English Literary Manuscripts Research Articles

Immaterial Texts in Late Medieval England: Making English Literary Manuscripts, 1400–1500 by Daniel Wakelin (review)

Immaterial Texts in Late Medieval England: Making English Literary Manuscripts, 1400–1500 by Daniel Wakelin (review)

Nicholas Udall as Author of a Manuscript Answer to the Rebels of Devonshire and Cornwall, 1549

AMONG the Royal Manuscripts of the British Library, there is an anonymous composition entitled ‘An answer to the articles of the co[m]moners of Deuonshere and Cornewall declaring to the same howe they haue ben sedused by Euell p[er]sons …’, which has been variously attributed to Philip Nicolls and Nicholas Udall, the latter of whom is now most famous for his dramatic works such as Respublica (1553) and Ralph Roister Doister (printed 1567).1 This manuscript tract against the Western rebels was evidently written while the rebellion was still ongoing.2 In the catalogue Index Britanniae Scriptorum, John Bale credited Nicolls with three works, one of which is entitled ‘Aduersus Cornubiensium rebellionem’.3 Bale also recorded a similar work written by Udall ‘scripsit contra articulos Cornubiensum’.4 Thus, we have to decide which of these records refers to the manuscript ‘Answer’. In 1884, Nicholas Pocock printed the text in full and attributed it to Udall,5 which used to be the consensus since Udall’s name had been written on the flyleaves of the manuscript by a contemporary or near-contemporary.6 However, in 1933, Gustave Scheurweghs plainly stated that this attribution was wrong. He made this revision on the basis of a single piece of internal evidence: the author of the manuscript described the Devonians as his ‘countrymen’ and the Cornishmen as his ‘neighbours’. Udall was born in Southampton and was working in London in 1549, whereas Nicolls was born in Ilfracombe, north Devon, and was living in south Devon; and therefore Nicolls must have written the ‘Answer’.7 Historians have tended to accept this argument. According to Anthony Fletcher and Diarmaid MacCulloch, the ‘Answer’ has ‘now been convincingly shown to have been written by the Devon Protestant Philip Nichols’.8 One scholar complained in 1949 that Scheurweghs’s case was ‘not entirely convincing’, although he gave no specific reasons for his scepticism.9 The manuscript appears under Udall’s name in the Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts, where Scheurweghs’s attribution is not treated as conclusive, so it is worth considering the evidence afresh.10

DEVILISH DETAILS: A NEW RECORD OF THE TOWNELEY PLAYS

This article announces a discovery which may have profound implications for the early provenance of one of the most important sixteenth-century English literary manuscripts, the Towneley Manuscript preserved in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California (hereafter HM 1). To state the matter briefly, four lines assigned to the First and Second Demons in the Towneley Judgment Day play, and possible references to two more of the plays in HM 1, exist among sixteenth-century marginalia in London, British Library, Sloane MS 480; the marginalia also include personal names, a location, and what appears to be a sketch of a strapwork initial not dissimilar to some found in HM 1 (as well as to some in the copy of the York Plays in BL Add. MS 35290). The marginalia date to the middle of the sixteenth century, and thus provide by far the earliest external witness to HM 1 's texts. Since I came upon them entirely by accident while looking for something else (confirming one of the relentless axioms of scholarship) I will content myself here with giving some modest background on the Sloane manuscript and the visual details of the graffiti, venturing only a few preliminary suggestions as to their relevance.The manuscriptSloane 480 is a small (135 x 85 mm), tightly bound volume containing only a Latin astronomical calendar (fols iv-2jv) and a Middle English translation of both books of John of Rupescissa's alchemical treatise De consideration quinta essentia (fols 26'-16T), in a single column varying between fourteen and eighteen lines per page, on vellum except for front and rear paper flyleaves. Until now its scholarly presence has been confined exclusively to lists: it is included in the medical inventories of Dorothea Waley Singer (1928) and Singer and Annie Anderson (1950), and more recently by pioneering Rupescissa scholar Robert Halleux as one of the several Middle English versions of the De consideration whose textual relationships are not yet established.1 Within the last twenty years it has also been listed in John B. Friedman's Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages, in George R. Reiser's volume on scientific writings in the Manual of the Writings in Middle English, and in Marguerite A. Halversen's unpublished dissertation on the Middle English translation of Rupescissa in Glasgow, Hunterian Library, Ferguson 205.2 Other recent scholars ignore the copy, contributing to the overall 'stealth' quality of its presence in studies of Rupescissa's remarkable iatrochemical treatise and of Middle English medical writings as a whole.3We can trace the manuscript with certainty back to 1697, when it is recorded in the library of Dr Francis Bernard (1627-98) as T24. A Book of Medicinal Receipts. Membran'.4 Bernard, who was elected Apothecary and Physician to St Bartholomew's in London in 1661 and 1683 respectively, amassed a library of some 50,000 individual volumes; upon his death these were dispersed at 'the most extensive library sale of the seventeenth century', a sale which famously included between one and two dozen Caxtons.5 His friend Hans Sloane purchased the Rupescissa manuscript at this time, and thus the notation 'Bern[ard]. 124' in Sloane's hand appears at the top centre of fol. 2r along with his interpretation of its contents: 'A Kalendar / Liber de 5a. / essentia / Medicinal! receipts' (the last of these referring to the second book of Rupescissa).6 Following the transfer of Sloane's collection to Montague House in the 1750s, the two components of the volume received their original British Museum catalogue entries as 'Calendarium. In perg. Sec. xv' and 'Liber de quintae essentiae. (Angl.) In perg. Sec. xv'.7How and when the manuscript came into Francis Bernard's possession is beyond my current ability to ascertain,8 but since 1904 'John Postylthwayt of Pontefract' has been catalogued as a former owner.9 This Postylthwayt, whose name appears on fols 4'' and 162' (the name John' also appearing solus on fol. …

Introducing DEx: A Database of Dramatic Extracts

Introducing DEx:A Database of Dramatic Extracts Laura Estill (bio) Early modern readers and playgoers often kept commonplace books and miscellanies, where they would copy poems, aphorisms, letters, recipes, accounts, and any number of things—including selections from plays. Although a renewed interest in miscellanies has produced valuable digital tools, including Adam Smyth's An Online Index of Poetry in Printed Miscellanies (1640-1682), the Folger Shakespeare Library's Union First Line Index of English Verse, 13th-19th Century, and Abigail Williams's forthcoming Digital Miscellanies Index, these resources often focus on print and poetry. Laura Estill's DEx: A Database of Dramatic Extracts will fill this gap by helping scholars find selections from plays copied into manuscripts.1 By offering transcriptions of these dramatic extracts, DEx will contribute to the ongoing opening of the archives facilitated by the digital turn. DEx builds on and complements Peter Beal's monumental Index of English Literary Manuscripts and forthcoming online Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700 by offering transcriptions and comparison to printed texts and also listing extracts from works by anonymous or lesser-known authors, such as Peter Hausted or William Peaps. Though we may overlook lesser-known plays and playwrights, early modern readers did not make the same distinction: consider Archbishop Sancroft (1617-93), who collected excerpts from Quarles's The Virgin Widow alongside quotations from Shakespeare and Fletcher. Extant manuscript evidence suggests that the phenomenon of copy selections from English plays began around the 1590s; as such, DEx focuses on seventeenth-century manuscripts. Although dramatic extracting continued in the Restoration, at the moment DEx catalogs only extracts from plays written and published before the closure of the theaters in 1642. That is to say, DEx includes manuscripts from the late seventeenth century that contain extracts from earlier works, such as BL MS Lansdowne 1185, which is a manuscript with eighty pages of Shakespearean extracts copied around 1700. The first iteration of DEx will allow users to search dramatic miscellanies, those manuscripts comprised primarily of selections from plays. Extant dramatic miscellanies contain thousands of extracts from dozens of early modern plays. [End Page 128] DEx users will be able to search and browse by playwright, by play, and by manuscript. The results will be displayed as a transcription with, where possible, act, scene, and line references and links to scholarly online editions of the plays, such as the Internet Shakespeare Editions, which will allow scholars to easily see the extract in the context of the full play. Scholars will also be able to sort results by folio number and click to the description of the manuscript from its repository (for instance, the British Library's Manuscripts Catalogue), to get a sense of the extract in its manuscript contexts. DEx's bibliography page will indicate all the sources used, including early modern print and manuscript as well as modern scholarly editions. DEx will also include a page of links to resources for manuscript study.2 DEx will offer full-text searching so that scholars can search the database by keyword or subject. DEx is an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) database that includes transcriptions encoding using the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). The transcriptions in DEx include original manuscript spellings and abbreviations with regularizations and expansions, which increases the usability of the full-text search: for instance, a search for "country" will also bring up results for "countrie" and "countrey." Manuscript compilers often changed the dramatic extracts they copied. DEx will allow users to compare the manuscript version of an extract to a print counterpart. For instance, one mid-seventeenth compiler took "'Tis a favour her betters sue for" (from J. W.'s The Valiant Scot [1637]) and changed it to "Thy bed is a favor betters sue for." Examples like this abound in seventeenth-century manuscripts—early modern readers had no compunction about adapting and altering dramatic extracts. Although the first release of DEx catalogs seventeenth-century dramatic miscellanies that contain extracts from Renaissance plays, in the future it could be expanded to include more manuscripts, such as commonplace books and verse miscellanies, extracts from Restoration plays, and eighteenth-century manuscripts. DEx will evolve as further dramatic extracts are discovered, more...

Scribleriana Transferred: Manuscripts and Printed Matter, 2010–2012, Part 1

Scribleriana Transferred: Manuscripts and Printed Matter, 2010–2012, Part 1 James E. May • Christopher Edwards (Wallingford, Oxon.) has listed for c. $950 a manuscript letter signed from Joseph Addison (Whitehall, 8 April 1707) to his old friend George Stepney (1663–1707), then on a diplomatic mission to the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. The letter, 2 pp. 4to (223 × 170 mm.) is unpublished. It is written in another’s hand, but Addison signed, dated and directed it and added “a couple of corrections and additions including a postscript which apologizes for ‘using so often another hand.” • Quaritch’s English Books (summer 2011) includes a manuscript transcription of a revised version of Mark Akenside’s “Hymn to Science,” a 15-stanza Miltonic ode that originally appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine during 1739. It is tipped into the first edition of Akenside’s Poems edited by the author’s friend Jeremiah Dyson (W. Bowyer and J. Nichols, 1772), 4to, in contemporary marbled calf (£650). “Hymn to Science” is not included in Poems 1772. Quaritch, after noting Akenside’s penchant for revising “earlier poems in later life,” indicates, “The present manuscript has more than twenty substantive differences, mostly alterations of single words, though one line is entirely rewritten and the order of two stanzas swapped.” A note attached to the MS indicates it was “given me by Doctor [Edward] Barnard Provost of Eton & in his own handwriting.” Quaritch suggests the note may have been written by Dr. George Hardinge, a family friend, with whom Akenside corresponded while Hardinge was at Eton studying under Barnard in the 1750s; Hardinge was identified by Dyson as owning a transcript of a different Akenside poem (Index of English Literary Manuscripts, AkM 2). • William Reese of New Haven has listed an autograph letter signed from Edward Cave (in full), publisher of the Gentleman’s Magazine, to “Mr. [Lewis] Paul, Birmingham,” dated 14 October 1740 ($850). Cave invested in a wool-spinning machine (carding cylinder) that Paul had patented and was to be building. Cave complains of Paul’s failure to show when Cave expected, after information from the Birmingham printer Thomas Warren, to have occasion to introduce Paul to “Cardmakers, & Mechanics.” • Christopher Edwards’s List 53 (November 2012) includes a short manuscript by Philip Doddridge written inside his friend Dr. James Stonhouse’s copy of Louis Ellies [End Page 281] Du Pin’s The Evangelical History: or, the Life of our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ (Timothy Childe, 1712), bound with The Evangelical History, Part the Second (Tim. Childe, 1707), 8vo, with frontispiece (frt) and 5 plates in vol. 1 and folding map and 13 plates in vol. 2; in cont. calf (£450). Edwards locates in the ESTC only the British Library copy for the Du Pin volume, but now Cambridge is also listed (perhaps this copy), and Cambridge is one of five to hold the second, anonymous work. Dr. Stonhouse set up a country infirmary in Northampton in 1743 and, in part from Doddridge’s influence, took holy orders. On the recto of vol. 1’s frt, Doddridge, making free with Stonhouse’s books, wrote an account, dated 5 December 1744 and signed “P Doddridge” below, of his engagement with Du Pin on reading his “Life of Christ” for the first time: “I found a remarkable agreement between my Harmony & ye order in wch he has disposed his History especially in ye Story of ye Resurrection of Christ” (the note includes a list of “perfect Coincidences”). • A printed employment form of the Universal Register-Office completed by office manager John Hutchinson and others offers insight into the office established by John and Henry Fielding in 1750. The document, 1 p. 4to, is listed in Quaritch’s English Books and Manuscripts (c. February 2012) and reproduced with great clarity (£650). John Fielding turned the office over to John Hutchinson in 1761. Under the heading for the office on Bishopsgate-Street comes a standard form that describes the applicant for employment and then a paragraph introducing a query about the applicant with the reminder that the applicant’s next employer and “Public Justice” require an honest answer to queries about the applicant’s past employment. Five queries begin with one...

PETER BEAL, A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology 1450 to 2000.

‘YOU may want to look up it in Beal’ my palaeography instructor used to say. For more than a quarter of a century scholars have associated Peter Beal’s name with the Index of English Literary Manuscripts (vol. I came out in 1980 and vol. II in 1987–93). Given that A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology 1450 to 2000 will certainly find room on library shelves throughout the world, there is every probability that many scholars will now have to start referring to ‘Beal’s Dictionary’ as well as to ‘Beal’s Index’. However, even if it integrates the OED in various places (see e.g. ‘bezant’, ‘scripophily’, and ‘trefoil’), Beal’s is not merely a ‘dictionary’. It is, rather, a vade mecum of the stamp of John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors, including many discursive entries, which sometimes take the form of short but very informative essays (see e.g. ‘Letters Patent’, perhaps the best concise survey of the topic available to date). While admitting, in the admirably frank introductory note, to a ‘special interest’ in the English Renaissance (pp. viii–ix) the book will not disappoint neither those in need of guidance on other periods (and, at least in part, on other areas of Europe) nor those who need assistance when wrestling with the complex vocabulary of, say, heraldic, ecclesiastical, military, and maritime documents, or those in need of understanding the often murky jargon of bibliography and textual studies. No two individuals will agree on what a dictionary, companion, or reference book should include or leave out: Peter Beal’s expertise and vast knowledge provide a most useful selection of terms which covers not only almost every aspect of codicology and palaeography (understandably, scripts receive here only brief descriptions) but also related matters such as manuscript containers, seals (again, including seal containers, cf. ‘skippet’), writing surfaces (see e.g. the interesting distinction between ‘writing box’ and ‘writing slope’), and miscellaneous terms related to a wide array of subjects from academic records to accountancy, from ‘old-style’ dates to Public Records and State Papers. In addition to this, one also finds data on several inventions, from passports to carte-de-visite, from postage stamps and postcards to typewriters and carbon copies.

REVIEWS

REVIEWS Get access Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. IV, 1800–1900; Part 3, Landor-Patmore. Edited by BARBARA ROSENBAUM, assistant editor, RICHARD PEARSON. Pp. xxxiv+856. London and New York: Mansell Publishing, 1993. £250. JUDITH PRIESTMAN JUDITH PRIESTMAN Bodleian LibraryOxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XLVII, Issue 186, May 1996, Pages 219–220, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XLVII.186.219 Published: 01 May 1996

REVIEWS

REVIEWS Get access Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. III, 1700–1800; Part 3, Alexander Pope-Sir Richard Steele. Compiled by MARGARET M. SMITH and ALEXANDER LINDSAY with contributions by JOHN GOODRIDGE and CHRISTINE ALEXANDER. Pp. xxii+460. London and New York: Mansell Publishing, 1992. £170. BREAN S. HAMMOND BREAN S. HAMMOND University of WalesAberystwyth Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XLVI, Issue 183, August 1995, Pages 384–385, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XLVI.183.384 Published: 01 August 1995

Reviews

Annotated Bibliographies of Old and Middle English Literature: 4. Old English Prose of Secular Learning. By Stephanie Hollis and Michael Wright, with Gwynneth Mills and Adrienne Pedder. Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: D.S. Brewer. 1992. xii + 383 pp., followed by 21 pages of indices, un‐paginated. Price: £35.00. Anglo‐Saxon Exeter: A Tenth‐Century Cultural History, Studies in Anglo‐Saxon History, 4. By Patrick W. Conner. Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press. 1993. xii + 279 pp. Price: £45.00. Chaucer and his Readers: Imagining the Author in Late‐medieval England. By Seth Lerer. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1993. 309 pp. Price: US $39.50. Chaucer's Boece and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius (Chaucer Studies 18). Edited by A.J. Minnis. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. 1993. x + 203 pp. Price: £39.50. The Index of Middle English Prose: Handlist VIII: Manuscripts containing Middle English Prose in Oxford College Libraries. Edited by S.J. Ogilvie‐Thomson. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. 1991. xxix + 198 pp. Price: £35.00/$70.00. William Caxton and English Literary Culture. By N.F. Blake. London and Rio Grande: The Hambledon Press. 1991. xi + 315 pp. Price: £35.00. Shakespeare Reshaped 1606–1623. By Gary Taylor and John Jowett. Oxford Shakespeare Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1993. xi + 333 pp. Price: £40.00. Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Volume III: 1700–1800. Part 3: Alexander Pope — Sir Richard Steele. With a first‐line index to Parts 1–3. Edited by Margaret M. Smith and Alexander Lindsay. London: Mansell. 1992. Price: £170.00. Pope, Homer and Manliness: Some Aspects of Eighteenth‐Century Classical Learning. By Carolyn D. Williams. London/New York: Routledge. 1993. 220 pp. Price: £37.50. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. By Joanne Shattock. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1993. ix + 492 pp. Price: £19.95. Language, Text and Context; Essays in Stylistics. Edited by Michael Toolan. London and New York: Routledge. 1992. xv + 320 pp. Price: £12.99 pb.

Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. III: 1700-1800, Part 3: Pope-Steele

Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. III: 1700-1800, Part 3: Pope-Steele

Index of English Literary Manuscripts: Volume III, 1700-1800; Part 3, Alexander Pope Sir Richard Steele.

Index of English Literary Manuscripts: Volume III, 1700-1800; Part 3, Alexander Pope Sir Richard Steele.

Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. 3: 1700–1800. Part 3: Alexander Pope–Sir Richard Steele. Margaret M. Smith , Alexander Lindsay , John Goodridge , Christine Alexander

<i>Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. 3: 1700–1800. Part 3: Alexander Pope–Sir Richard Steele</i>. Margaret M. Smith , Alexander Lindsay , John Goodridge , Christine Alexander

Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. III: 1700-1800. Part 2: John Gay-Ambrose Philips with a First-Line Index to Parts 1 and 2

Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. III: 1700-1800. Part 2: John Gay-Ambrose Philips with a First-Line Index to Parts 1 and 2

SMITH, Margaret M.Index of English Literary Manuscripts, Volume III 1700–1800, Part 2 John Gay—Ambrose Philips

SMITH, Margaret M.<i>Index of English Literary Manuscripts, Volume III 1700–1800, Part 2 John Gay—Ambrose Philips</i>

Smith, M. M. (ed.), Index of English Literary Manuscripts, Vol. III, 1700-1800, Part 2, John Gay-Ambrose Philips, with a First-line Index to Parts 1 and 2. Pp. xix + 375 + 13 photographic plates. London and New York: Mansell, 1989. 130.00

Journal Article Smith, M. M. (ed.), Index of English Literary Manuscripts, Vol. III, 1700–1800, Part 2, John Gay-Ambrose Philips, with a First-line Index to Parts 1 and 2. Pp. xix + 375 + 13 photographic plates. London and New York: Mansell, 1989. £130.00 Get access J. D. Fleeman J. D. Fleeman Pembroke College, Oxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 38, Issue 3, September 1991, Pages 390–392, https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/38.3.390 Published: 01 September 1991

Location Register of Twentieth-Century English Literary Manuscripts and Letters: A Union List of Papers of Modern English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh Authors in the British Isles.Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. III, 1700–1800, Part 2, Gay–Philips. Margaret M. SmithIndex of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. IV: 1800–1900 Part 2, Hardy–Lamb. Barbara Rosenbaum

<i>Location Register of Twentieth-Century English Literary Manuscripts and Letters: A Union List of Papers of Modern English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh Authors in the British Isles</i>.<i>Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. III, 1700–1800, Part 2, Gay–Philips</i>. Margaret M. Smith<i>Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. IV: 1800–1900 Part 2, Hardy–Lamb</i>. Barbara Rosenbaum

Location register of twentieth-century English literary manuscripts and letters: a union list of papers of modern English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh authors in the British Isles

Location register of twentieth-century English literary manuscripts and letters: a union list of papers of modern English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh authors in the British Isles

The location register of English literary manuscripts and letters: A second project

The location register of English literary manuscripts and letters: A second project

Smith, M. M.(comp.), with contributions by P.Boumelha, &lt;italic&gt;Index of English Literary Manuscripts, vol. III, 1700–1800 Part i, AddisonFielding&lt;/italic&gt;

Smith, M. M.(comp.), with contributions by P.Boumelha, &lt;italic&gt;Index of English Literary Manuscripts, vol. III, 1700–1800 Part i, AddisonFielding&lt;/italic&gt;

SCONUL symposium: English literary manuscripts — finding and using the sources

SCONUL symposium: English literary manuscripts — finding and using the sources