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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books: manuscript acquisitions 1976
Recent acquisitions: Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books: manuscript acquisitions 1976. -
Journal article
Antonio de Sancha, 1720-1790: a tentative list of holdings in the reference division of the British Library
THE remarkable improvement in printing standards in eighteenth-century Spain is generally considered to have been due to the work of Joaquin Ibarra. However, an almost equal place must be accorded to his contemporary Antonio de Sancha, whose printing skills came to rival Ibarra's, and whose literary formation and enthusiasms possibly...Whitehead, H. G.
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Manifestations of Arthur Waley: some bibliographical and other notes
IF Ezra Pound's assertion that the great ages of literature are always allied with great ages of translation is true, then those interested in the work of what Cyril Connolly called 'the Modern Movement' would have ample justification, like Connolly in his book, for including in their collections Arthur Waley's...Johns, Francis A.
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Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions, German Section
Lists of notable acquisitions often concentrate on the expensive and rare: this mixed baker's dozen is, on the whole, no exception. Some of the books listed chronologically here are not only rare but unique, some are of obvious historical or scholarly importance, some are beautiful. All are, I hope, interesting;...Paisey, D. L.
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Early Ottoman miniature painting: two recently acquired manuscripts in the British Library
THE Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books has recently acquired two illustrated Ottoman manuscripts. Historically and stylistically important, they are welcome additions to the small but select collection of some sixty illustrated Turkish manuscripts in the British Library. It is only comparatively recently that Turkish miniatures, unlike Persian, have...Titley, Norah M.
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Journal article
Bagford and Sloane
THE way in which over a hundred volumes of John Bagford collections were acquired for the Harleian Library after his death in 1716 is well known to bibliographers. However, the acquisition by Hans Sloane of several other volumes compiled by Bagford, including one which contained the Gutenberg leaf discussed by...Nickson, Margaret
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The composition of the manuscript of Christine de Pizan's Collected Works in the British Library: a reassessment
THE exquisite manuscript copy of Christine de Pizan's Collected Works, one of the greatest treasures of the British Library (Harley MS. 4431), is well known to scholars of late medieval literature and art. A splendid frontispiece depicts the first owner, Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, the wife of King Charles VI...Hindman, Sandra
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Journal article
Printing with gold in the fifteenth century
Gold printing in the fifteenth century is very rare. There are only two printers who are known to have applied this technique. One of them was Erhard Ratdolt who first used gold for printing a gloriously spectacular full page of dedication in a number of copies of his editio princeps...Carter, Victor ; Hellinga, Lotte ; Parker, Tony
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Journal article
Fernando Pessoa, poet, publisher, and translator
FERNANDO PESSOA is widely considered to be the greatest Portuguese poet of the twentieth century and a major writer of European stature. His enigmatic personality and the potent combination of poetic genius and metaphysics in his verse have fascinated a wide variety of readers both in Portugal and abroad. His...Howes, R. W.
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Journal article
Department of Printed Books: acquisitions 1982-March 1983: English books 1501-1800
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions 1982 - March 1983: English books 1501-1800.Archibald, Jean ; Jannetta, M. J.
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A mysterious Italian newsletter of 1517
'MYSTERIOUS' seems to be the most appropriate word to describe a newsletter, printed on only two leaves in quarto, and purchased by the Department of Printed Books of the British Library in August 1981, since it has taken a year of continuous research and puzzled contemplation to reach a conclusion...Rhodes, D. E.
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Journal article
The Mainz indulgences of 1454/5: a review of recent scholarship
THE earliest extant piece of European printing from movable type with which an absolute date can be associated is a Papal Letter of Indulgence which bears the printed date 1454 and the handwritten purchase date 22 October 1454. Forty-nine other printed copies of this Indulgence are known, some unsold and...Ing, Janet
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Journal article
A leaf from a Gutenberg Bible illuminated in England
OLD libraries, even those with a great tradition in providing information of a high standard, may sometimes benefit from visitors who insist on not confining themselves to what is listed or catalogued, although the outcome will frequently be - to the annoyance of all concerned - that the search was...König, Eberhard
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Journal article
The development of the collections of the Department of Printed Books, 1846-1875
In June 1872 a special Sub-committee of the Trustees of the British Museum considered a report prepared by W. B. Rye, the Keeper of Printed Books, on the acquisitions system of his department. They expressed great satisfaction with it, but asked that a further report should be produced showing what...Harris, P. R.
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Journal article
A Chaucer from Chief Justice Coke's collection
The sixteenth-century books acquired by the British Museum Library from Holkham Hall included Chaucer's Workes, printed by John Reynes in 1542 (SFC 5070). This volume belonged to Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke and is no. 861 in his Library Catalogue. L. H. Horstein showed that this actual copy was quoted...Hassall, W. O.
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Journal article
Modern bookbindings added to the Department of Printed Books, 1974-1983
The British Library's collection of twentieth-century bookbindings has not received much publicity, overshadowed as it is by the unrivalled collections of bindings from the past. When Howard M. Nixon wrote about the English and foreign bookbindings added to the Department of Printed Books between 1963 and 1974 most emphasis was...Foot, Mirjam M.
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Benito Monfort, 1716-1785: a tentative list of holdings in the reference division of the British Library
Benito Monfort is the last of the three best-known printers in eighteenth-century Spain to be considered in this series of articles. He is generally thought to be the most gifted of a group of printers centred in Valencia and in a wider context he is regarded by some as not...Whitehead, H. G.
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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
The book of Franciscan saints by Cornelius Thielmans, 1610: a question of title
On 31 August 1974 the British Library received as part of the Van Stuwe donation the gift of a book in small quarto entitled Cort Verhael van het Leven der Heijlighen van S[.] Franciscus Oirden Met Haer Levende Figuren Wt Diuersche schyvers [sic] genomen Deur Den E. P. Broeder Cornelius...Simoni, Anna E. C.
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Manuscripts: acquisitions January-December 1981
Recent acquisitions: Department of Manuscripts: acquisitions January-December 1981.Simoni, Anna E. C.
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Journal article
'My darling baby': Charles Kingsley's letters to his wife
A few days before his marriage on 10 January 1844 to Frances Grenfell, 'Fanny' as she was called by her family, Charles Kingsley wrote to his bride-to-be about their honeymoon, 'shall I bring down all our letters to Cheddar?-I think so. -My baby, we will classify them, & put the...Wright, C. J.
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions 1980-1982: Hispanic section
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: acquisitions 1980-1982: Hispanic section.Whitehead, H. G.
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Journal article
Day's Service Book,1560-1565
The period of gestation of this article has been truly elephantine. I first became interested in Day's Service Book in 1934 when working in the Westminster Abbey Library and I solved-to my own satisfaction-the main problem which it presents over twenty years ago. Its publication has, however, been delayed by...Nixon, Howard M.
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Journal article
Two East Slavonic Primers: Lvov, 1574 and Moscow, 1637
Cultural life in Russia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries differed from cultural life in Western Europe in two important respects. Works of literature and scholarship were not written in the spoken vernacular (Russian), but in Church Slavonic, and the predominant medium for conveying thought was not the printed book,...Thomas, Christine
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Journal article
The making of the Harley Psalter
The artists of later Anglo-Saxon England are particularly noted for the lively and delicate multi-coloured line drawings which feature in some sixty of the illuminated manuscripts which have come down to us from the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. These drawings are in distinct contrast to the often rather...Backhouse, Janet
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Journal article
Alban Berg and the BBC
Edward Clark (1888-1962), who was a programme planner with the BBC from 1927 to 1936, had been introduced to Arnold Schoenberg after a performance of the latter's symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande in Berlin in 1910. He was thereafter an ardent champion of the music of Schoenberg (whose pupil he...Chadwick, Nicholas
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Journal article
The library of the Royal Philharmonic Society
During the period from 1790 to the early 1830s, quite a number of organizations came into being in London to provide public musical entertainment of various kinds. The only one of them still active today is the Philharmonic Society, which was established in 1813 and received the title 'Royal' exactly...King, Alec Hyatt
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Journal article
Bartolommeo Sanvito and an antique motif
A curious motif appears at the foot of the frontispiece of the celebrated copy of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea, written and probably illuminated by Bartolommeo Sanvito, in the British Library (Department of Manuscripts, MS. Royal 14.C.III, fol. 2). This consists of a group of three putti, the...Evans, M. L.
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Journal article
Obiya Ihei, a Japanese provincial publisher
Commercial publishing came of age in Japan during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). Both at the beginning and at the end of this period there was a vogue for experimenting with movable type, but from the middle of the seventeenth century the burgeoning publishing industry relied almost exclusively on wood-block printing,...Kornicki, P. F.
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Julian Marshall and the British Museum: music collecting in the later nineteenth century
In the second volume of Sir George Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians which appeared in 1880, there is a descriptive list of private music libraries in the British Isles. First, understandably enough, is the Royal Music Library at Buckingham Palace; the next two libraries listed are those of Sir...Searle, Arthur
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Journal article
The Curzon Collection
Through the generosity of Dr Peter Curzon and Mr Fritz Curzon the British Library has recently acquired an extensive collection of annotated scores, notebooks, and other papers of the late Sir Clifford Curzon. The working scores amount to some 300 items. Nearly all are printed editions, but there are a...Neighbour, O. W.
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Journal article
'The grammar of research': some implications of machine-readable bibliography
Research into the history of man's culture and his institutions has always been conducted with procedures which have a basic grammar. Upon that basic grammar scholarship has developed, since Poliziano, ever more complex routines as the raw materials for research have proliferated. The provision of these raw materials has been,...Alston, R. C.
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: Selected acquisitions April 1983-March 1984: English books 1501-1800
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: selected acquisitions April 1983-March 1984: English books 1501-1800.Archibald, Jean ; Jannetta, M. J.
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Journal article
Matthew Prior's last manuscript: 'Predestination'
Until now the only known manuscript of Matthew Prior's unfinished poem, 'Predestination', has been the copy written in the fine italic hand of his secretary, Adrian Drift, which is labelled 'Brouillon of a Poem Began at Wimpole in August 1721. Transcribed From the Authors Papers since his Death.' It was...Wright, H. Bunker ; Croft, P. J.
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Journal article
The Elgar sketch-books
A major gift from Mrs H. S. Wohlfeld of sketch-books and other manuscripts of Sir Edward Elgar was received by the British Library in 1984. The sketch-books consist of five early books dating from 1878 to 1882, a small book from the late 1880s, a series of eight volumes made...Willetts, Pamela
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Journal article
Terra incognita: the Beudeker Collection in the map library of the British Library
The name 'Beudeker Collection' or 'Beudeker Atlas' commemorates the eighteenth century Dutchman who compiled these twenty-four large folio volumes, bound ingold-tooled white vellum, placed at Maps C.9.d.1-11, e.1-13. Each volume contains an average of a hundred to a hundred and fifty leaves, on to and between which large single or...Simoni, Anna E. C.
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: notable acquisitions 1964-1985: music library
No regular reports of notable acquisitions of printed music have appeared since the last acquisitions booklet of the Department of Printed Books was published, covering the years 1963-4. During the past twenty-one years far too many editions claiming notice for musical, textual, historical, or bibliographical reasons have entered the collection...Neighbour, O. W.
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Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: selected acquisitions, mainly from the period 1979-1985 Map Library
A PREVIOUS article (British Library Journal, v (1979), pp. 181-97) provided partial coverage for the period 1968-78, with the promise of a further instalment to include those items which were unavoidably omitted. This article completes the listing for the earlier period, but can give only a partial account of acquisitions...Campbell, Tony
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Journal article
Holywell House: a Gothic villa at St Albans
HOLYWELL HOUSE, when the Dowager Lady Spencer first came to live there in November 1783, was a small and rather run-down country house on the southern edge of St Albans: one of many properties inherited by John Spencer of Althorp at the death of his redoubtable and fabulously wealthy grandmother,...Pattie, T. S.
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Journal article
A newly discovered leaf of 'The Sforza Hours'
IN 1894, twenty-three years after the discovery of the Sforza Hours (BL, Add. MS.34294) and shortly after its presentation to the British Museum, Sir G. F. Warner, in his monograph on the manuscript, drew attention to a letter from the Milanese illuminator Giovan Pietro Birago. Neither the date nor the...Evans, M. L.
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Journal article
Fragment of an unpublished essay on printing by William Camden
THE known facts concerning the origins of printing from movable type in western Europe have been ably gathered and assessed by recent scholars and there is a large measure of agreement among them, but the information available to William Camden in the sixteenth century is interesting both where it agrees...Dunn, R. D.
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John Denham: new letters and documents
IT was inevitable that the fundamental divisions made in English society by the Civil Wars should affect the ranks of the poets and playwrights, and unsurprising that the former largely and the latter almost entirely would adhere to the king's party. Not that, from our more distant vantage-point at least,...Kelliher, Hilton
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Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: Polish books
Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: Polish books.Swiderska, H.
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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
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
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
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
The Būstān of Sa’dī: an illustrated Persian manuscript dated 850/1446
AMONG the notable items acquired in recent years by the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books is a finely calligraphed and illuminated mid-fifteenth century poetical manuscript in Persian (Or. 14237), containing three miniature paintings. Despite their slightly damaged condition these miniatures are of particular significance for the study of...Titley, Norah M. ; Waley, M. I.