Library Manuscripts

A Newly Acquired Literary Manuscript, MS 381: The Autograph Copy of Cyril Hare’s When the Wind Blows (1949)

Christopher — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 20:13:38 +0000

A Newly Acquired Literary Manuscript, MS 381: The Autograph Copy of Cyril Hare’s When the Wind Blows (1949)

Christopher Skelton-Foord

Issue number

(2024): 21

Notes category

Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark

�㽶ֱ�� alumnus, Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark (1900–1958), is better known as the murder mystery writer—one of the luminaries of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction—who went by the penname ‘Cyril Hare’. Seventy-five years since the first publication of Cyril Hare’s When the Wind Blows, I am delighted to be adding to our library’s collections the original holograph manuscript of this novel—now New College Library’s MS 381.

New College Library, Oxford, MS 381, f. 48r [detail]

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

21NCN9 (2024) Skelton-Foord on Hare.pdf899.52 KB

‘who gave the same to their daughter . . .’: Identifying Ownership of �㽶ֱ��, Oxford’s Books of Hours

Christopher — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 17:23:03 +0000

‘who gave the same to their daughter . . .’: Identifying Ownership of �㽶ֱ��, Oxford’s Books of Hours

Caitlín Kane

Issue number

(2024): 21

Notes category

New College Library houses a remarkable collection of no fewer than seven books of hours within its manuscript collections. These books of hours serve not only as religious texts, but also as windows into the personal devotions and family histories of their time, and thus deserve further scholarly attention. The large number of personal touches, both intentionally written and worn away through use, allow us an opportunity to feel backwards and think about how these individuals, named or anonymous, used and appreciated these books as treasured objects, family records, connections to the divine, and, sometimes, as scrap paper.

New College Library, Oxford, MS 323, f. 118v [detail]

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

21NCN3 (2024) Kane on Books of Hours.pdf1.18 MB

The Mappa Mundi in Oxford, �㽶ֱ��, MS 274 and the Aristotelian Theory of Elements

Christopher — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 19:11:38 +0000

The Mappa Mundi in Oxford, �㽶ֱ��, MS 274 and the Aristotelian Theory of Elements

Alfred Hiatt

Issue number

(2023): 20

Notes category

One of several intriguing features of MS 274 is the map of the world that appears prior to the manuscript’s copy of the first nineteen books of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. It was clearly designed to express the Aristotelian theory that only the known world, comprising Asia, Europe, and Africa, protruded above the ocean, in opposition to theories that proposed the possibility of antipodal lands beyond and beneath the known world.

World map in a 12th-century English manuscript of Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio
Trinity College Library, Cambridge, MS R.9.23, f. 60v [detail]
© The Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College Library, Cambridge

20NCN2 (2023) Hiatt on MS 274.pdf365.62 KB

A Tale of Two Iliads: Oxford �㽶ֱ�� 298 and Trinity College Dublin 922

Christopher — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 18:42:21 +0000

A Tale of Two Iliads: Oxford �㽶ֱ�� 298 and Trinity College Dublin 922

Mateu Portells Watson

Issue number

(2023): 20

Notes category

Trinity College Library, Dublin

John Tzetzes

Of all the ancient texts that have shaped history, the Iliad is among the most widely read, copied, and studied. Whilst the broad impact of the Iliad across macroscopic physical and temporal spaces is well-documented, the propagation of the texts themselves may offer cultural and historical insights on a more microscopic scale, where individual scholars can be found leaving their mark on history and our understanding of Homeric work. This is a tale of two Iliads, Trinity College Dublin MS 922 and Oxford �㽶ֱ�� MS 298.

Trinity College Library, Dublin, MS 922, f. 31v [detail]
© The Board of Trinity College Dublin

Trinity College Library, Dublin

20NCN1 (2023) Portells Watson on A Tale of Two Iliads.pdf464.77 KB

‘Very inconsiderable exceptg that they are the Hand writing of so great a Man’: The Provenance of Isaac Newton’s Manuscripts at �㽶ֱ��, Oxford

Christopher — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 13:35:04 +0000

‘Very inconsiderable exceptg that they are the Hand writing of so great a Man’: The Provenance of Isaac Newton’s Manuscripts at �㽶ֱ��, Oxford

Frederik Dhondt

Issue number

(2023): 19

Notes category

In 1872 a set of Issac Newton’s manuscripts was bequeated to �㽶ֱ��, Oxford by the Reverend Jeffrey Ekins. Although Newton scholars were well aware of this collection, its provenance is shrouded in mystery.

New College Library, Oxford, MS 361/2, f. 45v [detail]

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

19NCN5 (2023) Dhondt on Provenance.pdf1.45 MB

Andrew Holes and John Burgh: Two Wykehamists, One Manuscript Collection

Christopher — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 11:24:46 +0000

Andrew Holes and John Burgh: Two Wykehamists, One Manuscript Collection

David Rundle

Issue number

(2023): 19

Notes category

Andrew Holes

John Burgh

Library Manuscripts

To reach Winchester College, to where Andrew Holes was admitted in 1407, involved the first of the long journeys he undertook in his life: at his entry to the school, he was recorded as being the son of a knight of the Wirral. Holes moved to �㽶ֱ�� in 1412 and was admitted a fellow on 30 October 1414. John Burgh entered Winchester in 1425 and �㽶ֱ�� five years later. He was a fellow from 1432 until 1444, but he had already left Oxford a few years earlier.

New College Library, Oxford, MS 301, f. 1r [detail]

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

19NCN1 (2023) Rundle on Holes and Burgh.pdf1.25 MB

Ned Warren’s ‘Jack in the Pulpit’: �㽶ֱ�� MS 380 and Textual Transmission

Christopher — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 22:36:50 +0000

Ned Warren’s ‘Jack in the Pulpit’: �㽶ֱ�� MS 380 and Textual Transmission

Christopher Skelton-Foord

Issue number

(2022): 18

Notes category

Corpus Christi College, Oxford

In August 2022, it was our especial good fortune to be able to acquire a limp maroon leather-bound 90-page notebook that once belonged to �㽶ֱ�� alumnus Edward ‘Ned’ Perry Warren (1860–1928), containing fourteen autograph poems, along with quotations and other notes in Warren’s hand.

New College Library, Oxford, MS 380, f. 18r [detail]

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

18NCN9 (2022) Skelton-Foord on �㽶ֱ�� MS 380.pdf986.16 KB

�㽶ֱ��, MSS 8–13: A Remarkable Biblical Commentary from the Fifteenth Century

Christopher — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 19:05:25 +0000

�㽶ֱ��, MSS 8–13: A Remarkable Biblical Commentary from the Fifteenth Century

Lesley Smith

Issue number

(2022): 18

Notes category

�㽶ֱ�� MSS 8–13 comprise the six-volume set of the biblical commentary in Latin by the Franciscan scholar Nicholas of Lyra (d. 1349).

New College Library, Oxford, MS 8, f. 22v [detail]

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

18NCN3 (2022) Smith on MSS 8–13.pdf911.8 KB

The Heretic Scribbler of �㽶ֱ�� MS 319

Christopher — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 17:49:42 +0000

The Heretic Scribbler of �㽶ֱ�� MS 319

Antje G. Frotscher

Issue number

(2022): 18

Notes category

De consolatione philosophiae

Thomas Philpott

John Philpott

Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

Protestant Reformation

�㽶ֱ�� MS 319 is one of only twenty extant copies of John Walton’s Middle English verse translation of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae. It is one of a group of five manuscripts recorded as bequeathed to the college by one Thomas Philpott. There are many scribbles in the margins of the manuscript. What do they convey, and who might have written them?

New College Library, Oxford, MS 319, f. 2r

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

18NCN2 (2022) Frotscher on MS 319.pdf1.87 MB

The Appeal of Eros to Apollo: A New Manuscript for �㽶ֱ��, Oxford

Christopher — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 21:18:11 +0000

The Appeal of Eros to Apollo: A New Manuscript for �㽶ֱ��, Oxford

Christopher Skelton-Foord

Issue number

(2022): 17

Notes category

Edward ‘Ned’ Perry Warren (1860–1928) studied Classics at �㽶ֱ��, and is best remembered today for his prolific collecting of Greek and Roman antiquities. He was also an author of works exalting same-sex love, writing under the pen-name of Arthur Lyon Raile. In spring 2022, the library acquired a beautiful calligraphic manuscript in black and red inks, which dates from 1916, of an apparently unpublished poem by Warren—‘The Appeal of Eros to Apollo’.

New College Library, Oxford, MS 379, upper board

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

17NCN9 (2022) Skelton-Foord on The Appeal of Eros to Apollo.pdf455.68 KB