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

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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The literary archive of J. G. Ballard at the British Library includes an unpublished story set in the environs of Vermilion Sands, a fictional desert resort that is the exotic location of nine stories Ballard wrote between 1956 and 1966.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 The unpublished story in the archive – which has no title, is not dated, and was eventually abandoned as a composition – comprises seventeen closely typed pages that were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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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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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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Royal MS. 20 B. XX: Alexander the Great and the Voice of the Master. Interpretation and Astrology in a Medieval Manuscript
(2014)
Pérez-Simon, Maud
Royal MS. 20 B. XX is a small but lavishly illuminated copy of the French prose Alexander romance made in the 1420s. Its iconography is remarkable in the medieval tradition for a number of scenes in which the illuminator has concentrated on themes of divination by means of astrology and portents. The interpretation of signs and symbols in this Roman d’Alexandre en prose is both an element in the narrative and an invitation to the reader to decipher the inner meaning of text and image
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A Donizetti Manuscript in the Zweig Collection
(2014)
Scobie, Christopher
Stefan Zweig's collection of music manuscripts, donated to the British Library in 1986, contains autographs by some of the major canonical composers of European history; from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven through to Wagner and Strauss and Schoenberg. A piece by Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) in the collection, which does not seem to have been noticed by scholars of the composer, is the focus of this article. The manuscript is catalogued as being a movement from an unknown string quartet, but closer examination has suggested other possibilities.
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In a Bind: Pratt's Qui Tams and the Bookbinders' Dilemma
(2014)
Hill, Jonathan E.
The BL's Jaffray Collection contains rare copies of two qui tam cases brought in 1811 and 1812 by Robert Pratt, a member of the London Society of Journeymen Bookbinders. The cases were among the last attempts to uphold the Elizabethan statute of apprentices. They offer telling insight into a trade facing radical alterations in the retail market and in labour conditions. The statute prescribed a seven year apprenticeship as the foundational qualification for admission into a broad range of skilled trades. By the end of eighteenth century the requirement was perceived as impeding the free movement of labour and the growth of new trades and skills. In the case of the bookbinders, the increase in demand for low cost bindings was rendering a statute that required bookbinders be trained to levels of skill higher than were needed over restrictive. Many employers ignored the apprenticeship requirement. It was against two such employers that Pratt brought his suits. He won his first case, but lost his second. The statute was repealed in 1814.
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The First Manuals of English History: Two Late Thirteenth-Century Genealogical Rolls of the Kings of England in the Royal Collection
(2014)
Laborderie, Olivier de
The reign of Edward I (1272-1307) witnessed the creation of numerous genealogical rolls of the kings of England from Egbert to the reigning king, initially in Latin (for instance BL, Add. MS. 30079), but then more often in Anglo-Norman. As Thomas Wright first intuited in 1872, these much innovative aide-mémoire represent the first ‘feudal manuals of English history’. Their overall design owes much to the various visual abstracts of English history designed in the 1250s by the great St Albans chronicler Matthew Paris (such as his famous ‘portrait gallery’ in BL, Royal MS. C. VII, ff. 8v-9 or his genealogy in BL, Cotton MS. Claudius D. VI, ff. 5v-9v). The two royal genealogies in the Royal Collection, Royal MSS. 14 B. V and Royal 14 B. VI, are particularly representative of this kind of historical abstract, all the more so as they can be counted among the most finely illuminated of them and the only ones offering original ‘marginal’ drawings and grotesques that enhance their attractivity.
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eBLJ 2014

eBLJ 2014

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