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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
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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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'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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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'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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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Journal article
The authorship and date of HARL. MS. 6249, ff. 106V-110
HARL. MS. 6249 contains an anonymous and undated general history of the world. Part of this manuscript is printed in Memorials of the Empire of Japan in the XVI and XVII Centuries (Hakluyt Society: London, 1850), but the editor of this book, Thomas Rundall, failed to identify its author. Quoting...Shimada, Takau
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A memento of Napoleon
ON 5 May 1821 Napoleon died in exile on his island prison of St Helena. Amongst those Englishmen particularly affected by the news was John Cam Hobhouse, the eldest son of Sir Benjamin Hobhouse. His mother was a dissenter, and Hobhouse himself had attended a school run by a Unitarian...Daniels, Morna
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Journal article
Working with Vaughan Williams: some newly discovered manuscripts
IN the Autumn of 1988 the British Library published Working with Vaughan Williams my account of eleven years spent as musical assistant to the composer, and of the friendship which grew up between us during that time. The volume prints in full seventy-four letters written to me by Vaughan Williams,...Douglas, Roy
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: music: a monument of the ancient music
THE British Library recently acquired a fine and complete copy of an important Handel collection: "Forty Eight Overtures, Composed by Handel, as Performed at the Concerts of Antient Music, Newly Arranged for the Organ or Piano Forte, with a Figured Bass for the use of the Organ, By John Watts."Pont, Graham
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Journal article
Colour notes in English Romanesque manuscripts
COLOUR notes, indicating the colour to be used, have been recorded by Patricia Stirnemann in a group of late twelfth and early thirteenth-century French manuscripts. L. Gilissen has noted two other methods for indicating colour used in a group of thirteenth-century Cistercian manuscripts. One of these consists of writing the...Petzold, Andreas
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Journal article
Two fragments from Cotton MS. Otho B. X
IN his Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon, N. R. Ker notes for British Library, Cotton MS. Otho B. X (his no. 177) that ff. 52 and 54 can not be identified. Any subsequent work by other scholars involving the use of this manuscript has also failed to identify these two...Lee, S. D.
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Journal article
The 'Sloane Group': related scientific and medical manuscripts from the fifteenth century in the Sloane Collection
IN his entry on Sir Hans Sloane in the Dictionary of National Biography, Norman Moore observed that the Sloane Manuscripts 'must always be one of the main sources of medical history in England from the time of Charles II to that of George II'. While the validity of that observation...Voigts, Linda Ehrsam
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Journal article
A friend of the Clementis
ON 10 March 1832 Muzio Clementi, 'The Father of the Pianoforte', breathed his last in the unlikely setting of Evesham in Worcestershire. The 'Land without Music' had lost its most distinguished resident foreign composer since the death of Handel over seventy years before. On 2 January, realizing that his life...Wright, C. J.
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Journal article
Swift, the Earl of Oxford, and the management of the House of Lords in 1713: two new lists
THE two lists of members of the House of Lords published here are from the Harley papers in the former Portland Loan in the British Library (Add. MS. 70305, formerly Loan 29/31/2), and are in the hand of Jonathan Swift, with additions by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford. They can...Jones, Clyve
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Journal article
James II in pursuit of a pirate at Malta
AMONGST the British Library's many manuscripts which describe Britain's long involvement with Malta and the Mediterranean, Add. MS. 19306 is interesting for several reasons. 'Wood's Journal' is evidence of how the Royal Navy's Mediterranean squadron supported and protected from piracy that English trade to the Levant which had been growing...Allen, D. F.
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Journal article
Ephraem's 'On Repentance' and the translation of the Greek text into other languages
EPHRAEM the Syrian, who died on 9 June 373 in Edessa, was a writer of prodigious output if it is true, as the church historian Sozomen tells us, that he wrote three million verses. Certainly, the Catalogues of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Library list ninety or so manuscripts which...Pattie, T. S.
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Journal article
Carolingian uncial: a context for the Lothar Psalter
IN his famous identification and dating of the Morgan Golden Gospels published in the Festschrift for Belle da Costa Greene, E. A. Lowe was quite explicit in his categorizing of Carolingian uncial as the 'invention of a display artist'. He went on to define it as an artificial script beginning...McKitterick, Rosamond
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Sir Robert Harley, K.B., (1579-1656) and the 'character' of a puritan
IN February 1621 Thomas Shepherd caused a furore in the House of Commons by attacking the bill 'for the Punishment of divers Abuses on the Sabaoth-day' at its second reading. It was, he said 'very inconvenient and indiscreete' and 'it savours of the spirrit of a Puritan', and he called...Eales, Jacqueline
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A preliminary check-list of Sir Hans Sloane's catalogues
THE purpose of this article is to provide a convenient means of locating the extant original catalogues of Sir Hans Sloane's collections. With the notable exception of Sloane's catalogue of coins and medals these have survived rather better than the collections themselves, and with their aid it is possible to...Jones, Peter Murray
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Journal article
Some officials of the early eighteenth-century Secretaries of State
PRESENT knowledge of the personnel in the offices of the Secretaries of State is dependent upon the pioneering work of J. C. Sainty whose researches provide an essential foundation for historical study of this period. In the interests of completeness, this note is intended to fill in several gaps for...Alsop, J. D.
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Recent acquisitions: manuscript collections: acquisitions January-December 1983
Recent acquisitions: manuscript collections: acquisitions January-December 1983.McKendrick, Scot
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A rebellion in Burma: the Sagaing Uprising of 1910
THIS paper examines the British reaction to a rebellion which took place in the Sagaing district of Upper Burma in November 1910. This occurred twenty-five years after the British annexation of the kingdom of Upper Burma and the deposition of King Thibaw, the last monarch of the Konbaung dynasty. It...Ashton, S. R.
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Journal article
Missing folios in Cotton MS. Nero A. I
THE manuscript, Cotton Nero A. I, has been reproduced in facsimile edition entitled: A Wulfstan Manuscript containing Institutes, Laws and Homilies: British Museum Cotton Nero A. I, recognizing its importance to Anglo-Saxonists, and, by caption, indicating its associations, and designating some of the literary production in Latin of Wulfstan and...Cross, J. E.
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Journal article
The Harley family and the Harley papers
IN 1759 John Dalrymple of Cranstoun, a Scottish observer of British politics, wrote that the English 'bore two very low men Lord Oxford [Robert Harley] and Lord Orford [Sir Robert Walpole] long to reign over them, who had nothing but their own abilitys and their princes favour to support them,...Jones, Clyve
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Journal article
An old Spanish translation from the 'Flores Sancti Bernardi' in British Library ADD. MS. 14040, ff. 111V-112V
ALTHOUGH written in Castilian throughout, MS. Add. 14040 has a number of connections with the Catalan-speaking Kingdom of Aragon. The first text (ff. 1-85V) is a translation of Ramon Lull's 'Libre del gentil e los tres savis' made in Valencia by 'Goncalo Sanches de Useda'; a colophon gives the date...Taylor, Barry
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Journal article
The beginnings of Hebrew printing in Egypt
COMPARATIVELY little scholarly interest has been taken in Hebrew printing in the Islamic World, even though some of the Jews who fled there following their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497 brought with them their printing presses and equipment. These refugees and other exiles who settled...Rowland-Smith, Diana
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Journal article
Edward William Lane and his Arabic-English 'Thesaurus'
AMONG interesting material that came to light when Oriental Collections (then Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books) moved from the British Museum building to Store Street in 1981 was a large brown paper parcel containing some notebooks. This was immediately identified as part of the work of the Arabic scholar Edward...Stocks, Peter
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Thomas Tudway and the Harleian Collection of 'Ancient' church music
ONE of the best known sets of documents in British musical history is Harl. MSS.7337-7342, the first volume of which is titled A Collection of the Most Celebrated Services and Anthems used in the Church of England, from the Reformation to the Restauration of K. Charles If. Composed by the...Weber, William
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English Language Collections: selected acquisitions 1982-1987
English Language Collections: selected acquisitions 1982-1987.Archibald, Jean ; James, Elizabeth
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Robert Harley's 'middle way': the Puritan heritage in Augustan politics
THE character of Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford, was a puzzle to contemporaries and has continued to vex historians ever since. Harley's motives, objectives, principles (if indeed he had any) are of a piece with his notoriously difficult handwriting: often obscure and sometimes quite indecipherable. Of course, for a...Hayton, David
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Journal article
John Wilson, Hume's first printer
THE first two volumes of David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature were published (anonymously) in January of 1739, by John Noon. The third and final volume was published (again anonymously) near the end of October, 1740, by Thomas Longman. None of the volumes includes the name of the printer,...Brown, Sally
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Journal article
Problems in the history of Chinese bindings
THE origins and development of different binding formats form a subject of importance amongst the many aspects of the history of the Chinese book that require further research. In 1986, I published an article on the distinctions between jingzhe ['pleated sutra' or accordion binding with the first and last pages...Zhizhong, Li
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Journal article
Robert Harley's parliamentary apprenticeship: 1690-1695
WILLIAM'S 1690 Parliament has a claim to a particular place in the development of parliamentary procedure and processes. From 1690 began the unbroken record of annual sessions. The House of Commons met from late October or early November through until March, six days of the week, breaking only briefly for...Rowlands, Ted
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The making of a collection: Burmese manuscripts in the British Library
THE Burma manuscripts collection in the British Library by virtue of its size, range of material, and state of preservation constitutes the most significant collection of manuscripts to be found outside Burma. It numbers over 1,000 manuscripts, of which approximately 800 are in Oriental Collections and 350 in the India...Herbert, Patricia
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Journal article
Stefan Zweig's copy of Rimbaud, Une Saison en enfer (1873)
IN 1908 Stefan Zweig was given a copy of the first edition of Rimbaud's Une Saison en enfer; the volume now forms part of the Zweig Collection in the British Library.Michaelides, Chris
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Journal article
The Hastings Hours and the Master of 1499
THE book of hours once belonging to William, Lord Hastings (now BL, Additional MS.54782) is both a fascinating historical document and a work of art of the highest quality. It is of interest to the student of English history because of the important role Hastings played at the court of...Brinkmann, Bodo
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Recent acquisitions: Slavonic and East European Collections: three Polish pamphlets on Pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Sevi
IN 1669 the press of the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev published a substantial book Messyia pravdyvyi Isus Khristos [The true Messiah Jesus Christ] and in 1672 the Ukrainian version was followed by the Polish, Messiasz prawdziwy. Its Orthodox author, Ioannykii Haliatovskyi (Joanicjusz Galatowski), Rector of the Kiev Academy...Alsop, J. D.
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Journal article
An unrecognized Spanish edition of Poliziano's Silvae
ANGELO Ambrogini, born in 1454 and universally known as Il Poliziano from his birthplace of Montepulciano in Southern Tuscany, wrote four Latin poems which go under the collective title of Silvae. Of these, Manto was first published in Florence in 1482; Ambra was printed without date, also in Florence, probably...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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A skeleton in the cupboard: James West and the Portland Papers
IN an earlier article in this issue (pp. 123-33), Clyve Jones has surveyed the main collections which make up the archive of Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford. Another small group of strays which is worth noting are the letters to Oxford and his son's father-in-law, John Holies, Duke of...Harris, Frances
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'Hundreds of selves': the British Library's Katherine Mansfield letters
IN January 1920, Katherine Mansfield 'escaped' (as she declared in a letter to her husband, John Middleton Murry) from the 'hell of isolation . . . the loneliness and fright' of the past few months, which had been spent at Ospedaletti on the Italian Riviera. She was ill with tuberculosis,...Brown, Sally
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The printing of the 'Sermón de Amores' of Cristóbal de Castillejo
This book, printed in 1542 with no imprint, is a quarto of twenty leaves, having the unusual collation a20. Three gothic types are employed, and there is a woodcut on the last leaf verso, which we shall mention later. Despite the words 'Agora nueuamente corregido y enmendado', there seems to...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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Journal article
'Carte Blanche'
ALTHOUGH in the earlier part of the last century it was included in the permanent exhibition of manuscripts, the Department of Manuscripts has in more recent times been rather reluctant to publicize what is (or at any rate may be) one of the most dramatic items in the whole of...Skeat, T. C.
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Journal article
The Evanion Collection
IN 1895 the British Museum's Department of Printed Books acquired a collection of ephemeral material relating to the nineteenth-century entertainment world and contemporary life in general. It was purchased from a man who had been a moderately successful conjuror and ventriloquist but now in his old age had fallen into...Harland, Elizabeth
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Journal article
A stray notebook of miscellaneous writings by Coleridge
THE passing of Samuel Taylor Coleridge on 25 July 1834 was deeply felt among the circle of his friends, but nowhere more keenly perhaps than in the household of Dr and Mrs James Gillman at No. 3 The Grove, Highgate. For the last eighteen years of his life the Gillmans...Kelliher, Hilton
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The Tilliot Hours: comparisons and relationships
THE provision of a new catalogue for the Yates Thompson manuscripts now in the British Library, taking into consideration the many advances in scholarship which have taken place since the collector himself issued his original catalogues at the beginning of the century, was among the major ambitions which Derek Turner...Backhouse, Janet
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Journal article
W. H. Auden's Poems of 1928
IN April 1987 the Modern British Section of the British Library acquired a rare and important copy of W. H. Auden's Poems of 1928. This was Auden's first published work, privately printed by his fellow poet and undergraduate Stephen Spender during the Oxford summer vacation.Leevers, Joanna
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Journal article
The embroidered binding of the Felbrigge Psalter
MANY fine medieval manuscripts are exhibited in the British Library's Grenville Library, but one of the most unusual is the Felbrigge Psalter (Sloane MS. 2400), which was probably written and illuminated in Northern France in about the middle of the thirteenth century. At some time the manuscript came to England...Wallis, Penelope
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Journal article
The structure of English pre-conquest Benedictional
A FORM of liturgical manuscript which particularly interested Derek Turner was the benedictional. In his edition of the pontificals in BL, Cotton MS. Claudius A. III he made an important contribution to the study of this type of service-book, providing in his introduction a useful account of their nature and...Prescott, Andrew
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W. R. S. Ralston (1828-89): scholarship and scandal in the British Museum
ONE of the best-known members of staff in the British Museum in the late 1860s and early 1870s was William Ralston Shedden Ralston, an expert on Russian life and literature who was both a translator for, and a friend of, Ivan Turgenev. Ralston was respected in the Museum for his...McCrimmon, Barbara
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Journal article
An addition to the bibliography of Nantes
PRINTING began at Nantes with an isolated venture in 1493, when on 15 April an otherwise unknown printer named Etienne Larcher completed an edition of Jean Meschinot, Les Lunettes des princes, Vingt-cinq ballades. Commemoration de la passion. Of this exceptionally rare incunable the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris has two incomplete...Leevers, Joanna
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Journal article
Richard Garnett as censor
DURING the 1890s the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum was beset by problems of censorship, most of them arising from complaints of libellous statements in library materials, and one of them actually resulting in litigation. The mere thought of being taken to court distressed the officers of...McCrimmon, Barbara
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Journal article
Hans Sloane, book collector and cataloguer, 1682-1698
IT is well known that the immense library of printed books and manuscripts collected over a period of more than seventy years by Sir Hans Sloane and unsurpassed in his own time as the work of a single collector eventually became the foundation collection of the library of the British...Nickson, M. A. E.
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Journal article
Deciphering the Cotton Genesis miniatures: preliminary observations concerning the use of colour
THE Cotton Genesis (British Library, Cotton MS. Otho B. VI) was written and illuminated at some point during the period of the fourth to sixth centuries AD, and very badly charred in the Cotton Library fire of 1731. Since 1979 I have been recording all the decipherable features of the...Wenzel, Marian
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Journal article
An annotated copy of Goldsmith's Life of Nash, 1762
To some it may seem extravagant for a library already endowed with four copies of a book knowingly to acquire a fifth. The copy of the first edition of Oliver Goldsmith's Life of Richard Nash (London, 1762), recently purchased by the British Library will, however, for students of the author,...Jannetta, M. J.
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Journal article
Sir Hans Sloane and the Russian Academy of Sciences
THE year that Sir Hans Sloane became president of the Royal Society marked the beginning of formal Anglo-Russian scientific relations. His predecessor Newton, at his last meeting as president before his death in March 1727, read out a letter received from the newly-founded Russian Academy of Sciences, proposing scientific cooperation...Thomas, Christine G.
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Journal article
The account book of a Marian bookseller, 1553-4
MS. EGERTON 2974, fois. 67-8, preserves in fragmentary form accounts from the day-book of a London stationer who was active during the brief interval between the death on 6 July 1553 of Edward VI, whose regents allowed unprecedented liberty to Protestant authors, printers, publishers, and booksellers, and the reimposition of...King, John N.
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Journal article
D. H. Turner (1931-1985): a portrait
THE sudden death of D. H, Turner on 1 August 1985 deprived the British Library of a scholar of international distinction, an energetic and imaginative promoter of its treasures, and a memorable-if unpredictable-character. In this special number of The British Library Journal a small group of his friends and colleagues...Backhouse, Janet ; Jones, Shelley
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: notable acquisitions 1975-1985: Italian books 1501-1600
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: notable acquisitions 1975-1985: Italian books 1501-1600.Rhodes, D. E.
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Journal article
John Bagford, bookseller and antiquary
JOHN BAGFORD was born in London, lived his sixty-five or sixty-six years there, and was buried in the city in May 1716. From at least 1686 until his death, he was at the centre of the London book trade, involved both in the dispersal of existing collections and the formation...Gatch, Milton McC.
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Journal article
New light on the 'Sforziada' frontispieces of Giovan Pietro Birago
D. H. TURNER'S interest in the Milanese miniaturist Giovan Pietro Birago dated from his cataloguing of the detached full-page miniature of the Adoration of the Magi from the renowned Sforza Hours, which entered the British Museum in 1941, published in the Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts 1936-1945. Many years...Evans, M. L.
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Journal article
Acquisitions in the Department of Printed Books, 1935-50, and the effects of the war
THE great period of expansion in the Department of Printed Books which occurred in the third quarter of the nineteenth century has been described in an earlier article (British Library Journal, x (1984), pp. 114-46). After 1886/7 the purchase grant was cut from the former figure of £10,000 p.a., and...Harris, P. R.
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Journal article
The Cranbrook papers: stray letters from a politician's archive
THE main body of the papers of the Conservative statesman Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, 1st Earl of Cranbrook (b. 1814, d. 1906), were deposited by the 4th Earl in the Suffolk Record Office at Ipswich (Ref. HA 43; NRA report 1182); these papers were drawn upon by his son A. E. Gathorne-Hardy...Smith, Robert A. H.
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Journal article
Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts from the library of Sir Sydney Cockerell
I THINK that the first article by Derek Turner that I ever read was his list of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts which had belonged to Eric Millar (1887-1966) in an offprint from The British Museum Quarterly sent to me by Mrs June O'Donnell. I read it through and through, bewitched...Hamel, Christopher de
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Journal article
Ephraem the Syrian and the Latin manuscripts of De Paenitentia
EPHRAEM the Syrian is perhaps the greatest Christian poet before Dante. He was admired by Jerome, he was loved by Syriac-speaking Christians, and on 5 October 1920, somewhat belatedly, he was declared Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XV. He was born about AD 306 in Nisibis in the...Pattie, T. S.
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Journal article
Sir Hans Sloane, scientist
'ECCE Gloriae Mathematicarum et Physicarum'; so reads the inscription on an eighteenth-century engraving showing Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Hans Sloane. While Newton has remained a household word for scientific genius, Sloane is remembered (if at all) as a collector of curiosities, the founder of the British Museum, and Lord...Ultee, Maarten