eBLJ 2018

The Journal is published continuously throughout the year, with one volume per year. Articles undergo production as soon as they are ready, to ensure minimal delays in publication.

Collection Details

Creator (organisation)

British Library

ISNI

Language

English

Related collection

Electronic British Library Journal

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The Shorthand of Robert Willis, Physician-in-Extraordinary to King George III
(2018)
Underhill, Timothy
;
Peters, Timothy
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 5-8 November 1810, the time of his politically controversial appointment to work alongside official members of George III’s medical household – and also the shorthand contained in his 1810-12 medical notebooks (Add. MS. 41733). A more complex textual relationship than might have been supposed emerges between the latter and the better known longhand medical registers (Add. MS. 41696-41732), with the shorthand furnishing further details about aspects of the King’s behaviour and treatment during this period of relapse into chronic mania with accompanying dementia.
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The Watermarks on the Northumberland Manuscript and Hand D: Research Findings and Reflections on the Shakespeare Authorship Question
(2018)
Casson, John
Key manuscript documents relevant to the Shakespeare Authorship Question are examined for the watermarks on the paper. Manuscripts of ten contemporaries are examined, revealing that variations of a generic watermark of a pot were used by the paper manufacturers. Elements of this watermark are analysed and examples compared. This process shows that only the watermarks on paper used by one authorship candidate, Henry Neville, match those on the Northumberland Manuscript and the Hand D section of Sir Thomas More.
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A Fragmentary Draft as the Groundwork for Bloodthirsty 'Sir Cauline' in Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: British Library, Add. MS. 39547, f. 157v
(2018)
Mihara, Minoru
This article takes a novel approach to Thomas Percy's draft on 'Sir Cauline' in his ballad collection Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which is stored in the British Library (Add. MS. 39547, f. 157v). Very little attention has heretofore been paid to the conflation of the draft with the romance 'Eger and Grine' that contributed to reinforce the bloodthirsty image of the Reliques. This article carefully compares the draft, 'Eger and Grine' and the Reliques ballad to demonstrate how 'Sir Cauline' was presented in the Reliques via the conflation. The demonstration provides a new model for Percy's creation process in this ballad.
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Disembodied: Additional MS. 8785 and the Tradition of Human Organ Depictions in Medieval Art and Medicine
(2018)
McCall, Taylor
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 educated councilman of Mantua, for the city’s signore, Guido Bonacolsi, in the first decade of the fourteenth century. The manuscript is evidently the original that was presented to Guido and includes an extensive, carefully executed decorative programme. This essay focuses on the rare depictions of human organs in the initials of Book Five, On the Parts of the Body, examined here for the first time and compared to contemporary examples of similar imagery. This article seeks to situate these remarkable and unique images, drawn at the turning point between traditional reliance on authoritative texts and a new appetite for scientific human dissection (first undertaken in Bologna in approximately 1315), within the broader context of medieval anatomical illustration at a significant moment in the history of medicine.
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The British Library, Europeana 1914-1918 and the Memorialization of the Great War
(2018)
Jenkins, Jeremy
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 documents supplied by the general public. This article draws on Europeana 1914-1918 to examine various aspects of the memorialization of the conflict.
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The 'Continuation' of the Thomason Tracts? The British Museum's 'Political Tracts' Series of Pamphlets Relating to English Political History, 1542–1807
(2018)
Taylor, Edward
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 for most of the Museum's early holdings of pamphlets relating to English political history, drawn together from the Old Royal Library and the collections of Sir Hans Sloane, Major Arthur Edwards and Sir William Musgrave, among others. The pamphlets in the series date from between 1542 and 1807, with a particular concentration in the eighteenth century. However, the series has not been properly recognized because it has lain under the shadow of a far larger series of early modern pamphlets, the 22,000 civil war publications known as the Thomason Tracts. Regarded as Thomason's 'continuation', the Political Tracts were classified and shelved together with the Thomason Tracts as 'E' tracts in the nineteenth century, causing the Political Tracts series to disappear into obscurity. This article reconstructs the series, locates its constituent parts within the British Library today, examines the provenance of its contents, and traces the history of its assembly, disassembly and neglect.
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Sir Robert Knolles and the Patronage of the Carmelite Missal (Add. MSS.29704-5, 44892): Assessing the Visual Evidence
(2018)
Collins, Alexander
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 of the iconography of the Missal's patron images, as well as the wider scheme of the Missal, relationships are identified between the Missal and architectural sites patronized by Sir Robert and his wife Constance. In particular, their devotions find particular resonance in the illuminations of the manuscript, and new understandings of certain images in the Missal are put forth to support Sir Robert’s patronage of the manuscript.
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Provenance Confirmed for the Dismembered Breviary of the Cathedral of Agen (1297-1313): Add. MS. 42132
(2018)
Nadal, à‰milie
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 was still unknown. This article confirms the Agen provenance of this book which was certainly made for the cathedral. Indeed, in an article of 1889 barely mentioned in the literature, there is a description of this Breviary which was then still preserved in the vicinity of Agen, in the hands of the Baron Paul de Bastard, last owner of the almost complete manuscript.
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Reading Between the Lines: Sir George Smart's Annotated Programmes for Manchester's 1836 Musical Festival
(2018)
Johnson, Rachel
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. This article explores in detail Smart’s programmes from Manchester’s Grand Musical Festival of 1836, triangulating his comments against newspaper reviews and related sources in an attempt to uncover what actually happened at an early nineteenth-century music festival, both on stage and behind the scenes. Insights are gained into audience behaviour, concert management and the growing influence of the press. Questions are raised as to the limitations of printed concert programmes, how such limitations may be mitigated, and the tremendous untapped potential the George Smart collection still contains.
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Samuel Doody and his Books
(2018)
Thorley, David
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 the library of the apothecary Samuel Doody, son of the elder John Doody and uncle of the younger. Several, indeed, contain notes in Samuel Doody's hand and correspond to his purchases recorded in the 'hammer' catalogues of books auctions held in the 1680s. In this article, I discuss Samuel Doody's books that survive in the British Library, his acquisitions at public book sales, and the collaborative project of cataloguing nature in which Doody and other eminent botanists and Fellows of the Royal Society were engaged during the seventeenth century's closing decades. In three appendices, I provide book lists offering a partial reconstruction of Doody's library catalogues based on the volumes in the Sloane collection and his recorded purchases at two auctions.
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eBLJ 2018

eBLJ 2018

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