eBLJ 2010

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

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Electronic British Library Journal

Now showing 1 - 10 of 14

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Fortunate Survivors: Maps and Map Fragments in the Bagford Collection
(2010)
Harper, Tom
The printing samples collected together by John Bagford have been part of the British Library, formally British Museum, collections since 1753, and yet the few maps amongst them have so far not been studied. The present article will explore the reasons for this through the example of one particular volume of maps and fragments known as Harl.5935. It will chart the volume’s journey through various Museum departments during the nineteenth century, accounting for the treatment it has received during these years, and allowing for reflection on particular attitudes to cartographic material. The article will then turn to the maps themselves, drawing comparisons between them, establishing where they came from, and seeking to understand why Bagford might have thought them interesting. It will focus in particular on the fragments of three maps published in Antwerp in the sixteenth century which are revealed to be of special significance to the history of cartography. Establishing the importance of these maps will lead to a further rehabilitation of Bagford’s reputation as a collector of prints.
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A Lost Manuscript of the 'Rymes of [â€¦] Randolf Erl of Chestre'
(2010)
Spence, John
The first ever reference to Robin Hood as a literary character, in William Langland’s Piers Plowman, refers to ‘rymes of Robyn Hood and Randolf Erl of Chestre’. The reference to ‘Randolf’ has intrigued literary historians, as no medieval narrative verse is known to survive which features Ranulf, earl of Chester, as the protagonist. This article discusses a previously unnoted catalogue entry recording an early lost manuscript copy of verses about the deeds of Ranulf, earl of Chester. The lost copy once existed in Cotton MS. Otho B. III, which was badly damaged by fire at Ashburnham House in 1731.
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Beyond Photography: An Introduction to William Henry Fox Talbot’s Notebooks in the Talbot Collection at the British Library
(2010)
Brusius, Mirjam
William Henry Fox Talbot is now primarily remembered as the pioneer of photography. This was reinforced by the disposition of his papers, notably the separation of photographs and the few notebooks which document his photographic innovations from the rest of his archive mostly concerned with other scholarly activities beyond photography. Talbot’s interest was vast, ranging across the natural sciences, classical scholarship and Assyriology. The aim of this article is to explore his interest beyond photography by examining his scholarly notebooks that have been donated to the British Library by the family of Talbot’s descendents in 2006 as part of a larger archive.
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John Grose (1744-1771): Correspondence relating to his Career in Bengal, 1763-1771
(2010)
Pedley, Avril
John Grose (1744-1771): Correspondence relating to his Career in Bengal, 1763-1771. The papers contained in BL, MSS Eur E284, Letters and papers of and relating to John Grose (c. 1744-71), East India Company servant [â€¦] chiefly comprising letters to members of his family, formerly formed part of a larger collection of papers relating to the Grose family of the Isle of Wight and London. While the items relating to John Grose, which cover his short career overseas, were sold in two lots and became part of the British Library’s holdings in the 1960s, the bulk of the family papers, some 600 items mainly pertaining to John’s brother Nash and his wife, remained in private hands until also sold at auction when they were bought by the author of this article. Investigation showed that some items relating to John Grose’s career in Bengal still remained in the family papers, and this article uses the two groups to form a coherent account of this young East India Company employee at a turbulent time in the history of Bengal.
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'A Poor Jonah': John Osborne's Roads to Freedom
(2010)
Andrews, Jamie
While recent years have seen increasing critical engagement with British theatre in the years preceding John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, few writers have concentrated on the theatre of Osborne himself before 1956. However, the emergence in the British Library's collections in 2009 of two play-scripts written by Osborne and (briefly) staged before 1956, as well as the deposit of previously unseen letters in the Osborne Archive in Texas, now allow for a fuller consideration of Osborne's long apprenticeship in the theatre, and of the seven plays written before his 'overnight' breakthrough with Look Back in Anger in May 1956.
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The Evolution of George Hakewill’s Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God, 1627-1637: Academic Contexts, and Some New Angles from Manuscripts
(2010)
Poole, William
This article examines aspects of the genesis and textual evolution of George Hakewill’s celebrated Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God, published in three ever-expanding editions in 1627, 1630, and 1635. Rather than comparing the three printed texts, however, this study instead focuses first on the political contexts of Hakewill’s work, and then on three extant manuscript witnesses to portions of his text. Two of these, Bodleian MSS Ashmole 1284 and 1510, demonstrate that Hakewill initially circulated in manuscript variant versions of the material he would eventually edit and add to the 1635 edition. Most importantly, British Library Sloane MS. 2168, an incomplete Latin translation of the Apologie, shows not only that Hakewill was independently developing a Latin translation of his work, but also that he continued to work on this Latin text after the publication of his final English edition. The two texts therefore diverge, with the Sloane manuscript representing the final expression of Hakewill’s text, a book that has hitherto been considered solely as an English, and a printed, work.
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The Lady Eccles Oscar Wilde Collection
(2010)
Lloyd, Andrea
This article looks at the generous bequest made in 2003 by Mary Viscountess Eccles of her extensive collection of books, manuscripts and ephemera relating to Oscar Wilde. Containing works pertaining to Wilde, his friends and family and the literary and artistic world of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Great Britain, the collection paints a vivid picture of the age in which Wilde lived. Cataloguing his rise to fame and his subsequent fall from grace, the collection is not merely an accumulation of his works, but a permanent shrine to Wilde’s colourful character, which is evident not only in his literary works but also in his inscriptions to friends and family and even the input he had in the decoration and ornamentation of his works. By bringing together such a wide selection of material and authors, Lady Eccles has created an enduring record of Wilde’s life, allowing each item to be viewed in the context of itself and also in light of its significance within the collection.
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'One of the Most Remarkable Things in London': A Visit to the Lord Treasurer's Library in 1713 by Samuel Molyneux
(2010)
Holden, Paul
Between December 1712 and April 1713 Samuel Molyneux (1689-1728) witnessed at first hand some of the finest antiquarian collections in London, Oxford and Cambridge. For the benefit of his learned uncle he described what he saw in seven meticulously written letters, later transcribed into a copy-book and now held in Southampton City Archives. Amongst some of the collections he viewed were those still in the process of being accumulated by the connoisseurs Robert Harley and Sir Hans Sloane â”€ which, along with the Cotton library, later formed the basis of the British Museum collections. This article looks specifically at Molyneux’s visit to the Harleian collection which took place shortly before 18 February 1713.
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London, British Library Royal MS. 8 A. XVIII: A Unique Insight into the Career of a Cistercian Monk at the University of Oxford in the Early Fifteenth Century
(2010)
Fitzpatrick, Antonia
Royal MS. 8 A. XVIII is an early fifteenth-century Cistercian manuscript of Oxford origin. A scholar’s handbook, it contains Scholastic and legal tracts: a florilegium (primarily comprising sententiae from the Corpus Aristotelicum) and a series of short or abridged works on natural philosophy, juxtaposed with brief tracts on canon law procedure and numerous legal forms linking the book to a Cistercian abbey in the diocese of Lincoln. Despite its small size and fairly disheveled appearance, this manuscript is uniquely placed to permit comment, in one sitting, first upon the traditional assumption that in the fifteenth century arts learning in Oxford had developed a distinctive, innovative character (following the work of the ‘Merton School’), clearly setting it apart from that on the Continent, and second upon the nature of English Cistercian intellectual culture following educational reforms introduced one hundred years previously. A close analysis of the content and distribution of the Scholastic tracts demonstrates a strong sense of continuity in basic learning in the arts, both from the late thirteenth century to the fifteenth, and between Oxford and the Continent. As the only identified English Cistercian manuscript containing texts covering the range of the Oxford arts curriculum, our book demonstrates that despite accommodation and funding difficulties faced by Cistercians at this time, and in stark contrast to the antipathy to this kind of learning evident in the Order’s formative years, Cistercians could and did take full advantage of training in the arts. Cistercian educational reform had renewed the traditional prohibition on the study of canon law. Yet our manuscript demonstrates vividly both Cistercian scholarly enthusiasm for canon law, and the exhaustive (and perhaps unsurprising) extent to which Cistercian social life was structured by rules and regulations, in line with the legal formalism dominating procedure in contemporary ecclesiastical and secular government in western Europe.
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Edward Angelo Goodall (1819-1908): An Artist's Travels in British Guiana and the Crimea
(2010)
St John-McAlister, Michael
It is fair to say that Edward Angelo Goodall is one of Victorian Britain's lesser known artists. He hailed from a family of artists and had a relatively successful artistic career, exhibiting regularly. Yet he never seemed quite able to emerge from the shadows cast by a more successful brother who became a Royal Academician, and their celebrated father. In 2007 the British Library was presented with a small collection of Goodall's sketchbooks and letters, and a journal of an expedition in British Guiana.
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eBLJ 2010

eBLJ 2010

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