the Pennsylvania Library Club, at the Friends' Library, Philadelphia, on Monday, 14 January 1895, Albert H. Smyth, Professor of the English Language and Literature, Central High School, Philadelphia, no librarian and therefore 'rather reminiscent than doctrinaire', raised the curtain thus: "For...Spevack, Marvin
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Journal article
The Perfect Scribe and an early engraved Esther scroll
THE origins of the tradition of decorating Esther scrolls for Purim are shrouded in mystery. Esther scrolls, also known by the Hebrew term Megillot (sing.: Megillah,''scroll") are copies of the Biblical book of Esther, transcribed on parchment scrolls to be read publicly on the feast of Purim, the anniversary of...Frojmovic, Eva
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Journal article
Patronage and Connection: The Career of the Rev. William Talbot (1720-1811), Chancellor of Salisbury
William Talbot, Chancellor of Salisbury Cathedral from 1771 to 1811, has been unknown to history, other than by his entry in Alumni Cantabrigienses which records that he was a native of Odel, Bedfordshire, educated at Oakham School, served as a sizar at Clare College, Cambridge from 1738, and having graduated...Gibson, William T.
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Journal article
The photographs from Stein's fourth expedition: a footnote
WHEN Wang Jiqing prepared his report on the photographs of the missing artefacts from Sir Aurel Stein's Fourth Central Asian Expedition, it was generally believed that the original negatives, from which the 'improved' versions were made at the Thomason College at Roorkee, had been lost. By coincidence, the recent detailed...Falconer, John
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Journal article
Kenneth B. Gardner (1924-1995)
It is fitting that this issue of the British Library Journal, devoted to the East Asian collections, should open with an appreciation of the late Kenneth Gardner. Prior to his retirement in 1986, Ken had held distinguished posts for thirty-one years in the British Museum and British Library, including the...Brown, Yu-Ying
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Journal article
An unrecognized novelist: Frances Jacson (1754-1842)
ACCORDING to its General Catalogue the British Library possesses among its holdings of late eighteenth-century/early nineteenth-century novels seven by the minor writer Alethea Lewis. On their acquisition they were entered by title only as of uncertain authorship, but subsequently all were attributed to her. In reality, Alethea Lewis is the...Percy, Joan
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Journal article
The Garendon cartularies in BL, Landsowne 415
THE period of maximum productivity of extant cartularies occurred in the second half of the thirteenth century, so that part of the interest of the Garendon texts in the Lansdowne volume lies in their compilation in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. Their broadly topographical arrangement conforms to the...Postles, David
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Journal article
The rediscovery of Margery Kempe: a footnote
THE year 1934 was truly an annus mirabilis for English literary studies, when over the space of three months during the summer and autumn unique manuscripts of three major works were brought to light. In July came the announcement by Walter Oakeshott of his discovery in the Fellows Library at...Kelliher, Hilton
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Journal article
An old Spanish tale from Add. Ms. 14040, flf. 113r-114v: 'Exenplo que acaesçio en tierra de Damasco a la buena duenna climeçia que avia veynte annos e la mecia en cuna'
THE main body of Add. MS. 14040 contains three translations into Castilian: Ramon Lull's 'Libre del gentil e los tres savis' (ff. 1-85V) in a version by Gonçalo Sanches de Useda and his 'Coment del dictat' (ff. 86r-iiir) from the Catalan, and an extract from the Flores Sancti Bernardi, probably...Taylor, Barry
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Journal article
Origins and characteristics of the Japanese Collection in the British Library
THE British Library's antiquarian Japanese collection has long been regarded as one of the finest outside Japan. Its quality and quantity are such that the descriptive catalogue compiled by my predecessor, the late Kenneth Gardner, had to be limited to pre-1700 printed books. Even then, it included 637 items of...Brown, Yu-Ying
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Journal article
Gandhi and the Indian women's movement
THE acquisition of publications from India in English is the responsibility of the British Library's Overseas English Section, together with the Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC), the Science Reference and Information Service (SRIS) and Official Publications and Social Sciences (OP&SS), and over the years material relating to Gandhi's influence...Norvell, Lyn
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A rare Wyndham Lewis pamphlet
IN January 1994 the British Library purchased at auction a copy of Wyndham Lewis's political pamphlet Anglosaxony: A League that Works (shelfmark: Cup.410.f.419.). Published 30 June 1941 in Toronto by the Ryerson Press in an edition of 1500 and priced at 75 cents, 310 copies were sold by February 1944....Egles, James
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The historical importance of the Chinese fragments from Dunhuang in the British Library
THE Dunhuang materials obtained by Sir Aurel Stein during his second and third expeditions were divided between the British Museum, the India Office and the Indian government (this final section now being in the National Museum, New Delhi). However, most of the written material remained in Britain. When the British...Xinjiang, Rong
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'Books with manuscript': the case of Thomas Cranmer's library
THE library of Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), though now widely dispersed, is a significant component of one of the main foundation collections of the present British Library - the Old Royal Library. Despite some losses through War damage and the duplicate sales of 1769 to 1819 there are still some 334...Selwyn, David G.
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Under the censor's eye: printed almanacs and censorship in ninth-century China
SEVERAL fragmentary printed almanacs dating from the ninth century were among the documents discovered in 1900 in Cave 17 at the 'Thousand Buddha' cave temple site near Dunhuang, north-west China. One fragment, now in the British Library, bears an inscription stating that it was printed in the East Market of...Whitfield, Susan
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Two manuscript maps of Nuevo Santander in Northern new Spain from the eighteenth century
IN the eighteenth century, through the occupation of Texas and Alta California and for a time parts of Louisiana and even the western side of Vancouver Island on Nootka Sound, the Spanish Empire in North America and with it Spain's imperial expansion globally attained its greatest geographical extent. After a...Reinhartz, Dennis
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Journal article
Slavery and antislavery in the United States of America
SLAVERY existed on American soil from the colonial period until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Contemporary sources of information about this 'peculiar institution' include slave narratives, journals and tracts published by abolitionist societies, travellers' reports, political speeches, religious sermons, newspaper articles and advertisements, and works of fiction....Kemble, Jean
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Journal article
A further note on 'asiantos' in Ephraem the Syrian
As a devotee of Ephraem the Syrian I recently read with great interest T. S. Pattie's welcome edition and translation of a tenth-century Greek fragment of the 'Sermo Compunctorius' (CPG 3908) which has traditionally, though probably erroneously, been attributed to St Ephraem. Whilst editing this fragment Pattie noticed that it...Taylor, David G. K.
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Journal article
The young Panizzi
ANTONIO PANIZZI was born on 16 September 1797 in Brescello, a small town at the junction of the Po and the Enza, a town so insignificant that it does not appear at all in the current Michelin guide to Italy. It lies in the fertile, but flat, Lombard plain. The...Foot, M. R. D.
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Journal article
Three modern American acquisitions
THE British Library has recently acquired three rare American items, Mark Twain's Memory Builder, Ezra Pound's A Lume Spento (Cup.410.f918) and John Ashbery's Turandot and Other Poems (YA.1997.b.3915).Digby, Andrew
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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'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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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'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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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