Ricerca
Risultati della ricerca
-
Journal article
'The Most Bogus Ideas': Science, Religion and Creationism in the John Maynard Smith Archive
The science and religion question is one of continued interest in academia and in the non-academic public. In terms of biology, discussions almost inevitably revolve around evolution and (human) origins, contrasting Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection to the Biblical account of creation and origins in...Piel, Helen
-
Journal article
Tambimuttu: Re-Inventing the Art of Poetry Illustration
M. J. T. Tambimuttu, the much maligned Ceylonese editor of Poetry London and Editions Poetry London, was in fact consistently admired at home and abroad during the Second World War. Both his periodical and books were held in high esteem by his peers for their aesthetic innovations: his judicious commissions...Boselli, Sandra
-
Journal article
Disembodied: Additional MS. 8785 and the Tradition of Human Organ Depictions in Medieval Art and Medicine
While Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum – a popular medieval encyclopaedia describing the properties of ‘things’ – has attracted the attention of scholars for centuries, far less well known is the British Library’s unique copy in the Mantuan dialect. This manuscript, Additional MS. 8785, was translated by Vivaldo Belcalzer, an...McCall, Taylor
-
Journal article
From West Country Farmers to W. H. Ireland, the Shakespeare Forger: The Previous Owners of Thomas Tusser's Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1599), BL, C.122.bb.40
This article examines the provenance of a rare sixteenth-century copy of Thomas Tusser’s Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie (Edinburgh, 1599), an agricultural manual that, unlike previous guides, was aimed at tenant farmers at the lower end of the social order. These rural farmers had relatively modest levels of literacy...Smith, Maddy
-
Journal article
Nautical Charts, Texts, and Transmission: The Case of Conte di Ottomano Freducci and Fra Mauro
The article addresses an unstudied nautical chart made by Conte di Ottomano Freducci in 1529 (British Library Add. MS. 11548) which is unusual for its long and non-traditional legends (descriptive texts). Following a discussion of what we know about Freducci and a survey of all his surviving works, I supply...Duzer, Chet Van
-
Journal article
The Annotated Amleth: Belleforest in the British Library
The account of Amleth in François de Belleforest’s Le Cinquiesme Livre des Histoires Tragiques is a recognized source for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The British Library copy of the Lyon 1576 edition (C.8.a.5) bears various manuscript annotations which reveal an early reader’s approach to Belleforest’s text: one possible author of these annotations...Casson, John
-
Journal article
J. G. Ballard's 'Elaborately Signalled Landscape': The Drafting of Concrete Island
The archive of J. G. Ballard at the British Library contains two very different draft texts for 'Concrete Island': an undated typescript substantially revised by hand, and a 'first draft screenplay' dated 20 September 1972. The screenplay is, in the author’s words on the title page, 'from the novel of...Beckett, Chris
-
Journal article
The Shorthand of Robert Willis, Physician-in-Extraordinary to King George III
The shorthand used by Robert Willis in documents within the Library’s Willis Papers collection is identified as a system similar to William Fordyce Mavor’s late eighteenth-century Universal Stenography but departing from it in some key respects. Transcriptions are provided of BL, Add. MS. 41734 – Willis’s memorandum of events between...Underhill, Timothy ; Peters, Timothy
-
Journal article
Provenance Confirmed for the Dismembered Breviary of the Cathedral of Agen (1297-1313): Add. MS. 42132
The Breviary of the cathedral of Agen, one of the most monumental witnesses of illumination in the South-West of France around 1300, has been dismembered and is currently preserved in four different places. The Southern French origin of these fragments is beyond doubt, but the recent history of the manuscript...Nadal, Émilie
-
Journal article
The Riverside Mansions and Tombs of Agra: New Evidence from a Panoramic Scroll Recently Acquired by The British Library
The riverfront at Agra once formed one of the great sights of Mughal India. As well as the fort and the Taj Mahal, both banks of the River Yamuna were lined with great mansions, palatial garden houses and imperial gardens. When the Mughal capital was moved the Delhi in 1648,...Koch, Ebba ; Losty, J. P.
-
Journal article
The British Library, Europeana 1914-1918 and the Memorialization of the Great War
Europeana 1914-1918 digitised a wealth of material in various formats (stories, films and historical material, manuscripts and printed items), all of which are directly related to World War I. A feature of the collection is that it brings together the holdings of cultural institutions (among them the British Library) and...Jenkins, Jeremy
-
Journal article
The First Manuals of English History: Two Late Thirteenth-Century Genealogical Rolls of the Kings of England in the Royal Collection
The reign of Edward I (1272-1307) witnessed the creation of numerous genealogical rolls of the kings of England from Egbert to the reigning king, initially in Latin (for instance BL, Add. MS. 30079), but then more often in Anglo-Norman. As Thomas Wright first intuited in 1872, these much innovative aide-mémoire...Laborderie, Olivier de
-
Journal article
Sloane's Portuguese Books
This article aims to systematize and briefly analyse the collection of books printed at Portuguese presses which once belonged to Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753). Portuguese books (or Portuguese printing) are here defined as early books and other materials printed in Portugal (including overseas territories during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth...Costa, Júlio
-
Journal article
'Handsomely bound in cloth': UK Book Cover Designs 1840-1880
A review of the many varied cover designs made for cloth trade bindings, with reference to signed cover designs, together with a review of online resources for the further study of these.King, Edmund M. B.
-
Journal article
Henry VIII and British Library, Royal MS. 2 A. XVI: Marginalia in King Henry's Psalter
The book which Henry VIII most heavily annotated is the manuscript Psalter Royal MS 2 A XVI held in the British Library. This note records and comments on one previously overlooked feature - the omission of numerous verses from Psalm 77. It also records the findings of a more detailed...Christie-Miller, Ian
-
Journal article
The Only Early English Translation of Giovanni Botero's Della ragion di stato: Richard Etherington and Sloane MS. 1065
Giovanni Botero (1544–1617) was an extremely popular Italian author of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. His works were translated into a number of languages and saw many editions. One of his most famous works, the Della Ragion di Stato (1589), was particularly popular in Europe. This response to...Trace, Jamie
-
Journal article
I Have Neither Interest nor Eloquence Sufficient to Prevaile': The Duke of Shrewsbury and the Politics of Succession during the Reign of Anne
On 13 April 1710 Queen Anne deprived the marquess of Kent of the office of lord chamberlain and appointed in his stead Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury. Many have seen in this event the opening salvo in Robert Harley's assault on the ministry of the duumvirs, Godolphin and Marlborough, which...Eagles, Robin
-
Journal article
The Royal Image and Diplomacy: Henry VII’s Book of Astrology (British Library, Arundel MS. 66)
One of the most intriguing manuscripts associated with Henry VII of England, British Library, MS. Arundel 66 combines astronomical tables and works of so-called judicial astrology with a short collection of political prophecies. As an informal note added at the end of one of its texts suggests, the volume was...Frońska, Joanna
-
Journal article
Reading Between the Lines: Sir George Smart's Annotated Programmes for Manchester's 1836 Musical Festival
Among the papers of the distinguished conductor Sir George Thomas Smart, held by the British Library in the George Smart collection, are numerous concert programmes covered in his handwritten annotations. Reflecting his punctilious approach, these document in great detail aspects including timings, planned encores, and changes to programme and personnel....Johnson, Rachel
-
Journal article
The Charles G. Leland Collection of Romani Books and Manuscripts
The American writer Charles G. Leland (1824-1903) is primarily known for his comic verses. He was, however, also a pioneering linguist who published widely on the languages of the Roma (Gypsy) people of Britain, Ireland and continental Europe. Archival collections in the American north-east hold a range of Leland's literary...Edwards, Adrian S.
-
Journal article
Eight Twelfth-Century Charters from the Norman Abbey of Saint-Étienne de Caen, c.1120–1204 (London, British Library, Add. Chs. 67574–67581) – A Catalogue and Commentary
This article provides the first comprehensive study and edition of eight original charters from the Abbey of Saint-Étienne de Caen in Lower Normandy (founded by William the Conqueror in 1063), kept today in the British Library (Add. Chs. 67574–67581). These charters form part of a larger diplomatic corpus that once...Pohl, Benjamin
-
Journal article
Willie King: One of Angus Wilson's 'Old Men at the Zoo'
From 1937 until 1955, when he left to write full-time, Angus Wilson worked in the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum. His 1961 novel, The Old Men at the Zoo, was a roman à clef based on many of the people he had known there. The character of...Wright, C. J.
-
Journal article
The Letters of Shen Fuzong to Thomas Hyde, 1687-88
The earliest surviving direct correspondence of a learned nature between a Chinese person and an Englishman comprises several letters sent between May 1687 and February 1688 by a young Christian convert from Nanjing, Michael Shen Fuzong (c. 1658-1691), to the Oxonian oriental scholar and librarian Thomas Hyde (1636-1704). This correspondence...Poole, William
-
Journal article
Forewarned and Forearmed: Contents of BL, Cotton MS. Titus A. XXV, ff. 94-105
Cotton MS. Titus A. XXV is a composite codex of several unrelated booklets, one of which has gone largely unnoticed and unexplored. The single gathering of ff. 94-105, preserves a fifteenth-century copy of political prophecy, five short pieces of prophetic and devotional material, and one of the three surviving examples...Geldof, M R
-
Journal article
Black English in Britain in the Eighteenth Century
In eighteenth-century Britain, several works of imaginative literature by white authors included black characters speaking the form of English, largely a British West Indian creole, which would have been heard in everyday real life from members of the growing black population; samples are presented in chronological order.Paisey, David
-
Journal article
Embedded Marginalia in the Psalter and Hours of Humphrey de Bohun (British Library, Egerton MS. 3277)
The phrase 'embedded marginalia' refers to images on the pages of medieval manuscripts that are beyond the text block in both a physical and conceptual sense but integrated nevertheless in the form and meaning of the page as a whole. This study is focused on the many examples of embedded...Sandler, Lucy Freeman
-
Journal article
The 'Continuation' of the Thomason Tracts? The British Museum's 'Political Tracts' Series of Pamphlets Relating to English Political History, 1542–1807
This article examines the history, scope and provenance of the 'Political Tracts' series of 3000 early modern pamphlets that was assembled by the British Museum c. 1790-1807, during the so-called 'synthetical arrangement', when the library of printed books was reorganized along subject-based lines. The series was designed as a repository...Taylor, Edward
-
Journal article
Samuel Doody and his Books
The title page inscriptions 'J. Doody' or 'John Doody' in several volumes held in the Sloane Printed Books collection, have typically been taken as indicating ownership by either John Doody (1616-1680) or John Doody (1687-1753), his grandson. In fact, I suggest that these items found their way to Sloane from...Thorley, David
-
Journal article
Sir Robert Knolles and the Patronage of the Carmelite Missal (Add. MSS.29704-5, 44892): Assessing the Visual Evidence
This article reviews the question of who patronized the London 'reconstructed' Carmelite Missal (Add. MSS. 29704-5, 44892). This has been raised before, and Sir Robert Knolles (d. 1407), a major patron of London Whitefriars, suggested. However, his connection to the Missal has not been examined in any detail. Through consideration...Collins, Alexander
-
Journal article
Parody Playbills: The Politics of the Playbill in Britain in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Recent scholarship on the British culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has explored the theatricality of politics and the politics of theatre. This essay examines the parody, mock or spoof theatre playbill – an ephemeral text often used for political purposes – during general elections, in Britain in the...Gregory, James
-
Journal article
Raja Jivan Ram: A Professional Indian Portrait Painter of the Early Nineteenth Century
The painter Jivan Ram is referenced in 19th-century European publications on India, but little of his work was known from actual examples. He was the first Indian artist totally to abandon the traditional techniques of Indian miniatures and instead to work fully in European techniques of oil painting and portrait...Losty, J. P.
-
Journal article
A History of the British Library Slavonic and East European Collections: 1952-2004
Using and complementing material gathered as part of the British Library Slavonic and East European Department oral history interviews project, this article studies the provision of Slavonic and East European materials in the British (Museum) Library since the establishment of the Slavonic Department in 1952.Grba, Milan
-
Journal article
An Unusual Position of Watermarks in an Italian Eighteenth-Century Paper
Positions of watermarks in laid paper can vary, but normally fall within a few patterns. This note examines the watermarks in the paper used in two quarto books in the British Library printed by G. F. Mairesse and G. Radix of Turin in 1713 and 1717. These watermarks fall in...Dumontet, Carlo
-
Journal article
Whose Acquisitions Policy? Panizzi and his Predecessors
Among his many accomplishments Sir Anthony Panizzi is generally credited with devising the acquisitions policy that led to the superior position of the British Museum amongst world libraries. A notable document was his 'On the Collection of Printed Books at the British Museum' of 1845. However, he was not without...Sternberg, Ilse
-
Journal article
The Incunabula of Sir Charles Frederick
This study identifies the twenty-two incunables collected by the politician and antiquary Sir Charles Frederick (1709-1785) and listed in the sales catalogue of his library.Rhodes, Dennis E.
-
Journal article
I Who Speak Always Unpremeditately': The Earl of Mulgrave's Speeches Against Corruption and in Defence of His Honour, 1692 and 1695
In December 1692 John Sheffield, 3rd earl of Mulgrave, intervened in the House of Lords to speak in favour of the Place Bill – a measure aimed at limiting the numbers of MPs permitted to hold offices in the armed forces and central government. At one point Mulgrave equated the...Eagles, Robin
-
Journal article
The Bestiary in British Library, Royal MS. 2 C. XII and its Role in Medieval Education
The process of medieval education is still very obscure to us, and indeed very little is known about how texts were used in schools. This is particularly true of the role and function of the influential genre of medieval bestiaries in the process of educating novices and pupils in cathedral...Dines, Ilya
-
Journal article
Books Fit for a King: The Presentation Copies of Martin Bucer's De regno Christi (London, British Library, Royal MS. 8 B. VII) and Johannes Sturm's De periodis (Cambridge, Trinity College, II.12.21 and London, British Library, C.24.e.5)
This article discusses the presentation copies of two sixteenth-century works, Martin Bucer’s De regno Christi and Johannes Sturm’s De periodis, both of which were sent in fine copies by Bucer to John Cheke in 1550. The covering letter that accompanied these books survives today at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, whilst...Pohl, Benjamin ; Tether, Leah
-
Journal article
A Place for Music: John Nash, Regent Street and the Philharmonic Society of London
The founding of the Philharmonic Society of London (from 1912 'Royal') has long been understood only in the simplest terms: in 1813 thirty musicians started a regular orchestral concert series to present the best classical works for select audiences. Two centuries later, a fresh look at circumstances and documents, some...Langley, Leanne
-
Journal article
Cornelius Cardew’s Music for Moving Images: Some Preliminary Observations
Cornelius Cardew’s music for moving images has so far not been written about. This might be owing to the lack of access to primary sources (films and documentaries, scores and other relevant materials). This contribution gives an overview of Cardew’s ‘film music’ projects, and considers sketches, manuscript music and other...Gresser, Clemens
-
Journal article
W. Somerset Maugham’s Letters to Lady Aberconway in the British Library
The Western Manuscripts collection of the British Library possesses a series of original letters from W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) to Christabel, Lady Aberconway (1890–1974) that has not been registered in bibliographies of Maugham’s manuscripts and private letters. Maugham’s biographers only mention the relationship between the two correspondents as fellow dinner...Lee, Lilith
-
Journal article
Reflections on 'The Annotated Amleth: Belleforest in the British Library': The Identity of the Annotator
This study discusses the authorship of the manuscript annotations in the BL copy of François de Belleforest's Le Cinquiesme Livre des Histoires Tragiques (C.8.a.5).Casson, John
-
Journal article
Psalterium in quatuor linguis: Hebraea, Graeca, Chaldaea [i.e. Ethiopic], Latina (Cologne, 1518). Baltic Trade and Cultural Connections: Evidence from the Paper
The archiving and study of images of the watermarks in the British Library’s three copies of Psalterium in quatuor linguis: Hebraea, Graeca, Chaldaea [i.e. Ethiopic], Latina (Cologne, 1518) enables close comparison to be made of the make up of the books. Access to the Bernstein on-line database of watermarks indicates...Christie-Miller, Ian
-
Journal article
St Edward’s Chair in the Queen Mary Psalter
The Queen Mary Psalter (British Library, Royal MS. 2 B. VII), probably made c. 1310-20 for a royal recipient, is among the most lavishly illuminated manuscripts produced in late medieval England. This study focuses principally on a single picture in the Psalter’s Old Testament preface showing the prophet Nathan’s reproof...Smith, Kathryn A.
-
Journal article
Frechulf of Lisieux's Historiarum libri XII, I.ii.17 in Royal MS. 13 A. xxii
Royal MS. 13 A. xxii contains a copy of Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum, a short text commonly attributed to Josephus, and an eleventh-century Latin poem. Despite the attribution of the penultimate text to Josephus, it is actually the opening section of Frechulf of Lisieux's Historiae I.ii.17 (lines 1–101). Though...Major, Tristan
-
Journal article
Royal MS. 20 B. XX: Alexander the Great and the Voice of the Master. Interpretation and Astrology in a Medieval Manuscript
Royal MS. 20 B. XX is a small but lavishly illuminated copy of the French prose Alexander romance made in the 1420s. Its iconography is remarkable in the medieval tradition for a number of scenes in which the illuminator has concentrated on themes of divination by means of astrology and...Pérez-Simon, Maud
-
Journal article
The Opening of the Impeachment of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, June to September 1715: The 'Memorandum' of William Wake, Bishop of Lincoln
July 2015 is the tercentenary of the opening of the impeachment of Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, for high treason and criminal misdemeanours together with three other leading figures of Harley's ministry of 1710-14: Bolingbroke, Ormond and Strafford. William Wake, bishop of Lincoln since 1705, and soon to be promoted...Jones, Clyve
-
Journal article
The Dawson Turner Collection of Printed Ephemera and Great Yarmouth
This article provides an introduction to an important collection of printed ephemera held at the British Library and created by Dawson Turner (1775-1858). This ten-volume collection was acquired by the British Museum in 1859 and 1873 and is significant as it includes a wealth of material relating to life at...Boneham, John
-
Journal article
'A Programme for the Reign': Press, Propaganda and Public Opinion at Russia's Last Coronation
Russia's last coronation took place in Moscow in May 1896. To the click of camera shutters, the rattle of telegraphs and the whirring of the earliest cine machines, the twenty-eight-year-old Nicholas II crowned himself as absolute autocrat, inheritor of the spiritual-political legacy of Byzantium. But the world-wide publicity Nicholas sought...King, Greg ; Ashton, Janet
-
Journal article
Additions to the Library of William Dowsing (1596-1668): A Reformation Tract Volume Reassembled
This article identifies several volumes from the library of the seventeenth-century puritan William Dowsing (1596-1668). Dowsing is primarily known for the campaign of iconoclasm which he conducted in East Anglia between late 1643 and 1644 and for the journal in which he kept a detailed record of these activities. This...Roberts, Dunstan