eBLJ 2019

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.

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English

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'The Most Bogus Ideas': Science, Religion and Creationism in the John Maynard Smith Archive
(2019)
Piel, Helen
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 Genesis. The eminent British evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith (1920-2004) engaged with religion more generally and creationism specifically. His archive, held by the British Library, contains relevant material from the 1960s to the 1980s: Maynard Smith kept publications sent to him by Jehovah's Witnesses, discussed the differences between science and religion on school radio, and publicly debated with creationists twice. These engagements reveal that for Maynard Smith there was a choice to be made between science and religion; he chose science. Religion may have poetic value but it lacks the explanatory powers of science. Especially during his encounters with creationists and their extreme views, Maynard Smith made use of Karl Popper's philosophy of science (in particular, Popper's concept of falsifiability) to demonstrate that creationism was not a scientific theory and thus not a valid contestant in answering questions about life and (human) origins.
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J. G. Ballard’s ‘Crash! A Science Theatre Presentation for the ICA’: The context of a lost document recovered
(2019)
Beckett, Chris
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 for the Beloved Monster that Lives on Sex and Sacrifice'), the performance did not take place. The narrator was to have been Ballard's close friend, the psychologist and computer scientist Chris Evans. According to Ballard's autobiography, Miracles of Life, Evans was the physical model for Vaughan, 'the auto-destructive hero of my novel Crash'. Evans – who worked at the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington, not far from Shepperton, where Ballard lived – died in 1979. Following his death, Evans's papers, which included his copy of the 'Crash!' outline, were packed away, undisturbed until recently. In the summer of 2017, Nancy Evans donated to the British Library her husband’s copy of the outline, the only surviving text. This article reproduces Ballard's typescript in full, discusses its relationship to the novel Crash (1973), and explores the context of the ICA.
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Henry of Blois's Gift Lists in Add. MS. 29436: Why the Discrepancies?
(2019-12)
Munns, John
Folios 46v-48r of Add. MS. 29436 contain two lists of the gifts donated by Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester (1129 – 71) to his cathedral church. The shorter list post-dates Bishop Henry's death, the longer list probably belongs to the last decade of his life. This article examines the discrepancies between the two lists and explores possible explanations for the disappearance of items between the composition of the earlier list and the later list. It also considers the significance of the only item added to the collection during this time: a foot relic of the Sicilian martyr, St Agatha.
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Scribes, Kings, and a Roll Chronicle: Dating and Provenance of British Library, Add. MS. 30029
(2019)
Bellato, Giulia
Created in a period of political transition, as England moved from the end of Henry III’s reign towards that of Edward I, British Library Add. MS. 30079 is an important witness to the historical events of the late thirteenth century. This manuscript was one of the first chronicle rolls written in Latin recording the history of England through a genealogy of its kings, a model which would then acquire popularity in the Anglo-Norman world during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. An investigation surrounding the manuscript’s context of origin will show how Add. MS. 30079 can be a relevant source for a broader historical analysis of the period. This paper considers the dating and provenance of this chronicle roll, putting particular emphasis on the implications of scribal choices and of the circumstances of manuscript transmission.
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The Reading Room in Literature
(2019)
Harris, P. R.
A survey of references to the Reading Rooms of the British Museum Library from its foundation in 1753 to the 1960s, with some personal memories.
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A New Witness to Henry of Avranches's Vita Sancti Oswaldi in London, British Library, Cotton MS. Faustina B. VII
(2019)
Ispir, Cristian N.
Cotton MS. Faustina B. VII. contains a previously unexamined piece of parchment inscribed with several verses taken from Henry of Avranches’ Vita Sancti Oswaldi, composed c. 1230. The article highlights the value of this textual witness in relation to the transmission of the Vita and discusses the function of the parchment strip in the Faustina manuscript.
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Philip Harris: Accomplished Librarian and Acclaimed Historian of the British Museum Library
(2019)
Phillips, Andrew
An appreciation of the life and work of the author of A History of the British Museum Library, 1753-1973 (London, 1998).
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Navigating Brave New Worlds: A Close Analysis of Anne McLaren's Laboratory Notebook
(2019-12)
Moynihan, Bridget
Dr Anne McLaren (1927–2007) was a leading developmental biologist with a decorated career that spanned more than fifty years. In particular, McLaren was interested in the ways in which an individual is always connected to, and a part of, its many environments. This interest led her to the study of mammalian development and genetics, where her work famously advanced the development of in vitro fertilization (IVF). The British Library holds an extensive collection of McLaren's papers (Add. MSS. 83830-83981 and Add. MS. 89202) and this article focuses on one laboratory notebook from these papers, Add. MS. 83844, in particular. This notebook documents egg transfer experiments conducted on mice by McLaren and her collaborator Dr Donald Michie (1923–2007) between 1955 and 1959. As I will work to show, this notebook allows a consideration of the painstaking daily tasks on which scientific advancements rely and provides insight into McLaren's working environments as she approached the IVF breakthrough. The first section of the article therefore analyses the ways in which the notebook is used to structure the detailed experimental data on egg transfers that it collects. The second section of the article situates the egg transfer experiments within the larger context of McLaren's working environment at the time of the notebook's creation, including by showing their connection to the IVF experiments. Throughout this discussion, I argue that Add. MS. 83844 attests to the ways in which McLaren used the environments, people, and resources around her to their fullest potential, asking as much as she could from them while also giving back to and through them.
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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
(2019)
Smith, Maddy
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 and have understandably left few records of their encounters with Tusser’s manual. Yet this copy contains rare material evidence of use by a family of tenant farmers living in Somerset in the early seventeenth century. Later, in the eighteenth century, it belonged for a time to William Henry Ireland, the notorious Shakespeare forger, who then passed it on to George Chalmers, the Scottish antiquarian book collector who amassed a significant gentleman’s library and who was also hoodwinked by Ireland’s forgeries. Following the auction of Chalmers’s library in 1842 this book found its way into the British Museum Library in 1846 via the London book trade. It is remarkable not just for its survival (it is one of the two copies extant of this edition) but because of what it reveals about its owners over the centuries.
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The Bibliographical History of The Spectator
(2019)
Bernard, Stephen
The bibliographical history of The Spectator 1712-2016 is a list of all complete editions and extracts in English (published in England, Scotland, Ireland, and the American colonies – later the United States of America) and French. It is intended to be comprehensive, but it may be that some extracts have been overlooked, such as single or few essays reproduced in anthologies. The shelfmarks of the copies which may be found in the British Library are given.
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eBLJ 2019

eBLJ 2019

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