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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
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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.
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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
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J. G. Ballard’s ‘Crash! A Science Theatre Presentation for the ICA’: The context of a lost document recovered
In the spring of 1968, J. G. Ballard drafted an eight-page outline for a multi-media 'science theatre presentation' called 'Crash!' It was to be performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). Although the event was teasingly promoted in a full-page feature in the Sunday Mirror newspaper ('A Star Role...Beckett, Chris
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Journal article
Recent Acquisitions: a Rare Work by Jacobus Tevius
Jacobus Tevius (Diogo de Tieve) is a key figure in the Portuguese Renaissance. This note describes the contents of his Epodon siue Ia(m)bicorum carminum libri tres [...] Ad Sebastianum primum, inuictissimum Lusitaniae Regem (Lisbon: Francisco Correia, 1565) and examines the author's contacts with courtly and scholarly circles in sixteenth-century Portugal...Taylor, Barry
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Journal article
The Date and Context of Robert of Torigni's Chronica in London, British Library, Cotton MS. Domitian A. VIII, ff. 71r-94v
This article establishes a precise date and context for British Library, Cotton MS. Domitian A. VIII, ff. 71r-94v, a copy of Robert of Torigni’s Chronica that was despatched from Mont-Saint-Michel to the Norman abbey of Le Bec during the early 1180s. Based on a palaeographical and codicological examination of MS....Pohl, Benjamin
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Journal article
Feo Belcari's Rappresentazione di Abramo Offset in Phalaris's Epistolae: Adventures of a Florentine Incunabulum
How did offset text from Feo Belcari's Rappresentazione d'Abramo find its way onto four pages of the British Library's copy of Phalaris's Epistolae (IA.29368) printed in Naples c. 1474? This article identifies the source of the offset text as the Florence 1490 edition now in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Palatino...Newbigin, Nerida
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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Some Italian Eighteenth-Century Books Acquired by British Travellers in Italy
This article studies three Italian eighteenth-century books acquired in Italy by three British travellers: Sir Charles Frederick (1709-1785), Joseph Trapp (c. 1716-1769) and I. Teckel.Rhodes, Dennis E.
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Constructing Saint Louis in John the Good's Grandes Chroniques de France (Royal MS. 16 G. VI)
In the 1330s a new, revised, densely illuminated copy of the Grandes Chroniques de France was made for the John, the dauphin of France who would be crowned King John the Good in 1350. Containing a twice-revised text and over 400 one- and two-column wide illuminations, the chronicle breaks from...Hedeman, Anne D.
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Journal article
Michael Renshaw: A Society Figure in War and Peace
For someone who was far from the public eye, Michael Renshaw had a remarkable circle of friends, from the aristocracy, politics, and the arts. The letters he received, donated to the British Library in 2008, not only cast light on the lives of their famous writers and some of the...John-McAlister, Michael St
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Journal article
In a Bind: Pratt's Qui Tams and the Bookbinders' Dilemma
The BL's Jaffray Collection contains rare copies of two qui tam cases brought in 1811 and 1812 by Robert Pratt, a member of the London Society of Journeymen Bookbinders. The cases were among the last attempts to uphold the Elizabethan statute of apprentices. They offer telling insight into a trade...Hill, Jonathan E.
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Paris National and International Exhibitions from 1798 to 1900: A Finding-List of British Library Holdings
The series of exhibitions which were held in Paris from the end of the eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth gave rise to a rich collection of publications, often illustrated, ranging from maps and guide books to catalogues, official reports and volumes of reflections. This article gives a brief history...Daniels, Morna
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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
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Journal article
The Manuscripts of Jan van Naaldwijk’s Chronicles of Holland, Cotton MSS. Vitellius F. XV and Tiberius C. IV
London, British Library, Cotton MSS. Vitellius F. XV and Tiberius C. IV are the autograph manuscripts of two chronicles of Holland by Jan van Naaldwijk, the son of a Dutch nobleman, written between 1513 and c. 1520. Renewed investigation of the manuscripts shows they came into the possession of Sir...Levelt, Sjoerd
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Journal article
A Royal Crusade History: The Livre d'Eracles and Edward IV's Exile in Burgundy
The English King Edward IV (1442-83) had multiple political, familial, and cultural connections with the Flanders-based court of Burgundy headed by Duke Charles the Bold, including Edward's sister Margaret of York's marriage to Charles, Edward's induction into the Burgundian Order of the Golden Fleece, and his five-month exile in Burgundy...Donovan, Erin K.
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Journal article
Intelligent by Design: The Manuscripts of Walter of Whittlesey, Monk of Peterborough
This article examines two important fourteenth-century manuscripts containing historical and other texts from Peterborough Abbey, both made for a monk named Walter of Whittlesey (Add. MS. 37958 and Add. MS. 47170). It reviews the biographical evidence for Whittlesey, the muddied issue of his role in the manuscripts' production, and also...Luxford, Julian
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Journal article
The National Printed Archive from Panizzi’s Time to the Digital Era
We have tended to view the modern development of the national research library and printed archive in the West in terms of a sequence of conspicuous innovators: Panizzi, Althoff and Harnack , Putnam and Evans, Francis and Hookway. Such a sequence can be best understood if it is seen as...Willison, I. R.
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Journal article
Humfrey Wanley and the Harley Collection
In the field of manuscript studies, the name Humfrey Wanley (1672-1726) is well known. Scholars have long recognized his achievements as Anglo-Saxonist, antiquarian, palaeographer, cataloguer, and librarian to Robert Harley and his son, Edward, 1st and 2nd earls of Oxford, who created one of the most outstanding private libraries in...Jackson, Deirdre
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Journal article
Destroyed, Damaged and Replaced: The Legacy of World War II Bomb Damage in the King's Library
In the early hours of 23 September 1940, an incendiary bomb fell on the East Wing of the British Museum, damaging an important part of the King's Library Gallery and destroying many of the books collected by King George III. A contemporary assessment estimated that 124 volumes (96 works) had...Edwards, Adrian S.
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Journal article
Matthew Paris, Visual Exegesis, and Apocalyptic Birds in Royal MS. 14 C. VII
This article argues that the prefatory maps in Royal MS. 14 C. VII act as a visual distillation of the vast system of emblems in the margins of the other Chronica Majora manuscripts. Recently, scholars have discussed Matthew Paris’s visual marginalia as reading devices and finding aids that distill sections...Kim, Dorothy
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Journal article
Harley MS. 3469: Splendor Solis or Splendour of the Sun – A German Alchemical Manuscript
‘Splendor Solis or Splendour of the Sun’ is one of the most beautiful and well known illuminated alchemical manuscripts. The text survives in many witnesses dating from the early sixteenth to the nineteenth century, of which Harl. MS. 3469 is definitely the most famous and best preserved example. Yet the...Völlnagel, Jörg
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Journal article
Accounts of Debates in the House of Commons, March-April 1731, Supplementary to the Diary of the First Earl of Egmont
John Perceval (1685–1748), 1st Viscount Perceval and (from 1733) 1st Earl of Egmont, was an assiduous recorder of his own life and times. His diaries, published by the Historical Manuscripts Commission from manuscripts in the British Library, are the best source for parliamentary debates at Westminster in the 1730s. For...Hayton, D. W.
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Journal article
The Making of L'Abreujamen de las estorias (Egerton MS. 1500)
L’Abreujamen de las estorias (BL, Egerton MS. 1500) is an Occitan diagrammatic chronicle executed in Avignon in 1321-24. It is composed of synchronic tables, regnal lists and genealogical diagrams, and is illustrated with more than sixteen-hundred miniature busts. Written instructions, corrections, sketches and unfinished miniatures attest to different stages in...Botana, Federico
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Journal article
The Westminster Tournament Challenge (Harley 83 H 1) and Thomas Wriothesley's Workshop
On the twelfth and thirteenth of February, 1511 Henry VIII held a tournament to celebrate the birth of his first son, Prince Arthur. The tournament is famously immortalized in the Westminster Tournament Roll (London, College of Arms, Westminster Tournament Roll) – a 60-foot long vellum roll that was painted soon...Walker, Alison Tara
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Journal article
The Discovery of a Watermark on the St Cuthbert Gospel using Colour Space Analysis
Watermarks on paper attached to substrates through which light cannot pass can be observed by converting a high resolution digital image of the region into a suite of colour spaces. An image is comprised of a variety of layers or textures which can be separated. This allows pixels of interest...Duffy, Christina
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Journal article
Understanding a Selection of Medical, Theological and Poetic Diagrams in a Thirteenth-Century Book of Biblical Commentaries: British Library, Harley MS. 658
British Library, Harley MS. 658 is a miscellany of study aids for the Bible from the early thirteenth century, bound together with a collection of scientific, poetic and theological diagrams. The texts were written by different scribes probably at separate times and places, but, apart from two texts at the...Corran, Emily
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Journal article
The Problem of Death: Dr Maurice Ernest and his Longevity Library
Maurice Ernest (ne Ernst, 1872-1955) was a notable student of human longevity. This article studies his life and his extensive library, which was donated to the National Central Library and is now in the British Library at Boston Spa.Evans, Lucy
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John Jaffray: Victorian Bookbinder, Chartist and Trade Unionist
John Jaffray (1811-1869) was a journeyman – a qualified binder – who did not own his own business but worked for others. His professional life as a finisher took him to numerous workshops in central London. He was also an historian of his trade, collecting ephemera and the memories of...Marks, P. J. M.
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Journal article
A Donizetti Manuscript in the Zweig Collection
Stefan Zweig's collection of music manuscripts, donated to the British Library in 1986, contains autographs by some of the major canonical composers of European history; from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven through to Wagner and Strauss and Schoenberg. A piece by Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) in the collection, which does not seem...Scobie, Christopher
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Journal article
John Wilson Croker's Image of France in the Quarterly Review
Political developments in France provided a substantial topic for British periodicals during the first half of the nineteenth century. The most sustained comment came from the Rt Hon. John Wilson Croker, a close associate of the Duke of Wellington, Canning and Pitt, who was Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809...Morphet, David
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Journal article
Some Greek Gospel Manuscripts in the British Library: Examples of the Byzantine Book as Holy Receptacle and Bearer of Hidden Meaning
The Gospel book is by far the most numerous, and hence the most important and characteristic, genre of book production in Byzantine culture. A detailed survey of the surviving material in the British Library carried by the author provides an overview of the Byzantine perception of the Gospel book, and...Takiguchi, Mika
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Journal article
The Printed Books of the Cotton Family and Their Dispersal: Additions
As a supplement to the author’s ‘The Printed Books of the Cotton Family and Their Dispersal’, in Giles Mandelbrote and Barry Taylor (eds.), Libraries within the Library: The Origins of the British Library’s Printed Collections (London: British Library, 2009), pp. 43-75, the present article identifies five copies and adds two...Tite, Colin G. C.
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Journal article
Newly Catalogued Pamphlets from the India Office Library Collection
This note records the recent cataloguing of a collection of pamphlets received by the India Office Library during the 1920s and 30s, nearly 75% of which are new to the British Library.Pickett, Catherine
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Journal article
Monastic Learning in Twelfth-Century England: Marginalia, Provenance and Use in London, British Library, Cotton MS. Faustina A. X, Part B
BL, Cotton Faustina A.x is a composite manuscript consisting of a late Anglo-Saxon copy of Ælfric’s Grammar and Glossary (Part A) and an early 12th-century copy of the Regula Sancti Benedicti in Old English (Part B). This study attempts to shed new light on the question of the composite’s provenance...López, Francisco José Álvarez
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Journal article
Near Vermilion Sands: The Context and Date of Composition of an Abandoned Literary Draft by J. G. Ballard
The literary archive of J. G. Ballard at the British Library includes an unpublished story set in the environs of Vermilion Sands, a fictional desert resort that is the exotic location of nine stories Ballard wrote between 1956 and 1966. The stories were subsequently collected and published as 'Vermilion Sands'...Beckett, Chris
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Journal article
An Unidentified French Incunable: Sir John Mandeville, Le lapidaire en francoys, [Lyon, c. 1495-1496]
The British Library's copy of the Lapidaire en francoys attributed to Sir John Mandeville, previously dated [c. 1530], can be shown on typographical grounds to be an incunable edition printed in Lyon c. 1495 or 1496. The book is printed with a very peculiar Lyon bastarda type whose printer is...Shaw, David J.
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Journal article
A Lost Manuscript of the 'Rymes of […] Randolf Erl of Chestre'
The first ever reference to Robin Hood as a literary character, in William Langland’s Piers Plowman, refers to ‘rymes of Robyn Hood and Randolf Erl of Chestre’. The reference to ‘Randolf’ has intrigued literary historians, as no medieval narrative verse is known to survive which features Ranulf, earl of Chester,...Spence, John
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Journal article
A Genealogy of the Kings of England in Papal Avignon: British Library, Egerton MS. 1500
This article examines the use of Anglo-Norman genealogical rolls in Fra Paolino Veneto’s L’Abreujamen de las estorias (Eg. MS. 1500), a diagrammatic world history that was composed in the Occitan vernacular in papal Avignon, circa 1321-1326 (see eBLJ articles by Botana and Ibarz). That such documents were available as a...Léglu, Catherine
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Journal article
A Medieval Psalter 'Perfected': Eighteenth-Century Conservationism and an Early (Female) Restorer of Rare Books and Manuscripts
Many medieval manuscripts suffered from antiquarian zeal during the eighteenth-century revival of interest in medieval art: enthusiasts often augmented their own albums and private collections by removing attractive illuminations from manuscript pages, leaving wounded books in their wake. Less familiar is the restorative work of their contemporaries, a small number...Drimmer, Sonja
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The Evolution of George Hakewill’s Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God, 1627-1637: Academic Contexts, and Some New Angles from Manuscripts
This article examines aspects of the genesis and textual evolution of George Hakewill’s celebrated Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God, published in three ever-expanding editions in 1627, 1630, and 1635. Rather than comparing the three printed texts, however, this study instead focuses first on the political...Poole, William
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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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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
A Fourteenth-Century Register of Freizins Rents from Erfurt (British Library, Add. MS. 24637)
Add. MS. 24637 is a register of specially-privileged Freizins rents collected by the archbishop of Mainz at Erfurt from the years 1351-1358. Other registers in the series from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are preserved at the Landeshauptarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt in Magdeburg, and consequently the British Library manuscript has been overlooked...Pope, Ben
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Journal article
Daniel Foote, M.D., of Cambridge: The Evidence in Print and from the Sloane Collection
This article introduces the physician and translator Daniel Foote (1629-1700), predominantly though his little-examined manuscripts in the Sloane Collection. Foote survives in the scholarly memory principally as the translator of the unpublished ‘Observations’ of Francis Mercury Van Helmont (1682) and sometimes as a contributor to a dispute in the Royal...Thorley, David
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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
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
'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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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
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
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
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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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
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
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
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
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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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
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
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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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
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
The Pacific King and the Militant Prince? Representation and Collaboration in the Letters Patent of James I, creating his son, Henry, Prince of Wales
The relationship of King James VI and I with his elder son and heir, Prince Henry Frederick, has received much scholarly attention in recent years. James has often been portrayed as a resentful father whose peaceful policies were at odds with his son’s martial interests and militant Protestantism. With reference...Murray, Catriona
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Journal article
The Provenance of the Abreujamens de las estorias (London, British Library, Egerton MS. 1500) and the Identification of Scribal Hands (c. 1323)
This essay provides an overview of research undertaken on the provenance of a medieval Occitan (Old Provençal) translation of an unedited diagrammatic chronicle of Paolino of Venice (Marciana, Zanetti 399). It confirms the existing suspicion that the manuscript was produced in Avignon, and provides a possible dating of 1321-1323; it...Ibarz, Alexander
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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
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
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
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
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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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
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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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
Working at scale: what do computational methods mean for research using cases, models and collections?
Open access, peer-reviewed article published in Science Museum Group Journal, as part of a double-length special issue for the AHRC TaNC discovery project, 'Congruence Engine'. The article gives a critical overview of how 'scale' operates as a keyword within computational humanities as well as reviewing a number of cognate fields,...Wilson, Daniel C S
machine learning, AI for GLAM, STS, scale, computational humanities, history, and congruence engine
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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
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Journal article
Harley MS. 2979 and the Books of Hours Produced in Avignon by the Workshop of Jean de Toulouse
This contribution is centred on Harley MS. 2979, a Book of Hours illuminated in the last decade of the fourteenth century in Avignon, the capital of the antipopes during the Schism. Although now rather worn, it seems to have been one of the finest and most expensive of the Books...Manzari, Francesca