eBLJ 2021

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)

The British Library

ISNI

Language

English

Related collection

Electronic British Library Journal

Now showing 1 - 10 of 11

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The Alice N. Hays Notebook: A Tour of Early Twentieth-Century Library Methods in the UK and Europe
(2021)
Jordan, Jessica Camille
In the summer of 1909, Stanford librarian Alice Newman Hays embarked on a journey to visit libraries across England and Europe, compiling a record of cataloguing practices to share with her colleagues back in California. Among the stops on Alice's journey were prestigious institutions like the Bodleian Library and British Museum, as well as public libraries in Oxford, London, and Paris, where her librarian's eye was attentive not just to how her peers overseas managed accessions, cataloguing, and storage, but also to the experience of being in these library spaces. The notebook she kept of her travels also maps an international network of library professionals, connecting Hays with several prominent librarians and bibliographers of the early twentieth century, including Falconer Madan and L. Toulmin Smith at Oxford, Alfred Rogers at Cambridge, and Alfred W. Pollard at the British Museum. Her observations, in all their attention to the embodied experience of library use, are also a critical reminder of the human labour required to face the multifaceted challenges of preserving and making information accessible – labour that is too often elided in our histories, especially when performed by women. This edition contains the full text of Hays's notebook and is accompanied by an introduction which provides relevant contextual information, including brief historical notes on the development of Stanford's library and a biographical sketch of Alice N. Hays.
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From popular to rare: Acquisition and preservation policies at the British Museum Library in Panizzi’s time
(2021)
Carnelos, Laura
Large quantities of Italian early modern books were dispersed on a vast scale mainly from the 1760s onwards as a consequence of the decline of the local aristocracy, the French Revolution and the suppressions of religious libraries. Increasing interest in the Italian Renaissance and its historical importance strongly influenced the routes of these books towards the UK. Considered rare and purchased as reflections of Italian social life, so-called 'popular' books – those cheaply printed and widely sold, read, listened to and shared by people from all social classes in the early modern period – turned from books for consumption into objects worth collecting and preserving. Owing to changes in the scope of acquisition and preservation policies mainly led by Antonio Panizzi during his Keepership in the Department of Printed Books (1837-1856), the British Museum turned into a substantial buyer of these items. Official reports, invoices, registers, letters and minutes confirm that many collections of Italian popular early modern books were bought by the British Museum in this period and were preserved in the 'C' presses among the most precious items in the library.
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James McNeill Whistler to Richard D’Oyly Carte: A Letter Comes to Light at the British Library
(2021)
Beckett, Chris
Recently catalogued papers of the Doyly Carte family held at the British Library have brought to light a ‘lost’ letter from the American artist James McNeill Whistler to theatrical impresario and hotelier Richard D’Oyly Carte. The letter refers to Whistler’s decoration scheme for Carte’s home at No. 4 Adelphi Terrace (demolished in 1936) and to plans (not taken forward) for Whistler to decorate the restaurant in the newly built Savoy Hotel, which opened in 1889. Whistler’s letter to Carte is reproduced, transcribed, and discussed in context. The essay also considers the letter’s intriguing physical context in the D’Oyly Carte papers, hinged to the front flyleaf of the first volume of a two-volume biography of Whistler by Elizabeth and Joseph Pennell (1908). The biography belonged to Carte’s son, Rupert D’Oyly Carte, who has annotated the letter.
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A Transcription and Translation of Sloane MS. 2131, Robert Ashley’s (1561-1641) Vita: with Additional Biographical Details
(2021)
Kelser, Astrid
;
Nelson, Jennifer K.
;
Satterley, Renae
British Library Sloane MS. 2131, Vita, is an autobiography written in Latin by Robert Ashley (1565-1641), bibliophile, lawyer, and translator. Ashley bequeathed his collection of approximately 5000 books to establish a library at Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court. This is the first full transcription and translation of Ashley’s manuscript to be published. Ashley’s Vita has been cited in a variety of publications, ranging from studies on dreams and children’s literature, to his role as a political agent in the late sixteenth century, but there has been no systematic examination of his autobiography in the context of early modern English biographical studies.
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A Survey of the Art Works Connected to Adam Gumpelzhaimer with Revelations about his _Compendium musicae_
(2021)
Charteris, Richard
This study contains the first detailed survey of the art works connected to the influential Augsburg _Kantor_, composer, teacher and music theorist Adam Gumpelzhaimer (1559–1625) and demonstrates that they are much more plentiful and widespread than previously realized. For instance, this survey examines nineteen portraits of Gumpelzhaimer whereas only four are mentioned in recent works on the composer, and in the case of one portrait expands the number of known exemplars from six to twenty-nine. Other materials studied here comprise four contemporary printed art works with two of Gumpelzhaimer’s canons and another with one; eleven of his autograph items in _Stammbücher_ with art work and music; seven contemporary drawings, a number of which have music; eleven contemporary engravings for which he created music; and nine seventeenth-century oil paintings, some of which include his music. The art works date from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries and played an important role in cementing Gumpelzhaimer’s reputation, not least because some of the artists involved were well known. The images shed new light on Gumpelzhaimer and his music, on his interactions with artists and other figures, on his musical, literary and historical interests and on his standing among his contemporaries. In addition, this study includes significant revelations about Adam Gumpelzhaimer’s music treatise _Compendium musicae_ which appeared in thirteen editions between 1591 and 1681 and was used extensively throughout Europe. Its editions include art works, theoretical material and musical compositions by Gumpelzhaimer and other composers and mostly comprise canons, but also include bicinia, motets, hymns, instrumental pieces and other items. Gumpelzhaimer made extensive changes to the music treatise and many of them are explored for the first time. The musical items vary throughout the editions and in some cases Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) and others overlook or mischaracterize the composers represented in certain editions. An inventory of the musical works in the series with indications of the specific editions which include them has previously been unavailable in the literature and one appears in Appendix I; it establishes that the series contains more than 350 musical compositions and examples. RISM indicates the whereabouts of the editions, but as this study shows some of its listings are erroneous or overlook certain copies. Several unique copies in the British Library are examined including a sumptuously bound copy which Gumpelzhaimer presented to a distinguished relative. Adam Gumpelzhaimer’s _Compendium musicae_ influenced other authors and two are singled out in this study because of important new evidence about them. Until now it has escaped notice that the English editor, composer and music theorist Thomas Ravenscroft (c. 1589–c. 1630) appropriated twenty-six canons from Gumpelzhaimer’s _Compendium musicae_. In his _Pammelia_ published in London in 1609 and reprinted in 1618, Ravenscroft presented the latter canons as anonymous compositions and since then commentators about _Pammelia_ and editors of its music have treated these works in the same manner. As the present study reveals, twenty-three of the relevant canons were composed by Gumpelzhaimer and the remaining three were produced by other composers. The other author investigated here is the German _Kantor_, music theorist and teacher Maternus Beringer (b. 1580; d. after 1632), who appropriated thirty-three canons from Gumpelzhaimer’s _Compendium musicae_. The present study establishes that they comprise twenty-nine by Gumpelzhaimer, three by Giovanni Matteo Asola (c. 1532–1609) and one by an unknown composer. Beringer included them without attribution in one of his music treatises published in 1610. In the eighteenth century and again in the mid-twentieth century, three canons were attributed to William Byrd (c. 1540–1623) and thereafter the attributions were questioned without establishing their origin. This study demonstrates that they derive from Gumpelzhaimer’s _Compendium musicae_ and that he composed two of them.
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The Papers of Edward Scott, Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum 1888-1904
(2021)
Wright, C.J.
Edward Scott (1840-1918) was a member of the Department of Manuscripts, British Museum for just over forty years, 1863-1904. From 1888 until his retirement he was Keeper of Manuscripts and yet he is not as well remembered as his predecessors or successors. In 2014 the British Library acquired a small cache of his papers, most notably a diary covering the first seven months of 1869. This paper investigates his background and career in the light of this new material to see if it is possible to take the first steps towards a re-evaluation of this largely forgotten figure.
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Consul Joseph Smith’s Gold-Tooled Leather Bookbindings
(2021)
Marks, P. J. M.
To some researchers Consul Joseph Smith's (1682-1770) favoured binding style would comprise plain white/cream parchment covers and coloured spine pieces. There are many examples in the library of George III. This tells only part of the whole story, however, as more elaborate styles exist. As a bibliophile Smith would at least want his books to be neatly bound; as a book dealer he needed them to catch the eye of purchasers, many of whom were aristocratic, wealthy and of refined taste. To the latter, the elaborately tooled binding of a rare and elegant manuscript, for example, acted as a shop window, enticing potential buyers to look within. As Smith rarely left the bindings of the books and manuscripts he discovered untouched, rebinding was key. His business operations in Venice included publishing, writing, translating and the ownership of a bookshop. For these reasons, a well-run local Venetian binding workshop would be essential. It would be required to cope economically with large quantities of binding and rebinding in various styles using parchment and leather. Proficiency at different methods of 'finishing', for example tooling in gold, would be crucial, whether carried out in the same workshop or that of another specialist. Alas, the name of such a craftsman remains elusive, but the bindings themselves show that Smith had definite views as to how his books and manuscripts should be bound.
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The Formation, development and curation of the Tapling Collection at the British Museum Library in the Nineteenth Century
(2021)
Morel, Richard Scott
In 1891 Thomas Keay Tapling bequeathed his near complete, worldwide collection of stamps and postal stationery to the British Museum Library. To celebrate the 130th anniversary of this event which created the British Library's Philatelic Collections, this article provides an overview of the Tapling Collection's formation, development and early curation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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Edward Spencer Dodgson, the Basque language, and the British Museum Library
(2021)
West, Geoffrey
Edward Spencer Dodgson (1857-1922) studied Classics at Oxford University, but there is no evidence that he sat his Finals. A visit to the Basque Country in 1886 began a life-long, passionate devotion to the Basque language and bibliography. He published new editions of important early texts and a series of concordances to the forms of the verb in the books of the Basque New Testament of 1571. In supplementing – and correcting – Jules Vinson’s bibliography of the Basque language (1891, 1898), Dodgson collected many books, some of which he kept, but many others he donated to libraries, notably the British Museum and libraries at Oxford. This study explores the pattern of his donations to the Museum and the mixture of motives of a man gripped by an obsession.
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Hans Sloane, Samuel Pepys, and the Evidence of a Lost Pepys Library Catalogue
(2021)
Loveman, Kate
This article examines the relationship between Hans Sloane (1660–1753) and Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), two celebrated book collectors of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Pepys's and Sloane's connection is traced back to the mid 1680s and to their attendance at the Royal Society. A mysterious leaf in Sloane's papers (Sloane MS. 4019, f. 178) has previously been thought to be evidence of Sloane's early cataloguing practices in his library. In fact, this sheet proves to be evidence from Pepys's library and, intriguingly, it precedes Pepys's earliest surviving catalogue from 1700. An investigation of the origins of this sheet reveals how Pepys developed his cataloguing methods to accommodate the growth of his library. In considering the aesthetic role of catalogues, the article illuminates an overlooked aspect of seventeenth-century library design.
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eBLJ 2021

eBLJ 2021

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