Project MUSE®: The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/345
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 7 (2006) through current issueLatest Articles: The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical SocietyTWOProject MUSE®The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society1744-85810024-2160Latest articles in The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society. Feed provided by Project MUSE®A True and Impartial Narrative of the Lives of the Fletchers of Oxford, Eighteenth-Century Booksellers
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987295
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Frontispiece. ‘Auction at J. Fletcher’s Bookseller in the Turl Oxford 1750’, engraving (230 × 180 mm) on paper backing (370 × 230 mm). Collection of Keith Fletcher.Eighteenth-century Oxford readers would have had little trouble identifying the book-trade Fletcher families there, or knowing where they worked, or what they would find in their shops. They probably could have said what part of the country the Fletchers came from too. Take the antiquary Thomas Hearne (1678–1735), for example. He ran into Stephen Fletcher on the streets of Oxford, visited Fletcher’s bookshop on the High Street, knew whose libraries Fletcher was buying, and was certain of his age, because Stephen Fletcher had told him one evening. He even
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/345/image/coversmallA True and Impartial Narrative of the Lives of the Fletchers of Oxford, Eighteenth-Century Booksellers2026-04-02text/htmlen-USA True and Impartial Narrative of the Lives of the Fletchers of Oxford, Eighteenth-Century Booksellers2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®1197592026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02The Floral Binder and Thomas Hunt
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987296
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A book of statutes for the constitution of God’s House at Ewelme, a fifteenth-century almshouse some thirteen miles southeast of Oxford, is notable among many things for its decorated limp binding.1 Its fine quality adds support to the view that such bindings were not cheap substitutes but prized for their technical and functional characteristics.2 The defining feature of a limp binding is the absence of wooden boards, a simple definition that belies the sheer diversity in the structural types of books enclosed in limp covers, from the loose wrapper to the decorated leather of the present example. There must have once been many more books in similar limp covers as is suggested by the occasional survivals of, for
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/345/image/coversmallThe Floral Binder and Thomas Hunt2026-04-02text/htmlen-USThe Floral Binder and Thomas Hunt2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®1070082026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Proof-reading in 1650 London: The Case of Thomas Sanderson
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987297
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British Library Sloane MS 915 is a manuscript note-book that belonged to Thomas Sanderson (1622–1670), sometime Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and son of Robert Sanderson (1587–1663), Bishop of Lincoln. The manuscript was at one point a commonplace book: there are alphabetical Latin headings running from ‘Abusio’ (abuse) to ‘Contritio’ (contrition). The fact that the headings proceed only as far as C suggests this text was once a part of a longer run of notebooks—there may have been other similar notebooks for D–Z. Some of the headings have gathered excerpts, but many do not: at a certain point in its history, the manuscript’s tight commonplace structure was abandoned and this commonplace book, like so
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/345/image/coversmallProof-reading in 1650 London: The Case of Thomas Sanderson2026-04-02text/htmlen-USProof-reading in 1650 London: The Case of Thomas Sanderson2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®1031422026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02At the Margins of the Gentry: The Library of William Clarke, 1688
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987298
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Surviving library lists for the seventeenth century are relatively rare and, when discovered, are worth putting into the public domain.1 This is especially so for the modest libraries of lesser gentleman and the ‘middling sort’. We know, at the one extreme, of the spectacular private libraries of some of the great noblemen, antiquaries, and intellectuals, running to several thousand books, and, at the other, of the handful of familiar titles that regularly occur in the inventories of ordinary literate people.2 The library list published here was the working collection of William Clarke, a West Country attorney and Whig activist, and it amounts to some two hundred items. It was drawn up at the time of his death in
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/345/image/coversmallAt the Margins of the Gentry: The Library of William Clarke, 16882026-04-02text/htmlen-USAt the Margins of the Gentry: The Library of William Clarke, 16882026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®1312682026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02The Transmission of Walter Map’s Dissuasio Valerii: Some Notes
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987299
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As any student of manuscripts knows, medieval books are littered with small texts, perhaps only a few folios in extent. These often are adventitious, compilers’ notes and jottings, for example, and relatively few such brief items have any circulation or impact whatever. There is, however, one glaring exception to this common rule, Walter Map’s Dissuasio Valerii ad Rufinum, ne uxorem ducat, an antigamous tract composed about 1180 and eventually absorbed into Map’s master-text, De nugis curialium. A survey in the most recent edition found 158 survivors in all, scattered in libraries from Barcelona to Gdansk, as well as a large number of lost copies.1Subsequent investigations have, of course, uncovered more, an
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/345/image/coversmallThe Transmission of Walter Map’s Dissuasio Valerii: Some Notes2026-04-02text/htmlen-USThe Transmission of Walter Map’s Dissuasio Valerii: Some Notes2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®305382026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Correspondence
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987300
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Sirs,It was I too that was engaged by the great Dick Sylvester on A Dialogue of Comfort, and I can add a little to Ralph Hanna’s note (The Library, VII, 26, June number). The manuscript that is now Yale Beinecke Library, MS Osborn fa21, turned up in a street market in Longacre, where it was picked up by Nigel Tattersfield, who brought it to me. I identified the text, and was asked for advice. I recommended offering it for sale at Sotheby’s, which took place accordingly. Professor Hanna’s reading of Dialogue (CW 208/22) ‘Authentique’ for ‘antique’ is clearly right, and it follows that the readings identified by Hanna as possible intrusions are probably just that. It is equally clear that the Martz and Manley text
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/345/image/coversmallCorrespondence2026-04-02text/htmlen-USCorrespondence2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®20692026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02Notes on Contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987302
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Christine Ferdinand has worked on book-trade history through much of her career, and is currently writing a biography of James Rivington (1724–1802), controversial bookseller, entrepreneur, royalist newspaper proprietor, and briefly spy for George Washington. She is Emeritus Fellow Librarian of Magdalen College, Oxford.Mark Goldie is Emeritus Professor of Intellectual History and a Fellow of Churchill College in the University of Cambridge. He has published extensively on politics, religion, and ideas in Britain in the early-modern period.Ralph Hanna is Professor of Palaeography (emeritus) and Emeritus Fellow, Keble College, Oxford.Holly James-Maddocks is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature & Palaeography at the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/345/image/coversmallNotes on Contributors2026-04-02text/htmlen-USNotes on Contributors2026-04-022026TWOProject MUSE®21312026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-02