DOCSLIB.ORG

Cambridge University Library Annual Report 2008–2009 Detail of Coats of Arms of Statutes of 1570, Given to the University, Ca

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Cambridge University Library Annual Report 2008–2009 Detail of Coats of Arms of Statutes of 1570, Given to the University, Ca Cambridge University Library Annual Report 2008–2009 Detail of coats of arms of Statutes of 1570, given to the University, ca. 1589 the University by Elizabeth I (UA Hare A.1, f. 7r). (UA Luard 187, f. 1v). HIGHLIGHTS 2008–9 has been a period of considerable change and activity for the Library, and this report sets out the key developments of the past year. Chief amongst these was the retirement of Mr Peter Fox as Librarian on 31 March 2009. Mr Fox’s achievements during his fifteen years of service were highlighted at events hosted by the Vice- Chancellor and the Chairman of the Library Syndicate and attended by university colleagues and library directors from across the UK and beyond. Mrs Anne Jarvis was elected as his successor and took up the post on 1 April 2009. Some of the major initiatives of the past year have been in the area of fundraising. Not only is this year the University’s 800th anniversary, it is also the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. It is therefore pertinent that this report should begin with the news of a generous £480,000 donation from The Bonita Trust for a three-year Darwin and Gender project. Among the specific areas that Darwin and Gender will address are Darwin’s domestic life, gender in a scientific context and gender and society. A pencil sketch by George Richmond of Charles Darwin around ....................................................................................... the time of his marriage to his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, in 1839. It hangs in the Manuscripts Reading Room. Not only is this year the University’s 800th anniversary, it is also the 200th anniversary of the is reliant on raising funding from charitable bodies and birth of Charles Darwin. It is therefore pertinent private individuals. Lord Egremont generously agreed that this report should begin with the news of to lead the appeal, and there was a public launch at a generous £480,000 donation from The Bonita Sotheby’s on 25 June 2009. By the end of July almost Trust for a three-year Darwin and Gender Project. £600,000 had been raised. ....................................................................................... The Library has also secured a generous $427,000 grant The Library was also offered the exciting opportunity from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a major during the year to purchase the residual archive of five-year project to catalogue its collection of fifteenth- Siegfried Sassoon. The archive, held by Sotheby’s on behalf century printed books online. Very few records for the of the estate of Sassoon’s son, George, was inspected Library’s celebrated collection of some 4,650 incunabula by senior Library staff and found to be of the greatest are currently in the online catalogue, and this grant will importance. As the holder of several highly significant enable the Library to fulfill a long-held ambition to address sets of Sassoon’s letters and manuscripts, Cambridge this omission. The project will start in autumn 2009, with University Library is already recognised for the importance the catalogue records providing subject access to the of its Sassoon collections, and for many years has played books for the first time as well as a full account of the a leading role in conserving the records of his life and provenance of individual copies, recording features such works and making them accessible to readers and to the as inscriptions, illuminations, bindings, and the names of public. There are numerous close correlations between former owners. the documents offered for sale and the Library’s current holdings, while the new material would bring significant For some years the Library has been seeking funding additional dimensions to the Library’s existing holdings. to digitise the Genizah fragments Taylor-Schechter A price of £1,250,000 was agreed with Sotheby’s, with a manuscripts. Now thanks to a grant of over £1 million deadline of December 2009 for the Library to raise this from the Friedberg Genizah Project the Genizah Research sum. This sum is beyond the capacity of the Library’s Unit and Imaging Services Department will be able to acquisitions budget to absorb, and therefore the Library complete this ambitious project in under three years, 1 Annual Report 2008–2009 shooting more than a quarter of a million separate the first empirical and qualitative survey spanning the high-quality, full-colour images. Such a project is only entire university and college system of ways in which possible thanks to the recent rapid advances in digital Cambridge students are introduced to library services. capture technology and the skills of the staff involved. M-Libraries: Information on the move (Keren Mills, Open Previous estimates of the time required, made just a University) is an assessment of the actual and potential few years ago and based on the best technology then utility and acceptability of information services provided available, suggested that it might take 27 years and cost via mobile phones. Foreign language learning in Second many millions. Life and the implications for resource provision in academic libraries (Stefanie Hundsberger, John Rylands Library, Through the generosity of a major donor the University University of Manchester) is a study of the ways in which Library has been able to support undergraduate learning library services might be used to support learning and by acquiring access in perpetuity to all titles in the Oxford teaching of modern languages in a digital environment, Scholarship Online collection of 2,500 e-books published with special reference to the virtual world of Second Life. to the end of 2008 in a wide-ranging group of subjects. Reading Lists in Cambridge: A standard system? (Huw Jones, Its acquisition helps to meet the fast growing demand for Cambridge) is a study of ways in which reading lists (a key access to textbooks anywhere and at any time, relieves driver of undergraduate use of library resources) can be pressure on the most sought-after titles and complements co-ordinated and computationally supported. ebook collections already in heavy use. Innovation was also prominent in the Library’s archival work: this year saw ....................................................................................... the transfer of the first ever digital records to the University One of the biggest single donations in the Archives, on CDs and DVDs which were among the six history of the Library occurred in February when metres of paper archives of the Cambridge-MIT Institute, Premier Wen Jiabao of the People’s Republic of (known as CMI), 1999–2008 China, donated 200,000 Chinese e-books. ....................................................................................... Many recent initiatives have been extending the boundaries of the library’s engagement with the wider John Naughton, Professor of the Public Understanding scholarly community at all levels. Following the Arcadia of Technology at the Open University, has guided the Fund’s generous donation of £500,000, for example, five Fellows. He has also instigated a series of seminars and Arcadia Fellows produced highly significant deliverables an annual Arcadia Lecture. The first Arcadia Lecture was during the first year, supporting the programme’s overall presented in March 2009 by Professor James Boyle (Duke objective of rethinking the role of the research library in a University), “Cultural Agoraphobia and The Future of digital age. Science@cambridge (Lihua Zhu, Cambridge) The Library”. The three seminars also covered pertinent is a new portal/gateway for science and technology issues – scholarly networking, a publisher’s perspective students that encourages them to engage with library on academic publishing in the digital age and supporting resources, especially online resources. It was launched as early career researchers. a public service on 16 October 2008 and demonstrated both the Library’s commitment to support for the sciences One of the biggest single donations in the history of the at research and teaching levels and its ability to make Library occurred in February 2009 when Premier Wen use of Web 2.0 technologies. IRIS: Induction, Research and Jiabao of the People’s Republic of China, who visited the Information Skills, (Lizz Edwards-Waller, Cambridge) is University in February as part of its 800th Anniversary Opening screen of the China Digital Library, presented by Wen Jiabao, Premier of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. 2 Cambridge University Library University officials survey weights and measures and burn those found to be false, as depicted in a manuscript of ca. 1589 (UA Hare A.I, f. 267v). celebrations, donated 200,000 Chinese e-books. This has is now the responsibility of the University Librarian in more than doubled the size of the University Library’s consultation with the Journals Coordination Steering Chinese monographs collection, which is now the largest Committee. The next step will be to develop formal links in Europe. with the Colleges. The Library also embarked on its first business venture As part of a concerted outreach strategy the University with a publisher, Cambridge University Press (CUP). Over Library participated in the Alumni weekend, Open a three-year period CUP’s ‘Cambridge Library Collection’ Cambridge and (for the first time) the Cambridge Open will digitise important works from the Library’s holdings. Days programme of events for prospective students and The selected out-of-print and out-of-copyright books their parents. For the latter event over 1000 visitors were span the ‘long nineteenth century’ from the late 1780s to welcomed into the Library over the two-day period and the early 1900s, including writings by Charles Darwin and were offered tours of the building by the staff, who greatly his circle, studies on Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Handel, enjoyed the opportunity to engage with an extremely Wagner and works of the greatest nineteenth-century receptive audience of potential future users.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Copyrighted Material
    1 A Guide for the Perplexed HIS is a book about how to look at written and printed words, not as Ttexts, but as processes of communication in which meaning is made through the relationship between signs, structures, and materials. It has been written to complement the use of Gaskell, and to expand on those areas that were not covered in his book.1 In the following pages, the intention is both to explain the methods and processes that are used to describe and study early printed books and manuscripts, and to situate that understanding in a scholarly context in order that the insights so derived might be fruitfully employed. The focus will shift from broader narratives about the methods and ideas employed in bibliographical study to specific details and examples that serve to make a more general point. The illustrations have been chosen, where possible, with an eye to freshness. The hope is that those who wish to read this will be able to look at a book or manuscript and study the way in which it was made, the processes through which it may have evolved, and its history as reflected through the archival records as well as the evidence of its use. I When we look at the handwriting of someone that we do not know, we form an impression of their personality from their ‘character’. We may not do so consciously, but we sense handwriting to be unique and revealing. We perceive whether the script is open or tight; whether the forms are regular and disciplined, or whether majuscules and miniscules are mixed together.
    [Show full text]
  • Sandars Lectures 2007: Conversations with Maps
    SANDARS LECTURES 2007: CONVERSATIONS WITH MAPS Sarah Tyacke CB Lecture III: There are maps and there are maps – motives, markets and users As Christian Jacob put it ‘There are maps and there are maps’. More prosaically the nature of them depends on what you want the map or chart for and how you the reader perceive it? This third lecture is about what drove the cartographic activity internally and externally and how did it manifest itself in England and the rest of maritime Europe through its distributors, patrons and readers. This is probably the most challenging subject, first articulated in embryonic form as part of the history of cartography’s remit in the 1970s by David Woodward (as we saw in lecture I) and developed thereafter as the history of cartography took a ‘second turn’ and embraced social context. This ‘second turn’ challenged the inevitability of progress in cartography and understood that cartography was just as much a product of its society as other texts. In the case of Brian Harley he took this further arguing powerfully, from the examples he found, that in the early modern period with the rise of the nation state and European expansion ‘cartography was primarily a form of political discourse concerned with the acquisition and maintenance of power’ ( Imago Mundi 1988, 40 pp. 57-76). One might say the same of archives and libraries which spent (and do spend) their time ordering knowledge in the shape of books and manuscripts. In the case of a National Archives there is a clear explicit connection between the state and the archive; but even here within the archive and within the map there are other human elements at work as well, even subversive at least when it comes to interpreting them.
    [Show full text]
  • © in This Web Service Cambridge University Press
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-75762-1 - Bibliographical Analysis: A Historical Introduction G. Thomas Tanselle Index More information Index Abbott, Craig S., 58 books, 6–14, 48–52; of 16th- and Agüera y Arcas, Blaise, 106 17th-century books, 15–28, 31–47; of Ames, Joseph, 8–9 18th-century books, 52–56, 79–80, 82–84; Amory, Hugh, 96 of 19th- and 20th-century books, 56–59, analytical bibliography. See bibliographical 84–85. See also book design; compositor analysis study; presswork study Anisson, Jean, 69, 110 bibliographical description, 93, 104, 159; Apollinaire, Guillaume, 66 collation formula in, 14, 91; definition artifacts, 2, 7, 30, 89; visual attributes of, of, 3, 4, 19, 46, 56, 104; title-page 61–62, 63, 66–68 transcription in, 89, 91 attribution of authorship, 98, 158 Bibliographical Society [London], 5, 17, 18, Austen, Jane, 105 19, 20–21, 22, 76, 89, 91, 92, 108; founding of, 11–12 Babbage, Charles H., 110 Bibliographical Society of America, 80 Bain, D. C., 105 Bibliographical Society of the University of Bain, Peter, 113 Virginia, 93 Bald, R. C., 25–26, 95 Bill, Max, 113 Ball, Douglas, 112 bindings, 4; custom, 87, 101, 112, 157; Barker, Nicolas, 57, 78, 79–80, 81, publishers’, 57, 87, 107, 112, 157. See also 108, 111, 114 bookmaking Barthes, Roland, 74 Blades, William, 7, 9–10, 12, 13, 89, 90 Baskerville, John, 55 Bland, David, 112 Bayfield, M. A., 98 Blayney, Peter W. M., 29, 35–36, 41, 46, 100, bearer type, 105, 156 101, 103 Beaumont, Francis, 98, 102 blind impressions, 105, 156 Beinecke Library, 114 Bloch, Marc, 108 Belanger, Terry, 94 Bloomfield, Paul, 110 Bennet, Thomas, 8, 89 Bodley Head, 85 Benton, Megan L., 86 Bond, W.
    [Show full text]
  • Digital Scholarly Editing Theories and Practices
    Digital Scholarly Editing Theories and Practices EDITED BY MATTHEW JAMES DRISCOLL AND ELENA PIERAZZO To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/483 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. Digital Scholarly Editing Theories and Practices Edited by Matthew James Driscoll and Elena Pierazzo https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2016 Matthew James Driscoll and Elena Pierazzo. Copyright of each individual chapter is maintained by the authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Matthew James Driscoll and Elena Pierazzo (eds.), Digital Scholarly Editing: Theories and Practices. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/ OBP.0095 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https:// www.openbookpublishers.com/isbn/9781783742387#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active on 26/7/2016 unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://www.openbookpublishers.com/isbn/9781783742387#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
    [Show full text]
  • Sandarslecture 1Revisednov07
    SANDARS LECTURES 2007: CONVERSATIONS WITH MAPS SARAH TYACKE CB LECTURE 1: ‘T HEN AND NOW’ - RECENT VIEWS OF MAPPING IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD Introduction I was somewhat surprised, but pleased, to be asked to give the Sandars Lectures as I had always understood them to be about bibliography and matters to do with the book ‘and the arts relating thereto.’ I checked to see if anyone had ever spoken about maps. Although I recognised some famous names that have been influential in the history of cartography, like Don McKenzie with his seminal work, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (London, c.1986), I could find nothing about maps themselves. I am therefore very grateful to the Electors of the Sandars Readership in Bibliography, for their confidence in asking a historian of maps to deliver the Sandars lectures for 2007. I hope I may fulfil their expectations. I should also say that my present research has been enhanced by the award of a Leverhulme Emeritus research fellowship for two years. I have chosen as my theme an all encompassing title, ‘Conversations with maps: world views in early modern Europe’. This enables me to range over modern debate and dispute about the period and its cartography, to consider maps as vehicles of communication of geographical and other knowledge transfer, and, of course, as objects of delight; I intend also to consider their production and dissemination and to consider their very different categories of users and wider audiences. The all- encompassing theme also allows me to fulfil one of the requirements made by the founder of the lectures, Samuel Sandars who wished the lectures to be based on the University’s collections.
    [Show full text]
  • Time and the Bibliographer: a Meditation on the Spirit of Book Studies
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Faculty Publications -- Department of English English, Department of Spring 2020 Time and the Bibliographer: A Meditation on the Spirit of Book Studies Matt Cohen Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishfacpubs Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, Modern Literature Commons, and the Reading and Language Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications -- Department of English by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Time and the Bibliographer A Meditation on the Spirit of Book Studies Matt Cohen Abstract In light of the global return of tribalism, racism, nationalism, and religious hypocrisy to power’s center stage, it is worth returning to the question of the relevance of bibliography. It is a time when, at least at the seats of power in the United States and some other places, books seem to have become almost meaningless. Bibliographic pioneer D.F. McKenzie’s strategy was not to constrain bibliography in self-defense, but to expand it, to go on the offense. What is our course? This essay explores bibliography’s past in order to suggest ways in which it can gain from an engagement with the methods and motivating concerns of Indigenous studies. The study of books has often functioned within a colonialist set of assumptions about its means and its ends, but at the same time, having been at times in something of a marginalized position themselves in their professions, its practitioners have developed unique tools, passions, and intellectual focuses with decolonial potential.
    [Show full text]
  • A Short History of English Printing : 1476-1900
    J \ Books about Books Edited by A. W. Pollard A Short History of English Printing BOOKS ABOUT BOOKS Edited bv A. W. POLLARD POPULAR RE-ISSUE BOOKS IN MANUSCRIPT. By Falconer Madan, Bodley's Librarian, Oxford. THE BINDING OF BOOKS. By H. P. HORNE. A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH PRINTING. By II. K. Plomer. EARLY ILLUSTRATED BOOKS. By A. W. POLI.ARD. Other volumes in pi-eparatioit. A Short History of English Printing 1476-1900 By Henry R. Plomer London Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibncr & Co., Ltd. Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane, E.C, MDCCCCXV I-'irst Edition, 1900 Second (Popular) Edition, 1915 The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved Editor's Preface When Mr. Plomer consented at my request to write a short history of EngHsh printing which should stop neither at the end of the fifteenth century, nor at the end of the sixteenth century, nor at 1640, but should come down, as best it could, to our ovm day, we were not without appre- hensions that the task might prove one of some difficulty. How difficult it would be we had certainly no idea, or the book would never have been begun, and now that it is Imished I would bespeak the reader's sympathies, on Mr. Plomer 's behalf, that its inevitable shortcomings may be the more generously forgiven. If we look at what has already been written on the subject the diffi- culties will be more easily appreciated. In England, as in other countries, the period in the history of the press which is best known to us is, by the perversity of antiquaries, that which is furthest removed from our own time.
    [Show full text]
  • 9 Rare Book Librarianship and Historical Bibliography
    9 Rare book librarianship and historical bibliography K. E. Attar Introduction The rare books world saw considerable activity in the years 2011–2015, and, especially through Research Libraries UK (RLUK) initiatives, enjoyed a high profile. Particular emphasis was on digitization, rendering texts available out- side library walls. Concurrently, libraries plunged themselves into ‘engage- ment’ (the buzzword supplanting ‘promotion’ and ‘outreach’ as a traditional core activity of rare book librarianship, and consciously including ‘public engagement’ beyond a library’s main stakeholders), whereby the celebration of printed objects through exhibitions, publications, and teaching emphasized the continued value of the printed artefact. Such activity, alongside acquisi- tions, concern at disposals, and projects to house special collections in new environments, conveyed a clear and triumphant message amidst challenges that rare books and special collections matter. RLUK initiatives A strand on ‘promoting unique and distinctive collections’ within RLUK strategy 2011–2014 gave special collections particular prominence. The purpose was to maximize ‘the potential of these collections in all formats held by RLUK members’, including ‘activity on public engagement, fundraising, promotion, resource discovery and delivery, and digitisation, and … encom- pass[ing] value, impact and staff skills’.1 The main resulting report was ‘Unique and distinctive collections: opportunities for research libraries’, which defined unique and distinctive collections (‘UDCs’),
    [Show full text]
  • Palaeography and Manuscript | University of Kent
    09/27/21 Palaeography and Manuscript | University of Kent Palaeography and Manuscript View Online Spring ‘A. Cappelli. Dizionario Di Abbreviature Latine Ed Italiani. Index.’ N.p., n.d. Print. A C De la Mare. The Handwriting of the Italian Humanists. OUP [for] Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, 1973. Print. Alexander, J J G. Medieval Learning and Literature. [Place of publication not identified]: Clarendon, 1976. Print. Bernard Cerquiglini. In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology (Parallax: Re-Visions of Culture and Society). The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Print. Bischoff, Bernhard, Cro ́ inin, Da ́ ibhi ́ o ́ , and Ganz, David. Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Print. Bishop, T A M. Facsimiles of English Royal Writs to AD 1100, Presented to V H Galbraith. [Place of publication not identified]: Clarendon Press, 1957. Print. ---. Scriptores Regis; Facsimiles to Identify and Illustrate the Hands of Royal Scribes in Original Charters of Henry I, Stephen and Henry II. [Place of publication not identified]: Clarendon Press, 1961. Print. Bishop, Terence Alan Martyn. English Caroline Minuscule. Oxford palaeographical handbooks. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. Print. Blake, and N F. ‘Caxton’s Copytext of Gower's Confessio Amantis.’ William Caxton and English Literary Culture. London: Hambledon Press, 1991. Web. <http://library.kent.ac.uk/cgi-bin/resources.cgi?url=http://www.kentuk.eblib.com/patron/Fu llRecord.aspx?p=742542>. Blake N.F. ‘Editing the Canterbury Tales: An Overview.’ The Canterbury Tales Project 1/7 09/27/21 Palaeography and Manuscript | University of Kent Occasional Papers: V.1: Edited by Norman Blake and Peter Robinson.
    [Show full text]
  • Download This PDF File
    have issued publications under such top-heavy lectures supplement the author's History of designations. the Cambridge University Press (1921) where This raises the practical point: do such lists the material on early publishing lacked the really make a contribution, or are they mere- information provided by manuscripts since ly the by-products of "busy work"? It may be discovered and where the material on modern argued that even if they are in the latter cat- publishing was, with proper delicacy, subor- egory, theresults are possibly useful and should dinated. Thus, the earlier book discusses works be made available. All well and good, but part published or printed at the beginning of the of the $5.00 price tag on the Wisconsin list eighteenth century with occasional references is due to the padding-out of headings. Each to the curators' minute-books; in the present library must assess the value of these lists for volume, cash accounts are analyzed to show itself, weighing the advantages against the production costs. The "sad story of the pub- drawbacks. Librarians need not be reminded lication of the Suidas Lexicon" (1705), in that, an Oklahoma heading to the contrary, which, unwillingly, "the Curators were for the there is no Santa Claus Commission.—John first time faced with the problems and respon- Rather, School of Library Service, Columbia sibilities of a publisher," is here told in de- University. tail. The master of Pembroke then turns to the nineteenth century, discussing efforts to main- Cambridge Publishing tain the press on a profitable basis before con- The Evolution of Cambridge Publishing.
    [Show full text]
  • Donald Francis Mckenzie 1931–1999
    DON MCKENZIE Copyright © The British Academy 2002 – all rights reserved Donald Francis McKenzie 1931–1999 DON MCKENZIE was Professor of English Language and Literature in Victoria University of Wellington, and later Professor of Bibliography and Textual Criticism in Oxford. One of the most stimulating teachers of his generation, he gave to bibliographical study new purposes and insights, and argued for its place at the centre of literary and historical understanding. In a lifetime divided between his native New Zealand and Britain, he sought to influence national values in both countries, whether in bibliography, theatre, publishing, or librarianship. A quick critical intelligence, an almost intuitive gift for friendship, personal sensitivity and a striking liveliness in his appearance, all informed his professional and private life alike. He was born on 5 June 1931 in Timaru, South Canterbury, New Zealand, the son of Leslie Alwyn Olson McKenzie and his wife Millicent Irene. He was the eldest of four brothers and a sister. His father, a boot- maker, was restless; and as the family moved about so Don moved also: when he reached Palmerston North Boys’ High School he had attended about a dozen primary and secondary schools. But by the time he left Palmerston North he had made a lifelong friend in Iain Lonie, who became a distinguished poet and whose premature death in 1988 caused him great distress. On leaving school in 1948, and a summer job in a meat freezing plant that turned him into a vegetarian, he joined the staff of the Post Office, as a cadet. There he was appointed to the Public Relations Department in Wellington, a situation that both provided a living and permitted him to Proceedings of the British Academy, 115, 297–315.
    [Show full text]
  • The Psalms and the English Reformation in the Parker Library At
    The Psalms and the English Reformation RUTH AHNERT In the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College library sits a fourteenth-century manuscript containing two versions of the Psalter, copied in the same fine large hand. The first is translated into Middle English, the latter is rendered in Anglo-Norman.1 Despite its pre-Reformation origins, this manuscript is witness to the sixteenth-century controversy over the propriety of translating the Bible into the vernacular. The double- Psalter is presumed to have been procured from Norwich Priory by the library's founder, Archbishop Matthew Parker, a key figure behind the reformist project of Biblical translation. Parker was the driving force behind the Bishop's Bible of 1568 (himself translating Genesis, Exodus, the gospels of Matthew and Mark, all of Paul's epistles except for Romans and 1 Corinthians, and the epistle to the Hebrews); he produced a metrical paraphrase of the entire psalter, which he later published at the urging of friends; and he played an active part in the development of a liturgy in English. The creation of his library was directly connected to this project of translation: motivated by the need to find evidence for the existence of an ancient English-speaking Church independent of Rome, he became particularly keen to preserve materials relating to Anglo-Saxon and medieval England. 2 In John Foxe's words, Parker collected books to show that ‘religion presently … is no new reformation of thinges lately begonne, which were not before, but rather a reduction of the Church to the Pristine state of olde conformitie’.3 In this context, the fourteenth-century double-Psalter acts as a piece of evidence that the programme of biblical translation was not an aberration, but rather a practice with a long history.
    [Show full text]