eBLJ 2014

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

Now showing 1 - 10 of 17

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Near Vermilion Sands: The Context and Date of Composition of an Abandoned Literary Draft by J. G. Ballard
(2014)
Beckett, Chris
The literary archive of J. G. Ballard at the British Library includes an unpublished story set in the environs of Vermilion Sands, a fictional desert resort that is the exotic location of nine stories Ballard wrote between 1956 and 1966.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' (1971 and 1973). The unpublished story in the archive – which has no title, is not dated, and was eventually abandoned as a composition – comprises seventeen closely typed pages that were revised and annotated on more than one occasion (in red and blue ink). When was it written? Why was it abandoned? This study attempts to answer these questions by assessing a range of evidence, beginning with the identification of textual clues to the date of composition. The draft story’s thematic relationship to the stories of 'Vermilion Sands' is then considered, particularly its relationship to ‘The Screen Game’, a story with which it has much in common. Finally, and rewardingly, the physical evidence of the document itself is assessed, the distinctive paper on which the story was typed.
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Frechulf of Lisieux's Historiarum libri XII, I.ii.17 in Royal MS. 13 A. xxii
(2014)
Major, Tristan
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 Frechulf does employ Josephus's Antiquitates in this section, his use of source material is complex, and it is uncertain why this text has been excerpted and added to the end of the Historia Langobardorum here and in the related Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, BPL MS. 71 without any rubrication.
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The Royal Image and Diplomacy: Henry VII’s Book of Astrology (British Library, Arundel MS. 66)
(2014)
FroÅ„ska, Joanna
One of the most intriguing manuscripts associated with Henry VII of England, British Library, MS. Arundel 66 combines astronomical tables and works of so-called judicial astrology with a short collection of political prophecies. As an informal note added at the end of one of its texts suggests, the volume was probably completed by a certain John Wellys on 30 June 1490. The present essay is an attempt to read the selection of political prophecies and interpret the manuscript’s pictorial contents in the light of events surrounding peace negotiations between England and France in 1489-90 and as a reflection of a use of renewed Plantagenet and Lancastrian claims to the French throne and a mythical royal ancestry in the early Tudor propaganda.
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Forewarned and Forearmed: Contents of BL, Cotton MS. Titus A. XXV, ff. 94-105
(2014)
Geldof, M R
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 of English instruction in the use of personal arms. This is a curious collection of thematically related material and suggests a reader who was interested in the political turmoil of the 1450s and an interest in both practical and intellectual protection from the uncertainties of his time.
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Feo Belcari's Rappresentazione di Abramo Offset in Phalaris's Epistolae: Adventures of a Florentine Incunabulum
(2014)
Newbigin, Nerida
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 E.6.7.47), and maps its travels from Florence to Guglielmo Libri's 1847 sale in Paris and back to Florence.
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A Royal Crusade History: The Livre d'Eracles and Edward IV's Exile in Burgundy
(2014)
Donovan, Erin K.
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 when the Earl of Warwick placed the former King Henry VI back on the English throne. British Library, Royal MS. 15 E. I, known as the Livre d'Eracles, a French translation and continuation of William of Tyre's crusade history Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, is a beautiful example of Edward IV's patronage of Flemish manuscript illumination. The manuscript was tailored to the king's royal interests and yet also showed some resonance with similar manuscripts made for the Burgundian noblemen with whom he interacted. The visual narrative in Royal MS. 15 E. I emphasizes humble and wise leadership, even particularly English leadership, for the gaze of its royal owner.
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A History of the British Library Slavonic and East European Collections: 1952-2004
(2014)
Grba, Milan
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.
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Matthew Paris, Visual Exegesis, and Apocalyptic Birds in Royal MS. 14 C. VII
(2014)
Kim, Dorothy
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 of written text into single images. This article expands that conversation by arguing that the imagery in the prefatory maps of Royal 14 C. VII is even more condensed and refined, focusing on how apocalyptic birds painted in the manuscript link England with the crusader East. Specifically, the apocalyptic birds of Royal MS. 14 C. VII link geographical space and marginal commentaries on the Historia Anglorum and Chronica Majora with Joachim of Fiore’s eschatological historiography in particular and Franciscan cosmology in general. In essence, these condensed visual images are forms of visual exegesis – a type of visual reading theorized by Paolo Berdini. As a result, Royal MS. 14 C. VII’s prefatory maps reorient cartographic hierarchies and entwine the contemporary crusader present with the apocalyptic future.
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John Jaffray: Victorian Bookbinder, Chartist and Trade Unionist
(2014)
Marks, P. J. M.
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 men long since retired, which stretched back to the famous strike of 1786. He has left fascinating vignettes of shop floor politics, and he inspired his friends to add to the archive after his death. The ephemera thus collected were bound into a series of scrapbooks which comprise part of the collection now in the British Library.
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Constructing Saint Louis in John the Good's Grandes Chroniques de France (Royal MS. 16 G. VI)
(2014)
Hedeman, Anne D.
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 prior and subsequent royal traditions of illustration. This article argues that the visual and textual expansions were designed to elide the chronicle with a contemporary copy of Vincent of Beauvais's Miroir historial also made for John. Because the manuscripts share format, mise-en-page, artists, secondary decoration and distinctive editing practice, their similarities would encourage readers to use the miroir and chroniques as an ambitious four volume world history that offered John interlaced genealogical frames for interpreting history and a particularly powerful model in Saint Louis.

eBLJ 2014

eBLJ 2014

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