My First Booke of My Life

Preface

xv Preface This edition would not have been possible without access to Alice Thornton ’smanuscriptsandthesupporting materialsinlibraries,record offices, and archives. Paula Peyraud generously copied the two manuscripts in her possession, providing the opportunityto appreciate the considerable amount of Thornton’s writing that has never been published. When the British Library later acquired both manuscripts, it was then possible to undertake the editing of the first and more important manuscript about the life of Alice Thornton. A microfilm acquired by Yale University of an earlier but now lost version of this manuscriptcomplementsherrevision. Besides the extensive resources of the British Library and Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library, central to this project was the research at the University of Connecticut Homer Babbidge Library and through its Interlibrary Division, the Society of Genealogists in London, and the North YorkshirePublicRecordOffice.TheBeineckeRareBookandManuscript LibraryandCushing/WhitneyMedicalLibraryatYalewerealsovaluable sources of information. The staffs at record offices, archives, and other libraries, who all responded promptly to correspondence, include those at the Borthwick Institute for Archives, Cheshire Record Office, Durham County Record Office, East Riding Archive, the John Rylands Library, Public Record Office in London, and West Yorkshire Archive Service. Severalpeoplewereespeciallygenerousinsharingtheirtimeandknowledge . At the British Library, Frances Harris, Head of Modern Historical Monuments, and Rachel Stockdale, Head of Manuscript Cataloguing, offered helpful information about the whereabouts and acquisition of the Thornton manuscripts. Diane J. Ducharme, Beinecke Library Archivist , discussed ways in which perplexing issues of transcription might be resolved. Linda Turnbull, Assistant Archivist, North Yorkshire County RecordOffice,facilitatedmicrofilmordersandprovidedanswerstoquestionsleftunresolvedduringavisittotherecordoffice .LizBregazzi,Durham xvi • Preface County Record Office County Archivist, searched for marriage records. Mrs. H. Clark, Treasure House Supervisor at the East Riding Archive, located and documented entries in parish registers, and Alexandra Medcalf , Archives Assistant, and her associates at the West Yorkshire Archive Service persisted in the successful search for wills. Leslie Tyson shared his interest in a family related to the Thorntons with a transcription of two valuable documents as well as with a picture of the church in which Alice was buried. A former academic colleague and now an Episcopalian priest,BennettBrockman,providedanswerstotheologicalconcerns.The nineteenth-century editorial work of Charles Jackson and Charles Best Norcliffe was also very useful. Some of the observations about Alice Thornton in the introduction reflecttheunderstandingandappreciationofhersignificancefirstexplored in essays published in Prose Studies; their development and refinement benefited from my wife Carol’s incisive response to the initial draft of the introduction. Carole Levin, co-director of this series, and the editorial members of the University of Nebraska Press helped make possible the publication of Alice Thornton’s “my first Booke.” ...