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Journal article
London, British Library Royal MS. 8 A. XVIII: A Unique Insight into the Career of a Cistercian Monk at the University of Oxford in the Early Fifteenth Century
Royal MS. 8 A. XVIII is an early fifteenth-century Cistercian manuscript of Oxford origin. A scholar’s handbook, it contains Scholastic and legal tracts: a florilegium (primarily comprising sententiae from the Corpus Aristotelicum) and a series of short or abridged works on natural philosophy, juxtaposed with brief tracts on canon law...Fitzpatrick, Antonia
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Robert Harley and the Myth of the Golden Thread: Family Piety, Journalism and the History of the Assassination Attempt of 8 March 1711
The myth has persisted amongst historians that the life of Robert Harley was saved by the golden embroidery in the waistcoat that he was wearing at the time of the assassination attempt with a penknife by the marquis de Guiscard on 8 March 1711. This myth is examined and traced...Jones, Clyve
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Journal article
Past, Present and Future for Thirteenth-Century Wales: Two Diagrams in British Library, Cotton Roll XIV.12
British Library Cotton Roll XIV.12 presents a rich vision of British history from the perspective of its thirteenth-century maker. Over nearly sixteen metres of surviving parchment, human history from Adam and Eve to the reign of William Rufus is presented through an intricate combination of texts and imagery. This article...Cleaver, Laura
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Journal article
The Duke of Newcastle's Letters on the Fall of Walpole in 1742
Thomas Pelham Holles, Duke of Newcastle, secretary of state and effective leader of the House of Lords in Sir Robert Walpole's whig ministry, was accused by Walpole after his fall in 1742 of having failed the ministry, along with Lord Hardwick, the lord chancellor, by not giving the required support....Jones, Clyve
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Journal article
A Scottish Whig View of the Character of Robert Harley,Earl of Oxford, in 1713
The character and personality of past politicians are difficult to discover. In the absence of a dairy or intimate letters the best source is often a description by a third party, but in early modern British history these can be rare. Such evidence, however, is often difficult to use because...Jones, Clyve
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Journal article
The Metamorphoses of a Late Fifteenth-Century Psalter (Harl. MS. 1892)
This article examines in detail a psalter for the use of Sarum executed in Rouen c. 1490-1500, to which a series of unexpected additions have been made. These include sections painted in the style of the Netherlandish Dark Eyes Masters and added leaves in various hands copied after engravings by...Yvard, Catherine
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Journal article
J. M. W. Turner and his World: John Platt (1842-1902), a Late Victorian Extra-illustrator, and his Collection
This essay highlights a recent re-discovery at The British Library: an extra-illustrated copy of George Walter Thornbury's The Life of J. M.W. Turner, London, 1862 (Tab.438.a.1). Thornbury is still a standard source for the history of this great British artist, but this unique copy enhanced with over 1,600 portraits, views,...Myrone, Felicity
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Journal article
Bob Cobbing, Visual Art Works (1942-73): A Preliminary Survey
Amongst the papers of Bob Cobbing at the British Library are two lists the poet compiled of his visual art works. Taken together, the lists record 153 works produced between 1942 and 1973. Information from these two documents has been collated to generate a single list, prefaced by an introduction...Beckett, Chris
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Journal article
'Peculiar Circumstances': Catholic chaplains of the Victorian British Army in India
Documents from the Indian Office Records paint a picture of the employment and conditions of Catholic chaplains in the British Army in India, chiefly among the Irish regiments and the Indian Labour Corps (previously known as coolies). Despite opposition from the Protestant Alliance, a live-and-let-live policy was largely followed.Mulvihill, Margaret
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Journal article
Underground London: From Cave Culture Follies to the Avant-Garde
London has had a long love affair with grottos, cellars, and caves. Based on the G. Creed collection, a superb discovery in British Library collections of fourteen large folio volumes on taverns in England and Wales, this essay traces the history from eighteenth century follies like Pope's grotto, to the...Harskamp, Jaap
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Journal article
The Golden Treasury: 150 Years On
The success of the Golden Treasury was immediate and enduring. Buoyed by adroit advertising and burgeoning national literacy, its enthusiastic reception by critics and public led to four editions within the lifetime of its originator, Francis Turner Palgrave, and eventually to a prominent place in schools, households, and indeed the...Spevack, Marvin
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Journal article
'A Poor Jonah': John Osborne's Roads to Freedom
While recent years have seen increasing critical engagement with British theatre in the years preceding John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, few writers have concentrated on the theatre of Osborne himself before 1956. However, the emergence in the British Library's collections in 2009 of two play-scripts written by Osborne and...Andrews, Jamie
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Journal article
1793: A Song of the Natives of New South Wales
‘A Song of the Natives of New South Wales’, written down in London in 1793, documents the first Australian Aboriginal song heard in Europe. The singers, Bennelong and his young kinsman Yemmerrawanne, were far from their Wangal homeland on the south bank of the Parramatta River in Sydney, New South...Smith, Keith Vincent
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Journal article
Lewis Morris and the Mabinogion
In 1764 the antiquarian Lewis Morris described the medieval Welsh texts known as the Four Branches of the Mabinogi in a notebook now in the British Library (BL, Additional MS. 14024). This is the first description of those texts which were to become the centrepiece of medieval Welsh prose literature...Luft, Diana
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Journal article
Edward Angelo Goodall (1819-1908): An Artist's Travels in British Guiana and the Crimea
It is fair to say that Edward Angelo Goodall is one of Victorian Britain's lesser known artists. He hailed from a family of artists and had a relatively successful artistic career, exhibiting regularly. Yet he never seemed quite able to emerge from the shadows cast by a more successful brother...St John-McAlister, Michael
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Journal article
Manuscripts Supplied to Robert Harley by John Bagford: Further Information from BL, Harl. MS. 5998
The London bookseller, John Bagford (? 1650/1-1716), transferred – probably by sale – many parts of his collections, printed and manuscript, to Sir Robert Harley (1661-1724), with the assistance of Harley’s librarian, Humfrey Wanley (1672-1726), and Harley’s son, Edward Harley (1689-1741). BL, Harl. MS. 5998, once thought to be an...Tite, Colin G. C.
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Journal article
The Royal Music Library and its Handel Collection
On 27 November 1957 Queen Elizabeth II presented the Royal Music Library to the Trustees of the British Museum, a gift commemorating the two hundredth anniversary of King George II's presentation of the Old Royal Library to the recently-established Museum. It was among the largest musical acquisitions ever made by...Burrows, Donald
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Journal article
John Grose (1744-1771): Correspondence relating to his Career in Bengal, 1763-1771
John Grose (1744-1771): Correspondence relating to his Career in Bengal, 1763-1771. The papers contained in BL, MSS Eur E284, Letters and papers of and relating to John Grose (c. 1744-71), East India Company servant […] chiefly comprising letters to members of his family, formerly formed part of a larger collection...Pedley, Avril
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Journal article
Guy of Saint-Denis and the Compilation of Texts about Music in London, British Library, Harl. MS. 281
This paper explores the codicological features, contents and history of BL Harl. MS. 281, an anthology of writings on music theory copied by a single hand in the early fourteenth century, well known inter alia for including one of only two copies of the Ars musice of Johannes de Grocheio....Mews, Constant J. ; Jeffreys, Catherine ; McKinnon, Leigh ; Williams, Carol ; Crossley, John N.
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Journal article
Advising France through the Example of England: Visual Narrative in the Livre de la prinse et mort du roy Richart (Harl. MS. 1319)
Some time between November 1401 and March 1402 Jean Creton wrote an eyewitness account of King Richard II’s deposition in 1399. Around 1405 Duke John of Berry, the uncle of the French King Charles VI, was given the only richly illuminated copy of the text to survive. This article examines...Hedeman, Anne D.
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Journal article
Who was Mozart's Laura? Abendempfindung and the Editors
Mozart's song Abendempfindung (K523) was written in 1787. This article challenges the editorial decision of the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (1963) to rename it Abendempfindung an Laura.Paisey, David
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Journal article
Early Northern Iroquoian Language Books in the British Library
This article surveys seventy-six antiquarian materials in or about Northern Iroquoian, a group of indigenous North American languages from the eastern side of the United States and Canada. The languages covered are: Laurentian, Huron/Wyandot, Susquehannock, Tuscarora, Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk. The aim is to survey what can be...Edwards, Adrian S.
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Journal article
Good Morals for a Couple at the Burgundian Court: Contents and Context of Harley 1310, Le Livre des bonnes meurs of Jacques Legrand
London, British Library, Harley MS. 1310 has received no scholarly attention for decades, perhaps even centuries. The aim of this article is to frame more precisely the early owners whose arms are painted in the lower margin of the frontispiece folio and to contextualize the manuscript and especially its illumination....Wijsman, Hanno
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Journal article
Fortunate Survivors: Maps and Map Fragments in the Bagford Collection
The printing samples collected together by John Bagford have been part of the British Library, formally British Museum, collections since 1753, and yet the few maps amongst them have so far not been studied. The present article will explore the reasons for this through the example of one particular volume...Harper, Tom
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The Library Lists of Francis Lodwick FRS (1619-1694): An Introduction to Sloane MSS. 855 and 859, and a Searchable Transcript
Francis Lodwick FRS (1619-1694) was a merchant of Flemish and French extraction, and an early linguist. Among his manuscripts now in the Sloane collection are two catalogues of books, Sloane MS. 859 and Sloane MS. 855. Together they total well over 5000 titles. Both lists can be securely linked with...Henderson, Felicity ; Poole, William
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Journal article
'In this signe thou shalt ouercome hem alle': Visual Rhetoric and Yorkist Propaganda in Lydgate's Fall of Princes (Harl. MS. 1766)
With its much abridged text and impressive visual scheme, Harl. MS. 1766 (c. 1450-60) is unique amongst the extant manuscripts of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes (c. 1431-38/39). This paper identifies and explores a rhetoric of kingship developed by the rearranged text and amplified through the design of the visual scheme....Pittaway, Sarah
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Journal article
Kissing Images, Unfurling Rolls, Measuring Wounds, Sewing Badges and Carrying Talismans: Considering Some Harley Manuscripts through the Physical Rituals they Reveal
This article considers how early users of prayer books handled and interacted with their manuscripts. Deploying evidence from signs of wear within the manuscripts themselves, the author argues that medieval believers used manuscripts ritually in such a way that they blurred the distinction between images and their referents. Votaries treated...Rudy, Kathryn M.
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The Identification of a Print Study for a Woodcut in Hieronymus Köler’s Album Amicorum in the British Library
A coloured woodcut portrait of Mikolaj [Nicholas] Krzysztof Radziwill (known as Sierotka, 'The Orphan') (1549-1616) is included in the album amicorum compiled c. 1563 by Hieronymus Köler of Nuremberg (BL, Egerton MS. 1184). An uncoloured version of the portrait also occurs in a volume of Greek poems by Martinus Crusius,...Letkiewicz, Ewa
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Journal article
Beyond the Template: Aesthetics and Meaning in the Images of the Roman d'Alexandre en prose in Harley MS. 4979
The Roman d’Alexandre en prose is the translation into Old French of a Latin text known as the Historia de preliis. The processes of language conversion and transcription during the Middle Ages allowed patrons and manuscript-making ateliers to adapt and bring classical works up to date with medieval tastes and...Pérez-Simon, Maud
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Journal article
The Library Catalogues of Sir Hans Sloane: Their Authors, Organization, and Functions
This article undertakes a detailed examination of the library catalogues of Sir Hans Sloane, whose collections formed the basis of the British Museum and thus of the British Library. These are now held in the British Library: Sloane MS 3972B, Sloane MS 3972C, Sloane MS 3972D and an interleaved copy...Blakeway, Amy
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Journal article
Sir Thomas Jewell Bennett (1852-1925)
An account of the personal papers of Sir Thomas Jewell Bennett (1852-1925), editor/principal proprietor of the Times of India and Conservative MP for Sevenoaks. They form an interesting source for politics and other issues in British India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.O'Brien, John
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'One of the Most Remarkable Things in London': A Visit to the Lord Treasurer's Library in 1713 by Samuel Molyneux
Between December 1712 and April 1713 Samuel Molyneux (1689-1728) witnessed at first hand some of the finest antiquarian collections in London, Oxford and Cambridge. For the benefit of his learned uncle he described what he saw in seven meticulously written letters, later transcribed into a copy-book and now held in...Holden, Paul
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Journal article
Mad Dogs and Scotsmen: A Plain Tale from the Military Collections of the India Office Records Section of the British Library
The Military Collections of the India Office Records of the British Library document the experiences of four Gordon Highlanders sent to the Institut Pasteur in Paris for treatment for rabies in the summer of 1896.Mulvihill, Margaret
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Journal article
Codicological Clues to the Patronage of Stowe MS. 39:A Fifteenth-Century Illustrated Nun's Book in Middle English
Stowe MS. 39 is well-known for its Middle English texts (The Abbey of the Holy Ghost, and The Desert of Religion) and illustrations. An examination of its physical make-up leads towards the identification of its original patroness, a Yorkshire nun.Kidd, Peter
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Journal article
The Progress of the Text: The Papers of J. G. Ballard at the British Library
The article provides an overview of the archive of J. G. Ballard, acquired by the British Library in 2010. The successive drafts of Ballard’s novels, in manuscript and typescript, comprise the majority of the archive, with the exception of Ballard’s first novel (The Wind from Nowhere) and The Unlimited Dream...Beckett, Chris
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Journal article
The Harleys as Collectors
To understand the nature and origins of the Harleian collection it is necessary to go back well beyond the date usually given for its foundation (the early 18th century), beyond the first evidence of Robert Harley’s collecting in the 1680s, to the time of his father and even his grandparents;...Harris, Frances
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From the Bombast of Vachel Lindsay to the Compass of Noise: The Papers of Bob Cobbing at the British Library
The article introduces the paper archive of Bob Cobbing (1920-2002) at the British Library, and contextualizes his influential contribution to British poetry – as an avant-garde performance poet, printer and publisher – over the course of more than fifty years. The archive evidences the continuity between Cobbing’s formative experience as...Beckett, Chris
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Journal article
The First British Performances of Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ Symphony: The Philharmonic Society and Sir George Smart
The Philharmonic Society of London commissioned a new symphony from Beethoven in 1823. After some delay, still not entirely explained, it received a manuscript score of the Ninth Symphony late in 1824. The Society immediately set about preparations for a private ‘trial’ performance of the work, and for its inclusion...Searle, Arthur
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Journal article
Confronting Cook
A pronged fishing spear, a twisted bark shield with a handle and a length of timber used to propel spears. Those famous explorers James Cook and Joseph Banks picked them up from a beach after the first skirmish between Australian Aborigines and British voyagers. These objects, probably those now in...Smith, Keith Vincent
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Journal article
The Lady Eccles Oscar Wilde Collection
This article looks at the generous bequest made in 2003 by Mary Viscountess Eccles of her extensive collection of books, manuscripts and ephemera relating to Oscar Wilde. Containing works pertaining to Wilde, his friends and family and the literary and artistic world of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Great Britain,...Lloyd, Andrea
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Journal article
Witnesses to Medieval Medical Practice in the Harley Collection
The new Wellcome Trust funded catalogue of medieval medical manuscripts in the Harley collection brings to light some of the critical documents for understanding how medicine was actually practised in fifteenth-century England. Thomas Fayreford and John Crophill both kept notes of their cures in manuscripts they owned, while the anonymous...Jones, Peter Murray
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Journal article
From the 'Bibliographical Nightmare'to a Critical Bibliography. Tesori politici in the British Library, and Elsewherein Britain
This is the first critical bibliography of one of the most intricate bibliographical cases of early-modern Europe: the Tesori politici (1589-1618). For the first time, printers involved in the publication, dedicatees, and many authors of the various texts have been identified; the complete content of the various editions, reprints, and...Testa, Simone
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Journal article
Hugh James Rose, James Murray and The Foreign Quarterly Review
The identity of the author of the famous article, 'Foreign Views of the Catholic Question', which appeared in The Foreign Quarterly Review in April 1829, gave rise to much contemporary debate. It has traditionally been attributed to the high church cleric Hugh James Rose. However, neither its contents or style...Wright, C. J.
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Journal article
Beyond Photography: An Introduction to William Henry Fox Talbot’s Notebooks in the Talbot Collection at the British Library
William Henry Fox Talbot is now primarily remembered as the pioneer of photography. This was reinforced by the disposition of his papers, notably the separation of photographs and the few notebooks which document his photographic innovations from the rest of his archive mostly concerned with other scholarly activities beyond photography....Brusius, Mirjam
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Journal article
A Mirror for Deaf Ears?A Medieval Mystery
Speculum medicine (The Mirror of Medicine) is the title of several works attested in manuscripts of the High Middle Ages. The present study deals with two of them that share some material, although their exact relationship is not clear at present. The shorter and certainly older text is a compilation,...Fischer, Klaus-Dietrich
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Journal article
‘Swifte and Secrete Writing’ in Seventeenth-Century England, and Samuel Shelton’s Brachygraphy
In the autumn of 2006 the British acquired S. Shelton's Brachygraphy of 1672, the only copy now known to be extant. This article sets Shelton's invention in the general context of seventeenth-century shorthand and considers its importance in understanding contemporary attitudes to the new fashion of short-writing both then and...Henderson, Frances
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Journal article
'A Poet Given to Compulsive Self-Revision': Reflections on Walt Whitman, Hypertext, and the 1855 Edition of Leaves of Grass
A discussion of the iconic first (1855) edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, of which the British Library holds a rare early copy, and its place in the author's literary development. Following the sesquicentenial anniversary of the work's publication, the experience of reading this celebrated volume in print is...Hayes, Dorian
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Journal article
A. W. Franks and Armorial Bookbindings: Including a List of British Armorial Bookbindings Contained within the Franks Collection
A list of the British armorial bookbindings collected by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks (1826-1897) purchased by the British Museum Library in 1900; the circumstances of its acquisition and subsequent cataloguing and an account of the previously unrecorded material associated with it.Marks, P. J. M.
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The Keyes Papers at the British Library
This article describes the papers and career of Roger Keyes (1872-1945), one of the most important naval figures of the first part of the twentieth century. The papers cover his long career from pre-World War One submarine service, through active service in World War One, the tense inter-war years, his...John-McAlister, Michael St
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Journal article
Tambimuttu and the Poetry London Papers at the British Library: Reputation and Evidence
The papers of the most influential literary magazine of the 1940s, Poetry London (1939-51), and the associated papers its Sri Lankan editor, M. J. T. Tambimuttu, were long considered lost until they came to light in 2005, when they were passed to the British Library. The papers of author Richard...Beckett, Chris