British Library Journal (volume 11, number 2, autumn 1985)

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Obiya Ihei, a Japanese provincial publisher
(1985-11)
Kornicki, P. F.
Commercial publishing came of age in Japan during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). Both at the beginning and at the end of this period there was a vogue for experimenting with movable type, but from the middle of the seventeenth century the burgeoning publishing industry relied almost exclusively on wood-block printing, and it continued to do so until the 1870s. The industry developed to such an extent that there was by the early nineteenth century a national, albeit informal, network of publishers and distributors and a national market for the printed book. So at the time of the opening of Japan in 1854 and the subsequent Meiji Restoration of 1868 there already existed in Japan the means of publishing and communication which could serve to inform the inhabitants of Japan about the world from which they had long been cut off. The first newspapers and magazines were predominantly wood-block publications, but soon after the Meiji Restoration wood-block printing began to lose ground rapidly to printing with movable type, which enjoyed the stimulus of newly imported Western technology. There can be no doubt, however, that the foundations of the Meiji publishing industry were laid in the Tokugawa period.
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Terra incognita: the Beudeker Collection in the map library of the British Library
(1985-11)
Simoni, Anna E. C.
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 several smaller prints have been mounted, and into which some complete books and extracts from others have been inserted in a carefully designed sequence. The whole forms a comprehensive display of the Low Countries, comprising the United Provinces (roughly equivalent to the modern Netherlands), the Spanish/Austrian Netherlands (roughly equivalent to modern Belgium plus French Flanders), and Luxembourg, from their earliest beginnings up to the compiler's own time, with additions by later owners right into the nineteenth century. Both topographical and historical material is used, whether factual, allegorical, heraldic, or in any combination of these, enlivened with portraits of important inhabitants of individual localities, pictures of archaeological finds, of a scientific instrument here, a typical or unusual industry there. A long series of Dutch political and religious dignitaries concludes the set.
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Matthew Prior's last manuscript: 'Predestination'
(1985-11)
Wright, H. Bunker
;
Croft, P. J.
Until now the only known manuscript of Matthew Prior's unfinished poem, 'Predestination', has been the copy written in the fine italic hand of his secretary, Adrian Drift, which is labelled 'Brouillon of a Poem Began at Wimpole in August 1721. Transcribed From the Authors Papers since his Death.' It was the text of this transcript, now among the Prior Papers at Longleat House (xxviii. 279-96), from which A. R. Waller first published the poem in his edition of Prior's Dialogues of the Dead and Other Works in Prose and Verse (Cambridge, 1907, pp. 345-54). It was from this same manuscript copy that H. Bunker Wright and Monroe K. Spears selected 276 lines for inclusion in their edition The Literary Works of Matthew Prior (Oxford, 1959 2nd edn. 1971, pp. 559-67, with commentary on pp. 997-1000).
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Bartolommeo Sanvito and an antique motif
(1985-11)
Evans, M. L.
A curious motif appears at the foot of the frontispiece of the celebrated copy of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea, written and probably illuminated by Bartolommeo Sanvito, in the British Library (Department of Manuscripts, MS. Royal 14.C.III, fol. 2). This consists of a group of three putti, the central one wearing a grotesque Silenus mask, from whom his two colleagues flee in terror, the one on the left tumbling as he runs. It has been pointed out that analogous figures may be found on the frontispiece of another manuscript attributed to Sanvito: a copy of Suetonius in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris (MS. lat. 5814, fol. i). Here, two pairs of putti appear, engaged in combat amongst the piles of classicizing armour which form pilasters on either side of the cartouche which contains the opening lines of text. One of each pair is bareheaded and defending himself with a winged staff from attack by the second putto. The assailant on the right wears a full-face helmet of classical Greek appearance with a horsehair plume. That on the left wears a Silenus mask with a similar plume. Like the mask-wearing putto from the frontispiece of the British Library Eusebius, the latter scares his fellow by poking one hand through the mouth of the mask which covers his face.
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Recent acquisitions: Department of Printed Books: notable acquisitions 1964-1985: music library
(1985-11)
Neighbour, O. W.
No regular reports of notable acquisitions of printed music have appeared since the last acquisitions booklet of the Department of Printed Books was published, covering the years 1963-4. During the past twenty-one years far too many editions claiming notice for musical, textual, historical, or bibliographical reasons have entered the collection for all to be listed individually in the present survey, or for full descriptions to be attempted. Title-page transcriptions have been kept brief, only numbered pagination or foliation is given (and none for part-books) and it has been necessary to deal with certain types of publication more summarily. Two important acquisitions have already been the subject of special articles and are therefore excluded: the collection of sixty-two items from the library of Alfred Cortot and two volumes of piano duets from the Royal Music Library.
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'The grammar of research': some implications of machine-readable bibliography
(1985-11)
Alston, R. C.
Research into the history of man's culture and his institutions has always been conducted with procedures which have a basic grammar. Upon that basic grammar scholarship has developed, since Poliziano, ever more complex routines as the raw materials for research have proliferated. The provision of these raw materials has been, since the Renaissance at any rate, one of the prime functions of historical and enumerative bibliography. Oddly enough, the basic grammar has not often been formalized. I suspect that this is due to the fact that we are more often than not required to exercise autodidactic skills in learning it. And we have learned how to develop the special skills needed to deal with the documents of the past (printed and manuscript) through imitation of examples furnished by previous failures and successes.
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British Library Journal (volume 11, number 2, autumn 1985)

British Library Journal (volume 11, number 2, autumn 1985)

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