British Library Journal (volume 17, number 1, spring 1991)

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Twentieth century Italian imprints
(1991-05)
Reidy, Denis
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 the printing of works in clear and elegant types, the most celebrated being 'Roman' and 'Italic'. They were also renowned for the beautiful layout and design of their books. By this time, virtually every major city in the Italian peninsula could boast at least one printing press, while in Venice alone there were more presses to be found than in any other city in the world. Indeed, it has been calculated that just under fifty per cent of all sixteenth-century books were printed there. Italian printers 'par excellence' such as Antonio Blado, Aldus Manutius and his heirs, Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari, the Giunta family, and Francesco Marcolini, to name the most famous, had earned a justifiable reputation for printing books in comparatively long print runs and, equally important, for publishing textually accurate and carefully edited works, a prerequisite for the literary and scientific researches of the Humanist scholar, especially in subjects such as biblical and classical exegesis. Italian printers were also famed for illustrating their books with woodcuts and engravings of the finest quality. These were not only of great beauty but were essential for scientific works, especially books on anatomy.
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'Importunate cries of misery': the correspondence of Lucius Henry Hibbins and the Duke of Newcastle, 1741-58
(1991-05)
Gibson, William T.
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 exercise of Church patronage. Mary Bateson ignores the correspondence, even though her aim was to exemplify the Duke of Newcastle's dealing with place-seeking clergy. More curiously Norman Sykes also ignores the collection and Daniel Hirschberg dismisses it in passing. The omission is significant since, among other things, the correspondence indicates that the censorious attitude of historians to placeseeking and self-recommendation for preferment should be reconsidered. Hibbins's appeals for a place represent the claims of a clergyman who had worked for the Church through a political 'interest', which he felt had then deserted him.
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The British Museum Library and colonial copyright deposit
(1991-05)
Sternberg, Ilse
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 complicated history of the relevant legislation, the attempts to enforce it and a preliminary evaluation of the benefits these brought to collection building in the British Museum Library.
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Two fragments from Cotton MS. Otho B. X
(1991-05)
Lee, S. D.
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 folios and their contents have remained a mystery.
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A memento of Napoleon
(1991-05)
Daniels, Morna
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 before going on to Westminster. It was not surprising, therefore, that his anti-Establishment sympathies inclined him to radicalism. While an undergraduate at Cambridge he became a close friend of Byron, with whom he travelled to Spain, Albania, Greece and Constantinople. In 1819, supported by Sir Francis Burdett and the radical tailor Francis Place, he unsuccessfully contested Westminster as a radical against George Lamb, the official Whig candidate. In December that year the House of Commons committed him to prison until the end of the session for breach of privilege by his assertion in a pamphlet that only troops prevented Parliament being dissolved by popular protest. Despite this, in the General Election of 1820 he defeated Lamb and was returned for Westminster.
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Guglielmo Libri and the British Museum: a case of scandal averted
(1991-05)
Maccioni, P. Alessandra
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 intention to sell his valuable collection of manuscripts and printed books. Re-reading the letter Panizzi must have considered the various possibilities of helping his friend, while at the same time enhancing the Museum's collections in his care. As far as the purchase of printed books was concerned, he foresaw no problems. To acquire the manuscripts, however, the consent of the Treasury and the Trustees would be necessary - and there was also the certainty of having to deal with the Keeper of Manuscripts, Sir Frederic Madden. The relationship between the two keepers can be characterized as a state of armed peace, which at the slightest provocation might erupt into yet another battle between them.
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A catalogue of Sir Robert Cotton's printed books?
(1991-05)
Tite, Colin G. C.
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 a subject which has so far received very little consideration- the question of the history, character and present whereabouts of Sir Robert Cotton's library of printed books.
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From copy to facsimile: a millennium of studying the Vatican Vergil
(1991-05)
Wright, David H.
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. It consisted of about 440 folios of fine parchment, but included some leaves with minor defects. The pages were about 24 cm. high and 21 cm. wide (the height of this Journal but one inch wider), much smaller than the slightly later classical books we know as the Codex Romanus of Vergil (about 35 by 33-5 cm.) or the Codex Augusteus of Vergil (about 42 by 35 cm.), two very pretentious coffee-table books. The text was written by a good scribe in a fluent version of Rustic capitals, the script expected for such a book, but it was not free of errors and careless omissions. It was illustrated with about 280 framed paintings inserted in the text at the appropriate places, a modest undertaking by comparison with the slightly later Greek Christian manuscript known as the Cotton Genesis, which had about 360 illustrations for only one book of the Bible.
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British Library Journal (volume 17, number 1, spring 1991)

British Library Journal (volume 17, number 1, spring 1991)

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