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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
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Journal article
Isaac Bernard: Prague Jew, jeweller, mintmaster and spy
IN his 'Catalogus Brevior' (1709-24), the text of which now constitutes the first part of the existing Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts, Robert Harley's librarian, Humfrey Wanley hesitantly - and ambiguously - recorded that a Hebrew cabbalistic work, now Harleian MS. 1204, was 'ut accepi, a quodam Isaaco Bernard, Judaeo...Barber, Peter
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Journal article
London, Bengal, the China trade and the unfrequented extremities of Asia: the East India Company's settlement in New Guinea, 1793-95
ON 25 October 1793 an Englishman, Captain John Hayes, hoisted the British flag at Dore Bay on the north-west coast of New Guinea, near present-day Manokwariin Irian Jaya. With appropriate ceremony a twenty-one gun salute was fired and Hayes, on behalf of the King and nation of Great Britain, took...Griffin, Andrew
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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
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Journal article
The great gun at Agra
IN 1974 there appeared on the London art market two bound volumes of watercolours entitled 'Views by Seeta Ram from Moorshedabad to Patna. Vol. V and 'Views by Seeta Ram from Secundra to Agra. Vol. IX'. Each of these volumes contained twenty-three large watercolours, normally on paper watermarked 'John Dickinson...Losty, J. P.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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Journal article
Sir Robert Harley, K.B., (1579-1656) and the 'character' of a puritan
IN February 1621 Thomas Shepherd caused a furore in the House of Commons by attacking the bill 'for the Punishment of divers Abuses on the Sabaoth-day' at its second reading. It was, he said 'very inconvenient and indiscreete' and 'it savours of the spirrit of a Puritan', and he called...Eales, Jacqueline
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Journal article
A preliminary check-list of Sir Hans Sloane's catalogues
THE purpose of this article is to provide a convenient means of locating the extant original catalogues of Sir Hans Sloane's collections. With the notable exception of Sloane's catalogue of coins and medals these have survived rather better than the collections themselves, and with their aid it is possible to...Jones, Peter Murray
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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.
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: manuscript collections: acquisitions January-December 1983
Recent acquisitions: manuscript collections: acquisitions January-December 1983.McKendrick, Scot
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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.
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Journal article
Thomas Tudway and the Harleian Collection of 'Ancient' church music
ONE of the best known sets of documents in British musical history is Harl. MSS.7337-7342, the first volume of which is titled A Collection of the Most Celebrated Services and Anthems used in the Church of England, from the Reformation to the Restauration of K. Charles If. Composed by the...Weber, William
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Journal article
English Language Collections: selected acquisitions 1982-1987
English Language Collections: selected acquisitions 1982-1987.Archibald, Jean ; James, Elizabeth
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Journal article
Robert Harley's 'middle way': the Puritan heritage in Augustan politics
THE character of Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford, was a puzzle to contemporaries and has continued to vex historians ever since. Harley's motives, objectives, principles (if indeed he had any) are of a piece with his notoriously difficult handwriting: often obscure and sometimes quite indecipherable. Of course, for a...Hayton, David
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Journal article
John Wilson, Hume's first printer
THE first two volumes of David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature were published (anonymously) in January of 1739, by John Noon. The third and final volume was published (again anonymously) near the end of October, 1740, by Thomas Longman. None of the volumes includes the name of the printer,...Brown, Sally
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Journal article
Problems in the history of Chinese bindings
THE origins and development of different binding formats form a subject of importance amongst the many aspects of the history of the Chinese book that require further research. In 1986, I published an article on the distinctions between jingzhe ['pleated sutra' or accordion binding with the first and last pages...Zhizhong, Li
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Journal article
Robert Harley's parliamentary apprenticeship: 1690-1695
WILLIAM'S 1690 Parliament has a claim to a particular place in the development of parliamentary procedure and processes. From 1690 began the unbroken record of annual sessions. The House of Commons met from late October or early November through until March, six days of the week, breaking only briefly for...Rowlands, Ted
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Journal article
The making of a collection: Burmese manuscripts in the British Library
THE Burma manuscripts collection in the British Library by virtue of its size, range of material, and state of preservation constitutes the most significant collection of manuscripts to be found outside Burma. It numbers over 1,000 manuscripts, of which approximately 800 are in Oriental Collections and 350 in the India...Herbert, Patricia
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Journal article
Stefan Zweig's copy of Rimbaud, Une Saison en enfer (1873)
IN 1908 Stefan Zweig was given a copy of the first edition of Rimbaud's Une Saison en enfer; the volume now forms part of the Zweig Collection in the British Library.Michaelides, Chris
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Journal article
Recent acquisitions: Slavonic and East European Collections: three Polish pamphlets on Pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Sevi
IN 1669 the press of the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev published a substantial book Messyia pravdyvyi Isus Khristos [The true Messiah Jesus Christ] and in 1672 the Ukrainian version was followed by the Polish, Messiasz prawdziwy. Its Orthodox author, Ioannykii Haliatovskyi (Joanicjusz Galatowski), Rector of the Kiev Academy...Alsop, J. D.
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Journal article
An unrecognized Spanish edition of Poliziano's Silvae
ANGELO Ambrogini, born in 1454 and universally known as Il Poliziano from his birthplace of Montepulciano in Southern Tuscany, wrote four Latin poems which go under the collective title of Silvae. Of these, Manto was first published in Florence in 1482; Ambra was printed without date, also in Florence, probably...Rhodes, Dennis E.
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Journal article
A skeleton in the cupboard: James West and the Portland Papers
IN an earlier article in this issue (pp. 123-33), Clyve Jones has surveyed the main collections which make up the archive of Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford. Another small group of strays which is worth noting are the letters to Oxford and his son's father-in-law, John Holies, Duke of...Harris, Frances
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Journal article
The Evanion Collection
IN 1895 the British Museum's Department of Printed Books acquired a collection of ephemeral material relating to the nineteenth-century entertainment world and contemporary life in general. It was purchased from a man who had been a moderately successful conjuror and ventriloquist but now in his old age had fallen into...Harland, Elizabeth
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Journal article
The Tilliot Hours: comparisons and relationships
THE provision of a new catalogue for the Yates Thompson manuscripts now in the British Library, taking into consideration the many advances in scholarship which have taken place since the collector himself issued his original catalogues at the beginning of the century, was among the major ambitions which Derek Turner...Backhouse, Janet
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Journal article
W. H. Auden's Poems of 1928
IN April 1987 the Modern British Section of the British Library acquired a rare and important copy of W. H. Auden's Poems of 1928. This was Auden's first published work, privately printed by his fellow poet and undergraduate Stephen Spender during the Oxford summer vacation.Leevers, Joanna
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Journal article
The embroidered binding of the Felbrigge Psalter
MANY fine medieval manuscripts are exhibited in the British Library's Grenville Library, but one of the most unusual is the Felbrigge Psalter (Sloane MS. 2400), which was probably written and illuminated in Northern France in about the middle of the thirteenth century. At some time the manuscript came to England...Wallis, Penelope
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Journal article
The structure of English pre-conquest Benedictional
A FORM of liturgical manuscript which particularly interested Derek Turner was the benedictional. In his edition of the pontificals in BL, Cotton MS. Claudius A. III he made an important contribution to the study of this type of service-book, providing in his introduction a useful account of their nature and...Prescott, Andrew
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Journal article
W. R. S. Ralston (1828-89): scholarship and scandal in the British Museum
ONE of the best-known members of staff in the British Museum in the late 1860s and early 1870s was William Ralston Shedden Ralston, an expert on Russian life and literature who was both a translator for, and a friend of, Ivan Turgenev. Ralston was respected in the Museum for his...McCrimmon, Barbara
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Journal article
An addition to the bibliography of Nantes
PRINTING began at Nantes with an isolated venture in 1493, when on 15 April an otherwise unknown printer named Etienne Larcher completed an edition of Jean Meschinot, Les Lunettes des princes, Vingt-cinq ballades. Commemoration de la passion. Of this exceptionally rare incunable the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris has two incomplete...Leevers, Joanna
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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
Deciphering the Cotton Genesis miniatures: preliminary observations concerning the use of colour
THE Cotton Genesis (British Library, Cotton MS. Otho B. VI) was written and illuminated at some point during the period of the fourth to sixth centuries AD, and very badly charred in the Cotton Library fire of 1731. Since 1979 I have been recording all the decipherable features of the...Wenzel, Marian
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Journal article
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 account book of a Marian bookseller, 1553-4
MS. EGERTON 2974, fois. 67-8, preserves in fragmentary form accounts from the day-book of a London stationer who was active during the brief interval between the death on 6 July 1553 of Edward VI, whose regents allowed unprecedented liberty to Protestant authors, printers, publishers, and booksellers, and the reimposition of...King, John N.
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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
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
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
Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts from the library of Sir Sydney Cockerell
I THINK that the first article by Derek Turner that I ever read was his list of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts which had belonged to Eric Millar (1887-1966) in an offprint from The British Museum Quarterly sent to me by Mrs June O'Donnell. I read it through and through, bewitched...Hamel, Christopher de
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Journal article
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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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.