Search Constraints
Search Results
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
Journal article
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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
-
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.
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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
-
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
-
Journal article
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
-
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
-
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.
-
Journal article
'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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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
-
Journal article
The author portraits in the Bedford Psalter-Hours: Gower, Chaucer and Hoccleve
AN inscribed portrait of John Gower, literary champion of Lancastrian kingship, provides the key to the reading of the unique illustrative programme of the Duke of Bedford's Psalter-Hours, Add. MS. 42131, the only manuscript he is known to have commissioned in England. Two hundred and ninety of the 300 minor...Wright, Sylvia
-
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
-
Journal article
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.
-
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
-
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
-
Journal article
'Lost or stolen or strayed': a survey of manuscripts formerly in the Cotton Library
THE manuscript collection that was founded by Sir Robert Cotton in the 1580s passed by inheritance first to his son, Thomas, and then to his grandson, John. In 1702, on the death of John and in accordance with the intentions of Sir Robert, it became national property, and fifty years...Tite, Colin G. C.
-
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.
-
Journal article
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
-
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.
-
Journal article
British foreign policy and international affairs during Sir William Trumbull's career
SIR William Trumbull served as envoy, and subsequently as Secretary of State, during a period of major change in Britain's international position. He was Ambassador Extraordinary to Louis XIV of France from 2 September 1685 to 12 October 1686, and then Resident Ambassador at Constantinople from November 1686 to October...Black, Jeremy
-
Journal article
Paine's Rights of Man, Swedenborgianism and freedom of the press in Sweden: a publishing enigma of 1792
A copy of the earliest Swedish translation of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, recently acquired by the British Library, illustrates the old tag that 'books have their fates'. The item is a slim octavo volume in plain grey board covers entitled Menniskans rattigheter and bearing the imprint Stockholm, tryckte hos...Hogg, Peter C.
-
Journal article
The Weckherlin Papers
THE Weckherlin Papers are part of the vast archive of the Trumbull family, which passed through the female line to the Marquesses of Downshire. It was kept at Easthampstead Park in Berkshire until it was deposited on loan with the Berkshire County Record Office at Reading in 1954. A large...Forster, Leonard
-
Journal article
The works of Paolo Angelo
NOTHING seems to be recorded about the life of Paolo Angelo, except for the meagre scraps of information which his own books reveal. He was a humble priest of Venice, apparently a member of the Dominican Order, and he had a fanatical hatred of Luther and his doctrines, which he...Rhodes, Dennis E.
-
Journal article
'The honourable sisterhood': Queen Anne's maids of honour
WHEN Sir Charles Sedley asked a new arrival among the maids of honour at the Restoration court whether she intended to set up as 'a Beauty, a Miss [mistress], a Wit or a Politician', he was acknowledging, in his unregenerate way, that these posts could offer considerable scope for a...Harris, Frances