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Journal article
Provenance Confirmed for the Dismembered Breviary of the Cathedral of Agen (1297-1313): Add. MS. 42132
The Breviary of the cathedral of Agen, one of the most monumental witnesses of illumination in the South-West of France around 1300, has been dismembered and is currently preserved in four different places. The Southern French origin of these fragments is beyond doubt, but the recent history of the manuscript...Nadal, Émilie
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Journal article
The Riverside Mansions and Tombs of Agra: New Evidence from a Panoramic Scroll Recently Acquired by The British Library
The riverfront at Agra once formed one of the great sights of Mughal India. As well as the fort and the Taj Mahal, both banks of the River Yamuna were lined with great mansions, palatial garden houses and imperial gardens. When the Mughal capital was moved the Delhi in 1648,...Koch, Ebba ; Losty, J. P.
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Journal article
The Shorthand of Robert Willis, Physician-in-Extraordinary to King George III
The shorthand used by Robert Willis in documents within the Library’s Willis Papers collection is identified as a system similar to William Fordyce Mavor’s late eighteenth-century Universal Stenography but departing from it in some key respects. Transcriptions are provided of BL, Add. MS. 41734 – Willis’s memorandum of events between...Underhill, Timothy ; Peters, Timothy
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Journal article
J. G. Ballard’s ‘Crash! A Science Theatre Presentation for the ICA’: The context of a lost document recovered
In the spring of 1968, J. G. Ballard drafted an eight-page outline for a multi-media 'science theatre presentation' called 'Crash!' It was to be performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). Although the event was teasingly promoted in a full-page feature in the Sunday Mirror newspaper ('A Star Role...Beckett, Chris
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Journal article
Recent Acquisitions: a Rare Work by Jacobus Tevius
Jacobus Tevius (Diogo de Tieve) is a key figure in the Portuguese Renaissance. This note describes the contents of his Epodon siue Ia(m)bicorum carminum libri tres [...] Ad Sebastianum primum, inuictissimum Lusitaniae Regem (Lisbon: Francisco Correia, 1565) and examines the author's contacts with courtly and scholarly circles in sixteenth-century Portugal...Taylor, Barry
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Journal article
The Date and Context of Robert of Torigni's Chronica in London, British Library, Cotton MS. Domitian A. VIII, ff. 71r-94v
This article establishes a precise date and context for British Library, Cotton MS. Domitian A. VIII, ff. 71r-94v, a copy of Robert of Torigni’s Chronica that was despatched from Mont-Saint-Michel to the Norman abbey of Le Bec during the early 1180s. Based on a palaeographical and codicological examination of MS....Pohl, Benjamin
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Journal article
Black English in Britain in the Eighteenth Century
In eighteenth-century Britain, several works of imaginative literature by white authors included black characters speaking the form of English, largely a British West Indian creole, which would have been heard in everyday real life from members of the growing black population; samples are presented in chronological order.Paisey, David
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Journal article
Willie King: One of Angus Wilson's 'Old Men at the Zoo'
From 1937 until 1955, when he left to write full-time, Angus Wilson worked in the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum. His 1961 novel, The Old Men at the Zoo, was a roman à clef based on many of the people he had known there. The character of...Wright, C. J.
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Journal article
Eight Twelfth-Century Charters from the Norman Abbey of Saint-Étienne de Caen, c.1120–1204 (London, British Library, Add. Chs. 67574–67581) – A Catalogue and Commentary
This article provides the first comprehensive study and edition of eight original charters from the Abbey of Saint-Étienne de Caen in Lower Normandy (founded by William the Conqueror in 1063), kept today in the British Library (Add. Chs. 67574–67581). These charters form part of a larger diplomatic corpus that once...Pohl, Benjamin
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Journal article
Forewarned and Forearmed: Contents of BL, Cotton MS. Titus A. XXV, ff. 94-105
Cotton MS. Titus A. XXV is a composite codex of several unrelated booklets, one of which has gone largely unnoticed and unexplored. The single gathering of ff. 94-105, preserves a fifteenth-century copy of political prophecy, five short pieces of prophetic and devotional material, and one of the three surviving examples...Geldof, M R
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Journal article
The Letters of Shen Fuzong to Thomas Hyde, 1687-88
The earliest surviving direct correspondence of a learned nature between a Chinese person and an Englishman comprises several letters sent between May 1687 and February 1688 by a young Christian convert from Nanjing, Michael Shen Fuzong (c. 1658-1691), to the Oxonian oriental scholar and librarian Thomas Hyde (1636-1704). This correspondence...Poole, William
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Journal article
Parody Playbills: The Politics of the Playbill in Britain in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Recent scholarship on the British culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has explored the theatricality of politics and the politics of theatre. This essay examines the parody, mock or spoof theatre playbill – an ephemeral text often used for political purposes – during general elections, in Britain in the...Gregory, James
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Journal article
Embedded Marginalia in the Psalter and Hours of Humphrey de Bohun (British Library, Egerton MS. 3277)
The phrase 'embedded marginalia' refers to images on the pages of medieval manuscripts that are beyond the text block in both a physical and conceptual sense but integrated nevertheless in the form and meaning of the page as a whole. This study is focused on the many examples of embedded...Sandler, Lucy Freeman
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Journal article
The Incunabula of Sir Charles Frederick
This study identifies the twenty-two incunables collected by the politician and antiquary Sir Charles Frederick (1709-1785) and listed in the sales catalogue of his library.Rhodes, Dennis E.
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A History of the British Library Slavonic and East European Collections: 1952-2004
Using and complementing material gathered as part of the British Library Slavonic and East European Department oral history interviews project, this article studies the provision of Slavonic and East European materials in the British (Museum) Library since the establishment of the Slavonic Department in 1952.Grba, Milan
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Journal article
Raja Jivan Ram: A Professional Indian Portrait Painter of the Early Nineteenth Century
The painter Jivan Ram is referenced in 19th-century European publications on India, but little of his work was known from actual examples. He was the first Indian artist totally to abandon the traditional techniques of Indian miniatures and instead to work fully in European techniques of oil painting and portrait...Losty, J. P.
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Journal article
An Unusual Position of Watermarks in an Italian Eighteenth-Century Paper
Positions of watermarks in laid paper can vary, but normally fall within a few patterns. This note examines the watermarks in the paper used in two quarto books in the British Library printed by G. F. Mairesse and G. Radix of Turin in 1713 and 1717. These watermarks fall in...Dumontet, Carlo
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Journal article
Whose Acquisitions Policy? Panizzi and his Predecessors
Among his many accomplishments Sir Anthony Panizzi is generally credited with devising the acquisitions policy that led to the superior position of the British Museum amongst world libraries. A notable document was his 'On the Collection of Printed Books at the British Museum' of 1845. However, he was not without...Sternberg, Ilse
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Journal article
Books Fit for a King: The Presentation Copies of Martin Bucer's De regno Christi (London, British Library, Royal MS. 8 B. VII) and Johannes Sturm's De periodis (Cambridge, Trinity College, II.12.21 and London, British Library, C.24.e.5)
This article discusses the presentation copies of two sixteenth-century works, Martin Bucer’s De regno Christi and Johannes Sturm’s De periodis, both of which were sent in fine copies by Bucer to John Cheke in 1550. The covering letter that accompanied these books survives today at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, whilst...Pohl, Benjamin ; Tether, Leah
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Journal article
Cornelius Cardew’s Music for Moving Images: Some Preliminary Observations
Cornelius Cardew’s music for moving images has so far not been written about. This might be owing to the lack of access to primary sources (films and documentaries, scores and other relevant materials). This contribution gives an overview of Cardew’s ‘film music’ projects, and considers sketches, manuscript music and other...Gresser, Clemens
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Journal article
W. Somerset Maugham’s Letters to Lady Aberconway in the British Library
The Western Manuscripts collection of the British Library possesses a series of original letters from W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) to Christabel, Lady Aberconway (1890–1974) that has not been registered in bibliographies of Maugham’s manuscripts and private letters. Maugham’s biographers only mention the relationship between the two correspondents as fellow dinner...Lee, Lilith
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Journal article
The Bestiary in British Library, Royal MS. 2 C. XII and its Role in Medieval Education
The process of medieval education is still very obscure to us, and indeed very little is known about how texts were used in schools. This is particularly true of the role and function of the influential genre of medieval bestiaries in the process of educating novices and pupils in cathedral...Dines, Ilya
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Journal article
A Place for Music: John Nash, Regent Street and the Philharmonic Society of London
The founding of the Philharmonic Society of London (from 1912 'Royal') has long been understood only in the simplest terms: in 1813 thirty musicians started a regular orchestral concert series to present the best classical works for select audiences. Two centuries later, a fresh look at circumstances and documents, some...Langley, Leanne
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Journal article
Royal MS. 20 B. XX: Alexander the Great and the Voice of the Master. Interpretation and Astrology in a Medieval Manuscript
Royal MS. 20 B. XX is a small but lavishly illuminated copy of the French prose Alexander romance made in the 1420s. Its iconography is remarkable in the medieval tradition for a number of scenes in which the illuminator has concentrated on themes of divination by means of astrology and...Pérez-Simon, Maud
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Journal article
Frechulf of Lisieux's Historiarum libri XII, I.ii.17 in Royal MS. 13 A. xxii
Royal MS. 13 A. xxii contains a copy of Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum, a short text commonly attributed to Josephus, and an eleventh-century Latin poem. Despite the attribution of the penultimate text to Josephus, it is actually the opening section of Frechulf of Lisieux's Historiae I.ii.17 (lines 1–101). Though...Major, Tristan
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Journal article
Psalterium in quatuor linguis: Hebraea, Graeca, Chaldaea [i.e. Ethiopic], Latina (Cologne, 1518). Baltic Trade and Cultural Connections: Evidence from the Paper
The archiving and study of images of the watermarks in the British Library’s three copies of Psalterium in quatuor linguis: Hebraea, Graeca, Chaldaea [i.e. Ethiopic], Latina (Cologne, 1518) enables close comparison to be made of the make up of the books. Access to the Bernstein on-line database of watermarks indicates...Christie-Miller, Ian
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Journal article
Feo Belcari's Rappresentazione di Abramo Offset in Phalaris's Epistolae: Adventures of a Florentine Incunabulum
How did offset text from Feo Belcari's Rappresentazione d'Abramo find its way onto four pages of the British Library's copy of Phalaris's Epistolae (IA.29368) printed in Naples c. 1474? This article identifies the source of the offset text as the Florence 1490 edition now in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Palatino...Newbigin, Nerida
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Journal article
St Edward’s Chair in the Queen Mary Psalter
The Queen Mary Psalter (British Library, Royal MS. 2 B. VII), probably made c. 1310-20 for a royal recipient, is among the most lavishly illuminated manuscripts produced in late medieval England. This study focuses principally on a single picture in the Psalter’s Old Testament preface showing the prophet Nathan’s reproof...Smith, Kathryn A.
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The Dawson Turner Collection of Printed Ephemera and Great Yarmouth
This article provides an introduction to an important collection of printed ephemera held at the British Library and created by Dawson Turner (1775-1858). This ten-volume collection was acquired by the British Museum in 1859 and 1873 and is significant as it includes a wealth of material relating to life at...Boneham, John
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The Opening of the Impeachment of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, June to September 1715: The 'Memorandum' of William Wake, Bishop of Lincoln
July 2015 is the tercentenary of the opening of the impeachment of Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, for high treason and criminal misdemeanours together with three other leading figures of Harley's ministry of 1710-14: Bolingbroke, Ormond and Strafford. William Wake, bishop of Lincoln since 1705, and soon to be promoted...Jones, Clyve
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Journal article
Reflections on 'The Annotated Amleth: Belleforest in the British Library': The Identity of the Annotator
This study discusses the authorship of the manuscript annotations in the BL copy of François de Belleforest's Le Cinquiesme Livre des Histoires Tragiques (C.8.a.5).Casson, John
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Some Italian Eighteenth-Century Books Acquired by British Travellers in Italy
This article studies three Italian eighteenth-century books acquired in Italy by three British travellers: Sir Charles Frederick (1709-1785), Joseph Trapp (c. 1716-1769) and I. Teckel.Rhodes, Dennis E.
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Constructing Saint Louis in John the Good's Grandes Chroniques de France (Royal MS. 16 G. VI)
In the 1330s a new, revised, densely illuminated copy of the Grandes Chroniques de France was made for the John, the dauphin of France who would be crowned King John the Good in 1350. Containing a twice-revised text and over 400 one- and two-column wide illuminations, the chronicle breaks from...Hedeman, Anne D.
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Journal article
Michael Renshaw: A Society Figure in War and Peace
For someone who was far from the public eye, Michael Renshaw had a remarkable circle of friends, from the aristocracy, politics, and the arts. The letters he received, donated to the British Library in 2008, not only cast light on the lives of their famous writers and some of the...John-McAlister, Michael St
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Journal article
In a Bind: Pratt's Qui Tams and the Bookbinders' Dilemma
The BL's Jaffray Collection contains rare copies of two qui tam cases brought in 1811 and 1812 by Robert Pratt, a member of the London Society of Journeymen Bookbinders. The cases were among the last attempts to uphold the Elizabethan statute of apprentices. They offer telling insight into a trade...Hill, Jonathan E.
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Paris National and International Exhibitions from 1798 to 1900: A Finding-List of British Library Holdings
The series of exhibitions which were held in Paris from the end of the eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth gave rise to a rich collection of publications, often illustrated, ranging from maps and guide books to catalogues, official reports and volumes of reflections. This article gives a brief history...Daniels, Morna
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Journal article
Additions to the Library of William Dowsing (1596-1668): A Reformation Tract Volume Reassembled
This article identifies several volumes from the library of the seventeenth-century puritan William Dowsing (1596-1668). Dowsing is primarily known for the campaign of iconoclasm which he conducted in East Anglia between late 1643 and 1644 and for the journal in which he kept a detailed record of these activities. This...Roberts, Dunstan
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Journal article
The Manuscripts of Jan van Naaldwijk’s Chronicles of Holland, Cotton MSS. Vitellius F. XV and Tiberius C. IV
London, British Library, Cotton MSS. Vitellius F. XV and Tiberius C. IV are the autograph manuscripts of two chronicles of Holland by Jan van Naaldwijk, the son of a Dutch nobleman, written between 1513 and c. 1520. Renewed investigation of the manuscripts shows they came into the possession of Sir...Levelt, Sjoerd
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Journal article
A Royal Crusade History: The Livre d'Eracles and Edward IV's Exile in Burgundy
The English King Edward IV (1442-83) had multiple political, familial, and cultural connections with the Flanders-based court of Burgundy headed by Duke Charles the Bold, including Edward's sister Margaret of York's marriage to Charles, Edward's induction into the Burgundian Order of the Golden Fleece, and his five-month exile in Burgundy...Donovan, Erin K.
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Intelligent by Design: The Manuscripts of Walter of Whittlesey, Monk of Peterborough
This article examines two important fourteenth-century manuscripts containing historical and other texts from Peterborough Abbey, both made for a monk named Walter of Whittlesey (Add. MS. 37958 and Add. MS. 47170). It reviews the biographical evidence for Whittlesey, the muddied issue of his role in the manuscripts' production, and also...Luxford, Julian
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The National Printed Archive from Panizzi’s Time to the Digital Era
We have tended to view the modern development of the national research library and printed archive in the West in terms of a sequence of conspicuous innovators: Panizzi, Althoff and Harnack , Putnam and Evans, Francis and Hookway. Such a sequence can be best understood if it is seen as...Willison, I. R.
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Journal article
Humfrey Wanley and the Harley Collection
In the field of manuscript studies, the name Humfrey Wanley (1672-1726) is well known. Scholars have long recognized his achievements as Anglo-Saxonist, antiquarian, palaeographer, cataloguer, and librarian to Robert Harley and his son, Edward, 1st and 2nd earls of Oxford, who created one of the most outstanding private libraries in...Jackson, Deirdre
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Journal article
Destroyed, Damaged and Replaced: The Legacy of World War II Bomb Damage in the King's Library
In the early hours of 23 September 1940, an incendiary bomb fell on the East Wing of the British Museum, damaging an important part of the King's Library Gallery and destroying many of the books collected by King George III. A contemporary assessment estimated that 124 volumes (96 works) had...Edwards, Adrian S.
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Journal article
Matthew Paris, Visual Exegesis, and Apocalyptic Birds in Royal MS. 14 C. VII
This article argues that the prefatory maps in Royal MS. 14 C. VII act as a visual distillation of the vast system of emblems in the margins of the other Chronica Majora manuscripts. Recently, scholars have discussed Matthew Paris’s visual marginalia as reading devices and finding aids that distill sections...Kim, Dorothy
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Journal article
Harley MS. 3469: Splendor Solis or Splendour of the Sun – A German Alchemical Manuscript
‘Splendor Solis or Splendour of the Sun’ is one of the most beautiful and well known illuminated alchemical manuscripts. The text survives in many witnesses dating from the early sixteenth to the nineteenth century, of which Harl. MS. 3469 is definitely the most famous and best preserved example. Yet the...Völlnagel, Jörg
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Journal article
Accounts of Debates in the House of Commons, March-April 1731, Supplementary to the Diary of the First Earl of Egmont
John Perceval (1685–1748), 1st Viscount Perceval and (from 1733) 1st Earl of Egmont, was an assiduous recorder of his own life and times. His diaries, published by the Historical Manuscripts Commission from manuscripts in the British Library, are the best source for parliamentary debates at Westminster in the 1730s. For...Hayton, D. W.
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Journal article
The Making of L'Abreujamen de las estorias (Egerton MS. 1500)
L’Abreujamen de las estorias (BL, Egerton MS. 1500) is an Occitan diagrammatic chronicle executed in Avignon in 1321-24. It is composed of synchronic tables, regnal lists and genealogical diagrams, and is illustrated with more than sixteen-hundred miniature busts. Written instructions, corrections, sketches and unfinished miniatures attest to different stages in...Botana, Federico
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Journal article
The Westminster Tournament Challenge (Harley 83 H 1) and Thomas Wriothesley's Workshop
On the twelfth and thirteenth of February, 1511 Henry VIII held a tournament to celebrate the birth of his first son, Prince Arthur. The tournament is famously immortalized in the Westminster Tournament Roll (London, College of Arms, Westminster Tournament Roll) – a 60-foot long vellum roll that was painted soon...Walker, Alison Tara
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Journal article
The Discovery of a Watermark on the St Cuthbert Gospel using Colour Space Analysis
Watermarks on paper attached to substrates through which light cannot pass can be observed by converting a high resolution digital image of the region into a suite of colour spaces. An image is comprised of a variety of layers or textures which can be separated. This allows pixels of interest...Duffy, Christina
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Journal article
Understanding a Selection of Medical, Theological and Poetic Diagrams in a Thirteenth-Century Book of Biblical Commentaries: British Library, Harley MS. 658
British Library, Harley MS. 658 is a miscellany of study aids for the Bible from the early thirteenth century, bound together with a collection of scientific, poetic and theological diagrams. The texts were written by different scribes probably at separate times and places, but, apart from two texts at the...Corran, Emily