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List of books - accounts, exit and redit books etc - with Wren Library reference numbers assigned to each. MS pencil note at top, '(Most) 1932 now in Muniment Room (behind Clock)'. Pencil annotations state which books remain in the Library, with the initials 'AH' [Arthur Halcrow?]. MS pencil note at bottom: 'Most of these volumes are stored in the Tower muniment room (behind clock). Nov. 1932 C.B.H. [Cecil Baldwin Hurry]'.

This file contains correspondence on a variety of bibliographical topics. A printed item, which was probably sent to McKerrow at some date, has been added at the end (1/57).

8 Macpherson Avenue, Toronto, Canada.—Asks for a specimen of the Society’s book-plate, and sends two of his own design.

(The design at the head of the paper is similar to Add. MS a. 684/1/2. The Bibliographical Society did not have a Librarian; the letter was presumably passed to R. B. McKerrow as Secretary.)

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Transcript

83 Macpherson Avenue, Toronto, Canada
2nd November 1918

Mr Stanley Harrod presents his compliments to the Librarian of the Bibliographical Society and begs to request that he may be favoured with one of the society’s bookplates by C. W. Sherborn.

He wishes to explain that in taking this somewhat presumptuous step he is actuated solely by a desire to possess examples of the highest attainment in this field of art, that by their study he may improve his own work. To accomplish this end he must appeal to the courtesy and generosity of the owners of the plates.

He encloses two of his own designs in the hope that they may prove of some slight interest.

(With a blank sheet. The list in fact includes only one entry.)

The Mill House, Westcott, Dorking. - Discusses a passage of Thucydides, and Macaulay's criticisms of Lucan, which 'are among his very best... He never fails to choose out the best passages, and to laugh at the bad ones'. Robert 'has a great affection for Lucan, perhaps out of proportion to his merits', partly because after Catullus he was the first classical author he studied 'on my own adventure, and so, as it were, with passion', and partly because he read it at school with Bowen, who 'delighted in Lucan, and thought his cleverness and brilliance... apart from all others'.

The weather is 'desperately and oppressively hot'; he and Bessie are going to Borrowdale before coming to Wallington. Hopes 'London is not going to be visited for its sins like New York' [perhaps a reference to the stock market crash?]

On headed notepaper for the Evening Star and South Wales Times, proprietor W. N. Johns. - Expressing sympathy on the death of C. W. King, whom he knew for many years and was very helpful in the preparation of a history on Newport, his native town. Wonders if anything from among King's possessions might be presented to the town for the Free LIbrary or Museum, to preserve the memory of 'one of Newport's most worthy sons'.

Addressed by Johns c/o Trinity College , Cambridge, forwarded on to Rev. H. L. Nelthropp at Upper Norwood.

Will pass through London between 5th and 9th.

Trinity College, Cambridge. - Found letter and detective magazine on his return from a weekend in Hastings; Smythies has got unconditional exemption [from conscription?]; feeling run down.

Labelled on front cover in ink. Date, '20/2/39' written at top of first page in pencil.

Printed by Redin & Co., Cambridge. Illustration on front of watercourse lined with reeds, in which a heron is standing; frame incorporating figures of a conductor, horn player, and two singers around the musical numbers listed on the back. Programme begins '"God Bless The Prince Of Wales." (Silver Wedding Day of T. R. H.)'. Names of individual performers and orchestra members given. Conductor, H. E. Cotterill.

Map originally produced in 1933 with the lower right quadrant showing where the dams were found.

Photomechanical copy of Niels Bohr’s 3 June 1939 letter to Oliphant, proposing that Frisch make a short stay at his laboratory. He also states that he believes that using uranium to make a bomb would involve a tremendous task indeed, but suggests that using uranium as a moderate source of heat or as a neutron source.

Includes appendix with lists of subjects and winners (the results for 1985 and 1986 added by hand).

With copy of note by Chainey, 23 Apr. 1986, stating his intention to deposit copies of this work from 1984 with the University Library, Trinity College Library, and King's College Library, with copies of 'all the post-1970 winning poems I have managed to gather' as well as some associated correspondence deposited with the University Library and a selection from this material at the other two institutions.

Includes copies of correspondence with Roger Evans and with Jacqueline Osherow, Jun. 1984, as well as copies of poems by David Lloyd, Jacqueline Osherow, Alice Goodman, James Noggle, Jean Hanff Korelitz.

Copy of Chainey's 'The Chancellor's English Medal', reprinted from the Cambridge Review, Dec. 1984, pp. 200-203.

MS copy by Joseph Wilkinson. Paper originally read 19 Mar. 1860.

Clarendon Press, Oxford.—Comments on the text, and suggests alterations.

(A handwritten message, with seven sheets of typed notes, of which the first six are numbered 2-7 and the last is unnumbered.)

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Transcript

The Clarendon Press, Oxford
1:1:26

Part III I p. 4 dele ‘or even non-existent’? I see what you mean, but it is awkward.

p. 10 Johnson’s Letters printed (from his MSS) in 1788 and in 1791. The printer normalized nearly all J’s (not infrequent) odd spellings.

Jane Austen always wrote beleive, neice, and even veiw. Hardly any trace of such spellings survived in her novels, except that in the first edition of Mansfield Park (which is very badly printed) a few spellings occur such as teize, which is undoubtedly Janian.

RWC

RBMcK.

[Additional notes:]

[Part I, Chapter vii?] p. 24

If you bring in stereos perhaps you ought to mention the nobler art of electroplating, {1} though I cannot say off-hand when it was introduced. The footnote perhaps needs modification. I believe that the introduction of stereos into America is quite recent. Frank Doubleday told me in 1920 that he was trying to persuade his people that it was possible to print from stereo; but when I asked him in (I think) 1925 if he had succeeded in doing so he said the resistance had been too strong for him. I am not quite clear if the second half of the footnote refers to America only. We should not willingly accept it as true of ourselves. In the first place (and this affects your text as well) we very often print a book in the first instance from plates. No type used in the New Eng-lish Dictionary ever touched the paper; and we should as soon think of printing a bible from type as of infringing the Thirty-Nine Articles. No printer would dream of printing a book like the Pocket Oxford Dictionary from type, unless he set it by machine, for no one would have enough type to produce it at any decent pace. The same is of course true of such books as Liddell and Scott. And when we set up a book of which we expect to sell a great many copies, e.g. the Oxford Book of English Verse, we make electroplates before printing, in order to keep the type perfectly clean. Indeed (and here I let you into a state secret) we make two sets of plates, so that if the first gets worn out a second may be made from the unused set. N.B. This is not true of the Oxford Book of English Prose, and is very exceptional. You mustn’t print too much of this information.

Chapter viii, p. 2

I believe that in the United States signatures are regarded as obsolete. {2}

[Chapter viii,] p. 11

Printing with figures. It might be interesting to infer, by comparison of a number of books printed by the same printer in the course of a few years, how many presses he possessed. I do not think I have ever seen a ‘figure’ consisting of two digits, or, if I have, certainly nothing above 12.

Chapter viii, pp 7-8

I think, indeed I am sure, that the normal place for both watermarks was the centre of the half-sheet. {3} I do not remember an ‘excentric’ {4} watermark before the very end of the eighteenth century. In my experience of the eighteenth century, paper far oftener than not had two water-marks; and I suppose the intention of putting the mark or marks in the centre of the half-sheet was that it should be visible in the finest kind of book for which the paper was used, namely a folio. N.B. My Rawlinson MS of 1674 shews that the double watermark was well established by that date. {5} After about 1800 I think watermarks appear in all sorts of funny places.

Chapter x, p. 3

My copy of Brooke’s Gustavus Vasa (a subscriber’s copy on Royal paper) has two blank leaves at the beginning and two at the end, not forming part of the book as printed, but included in the stabbing.

[Chapter x,] p. 4-5

Unfortunately I cannot lay my hands on such evidence; but my impression is that publishers’ boards are a good deal earlier than you suggest. Eighteenth Century publishers’ advertisements give price sewn, price in boards, price bound. Sometimes, though not normally, two of these are given as alternatives. My impression is that ‘price in boards’ is as common earlyish in the century as ‘price sewn’. A Dodsley pamphlet of 1754, which I happen to turn up, has in half a dozen places ‘price bound’. Pamphlets were issued also in wrappers. {6}

Part II.
Chapter iv, p. 1

Except of course in collected editions. The first edition of Thomson’s Sophonisba is octavo, the second edition is a very handsome quarto, printed to complete ‘the second volume of Mr Thomson’s Poems’, which consists mainly of the unsold and unsaleable sheets of the first edition of Liberty, and was produced with a special title-page uniform with The Seasons.

I suggest the avoidance of the word 12mo., which is as ugly to the eye as to the ear. Why not twelves? ‘(But you can’t say a twelve!)’ {7}

[Chapter iv,] p. 8.

Today the cost of blanks is due, not so much to waste in machining, as to the fact that we have to pay the compositor for the blanks as if they were full. But I do not know how far back that goes.

Chapter Vi†, p. 2

See my edition of the Tour to the Hebrides, p. 324, from which you will see that Boswell ‘hastened to the printing-house’; and also p. 481, which refers you to the notes to pp 232, 291, 324. I have recently been examining the revises (so-called by Boswell himself) of the Life of Johnson. These were regularly marked ‘For Press’ or ‘Send another revise’, and corrected by the press reader and by the author in a manner differing hardly at all from the modern practice. I am afraid I do not know of any proofs, except those you mention, earlier than about 1780, nor do I know of any surviving MSS which have been through the printer’s hands earlier than about that date. {8}

[Chapter Vi,] p. 287 (of the original print)

Bywater used to tell me that he had no doubt of the existence of picked copies; and I remember his shewing me a book which he believed to be a picked copy intended for presentation to some great man; but the process of picking would probably have reference to technical excellence (freedom from flaws in the paper and the like) rather than to the selection of sheets containing the corrected readings. But I can quite imagine Boswell, for instance, instructing Messrs Dilly to pick for say Sir Joshua Reynolds a copy containing the latest state of the sheets. {9}

Chapter ix

I demur to your expression (p. 4) ‘The text which embodies the author’s latest corrections should as a general rule be decisive in questions of reading’; I prefer your original wording ‘should be the basis of a modern edition’. In all the eighteenth and nineteenth century texts which I have edited and in which this question comes up I have found that variants must be judged upon their merits; there are, for example, readings in the third edition of the Life of Johnson which might be defended if they stood alone, but which fall to the ground the moment they are compared with the readings of the first and second editions, because they are explicable as printer’s errors and wholly inexplicable as author’s corrections. Sometimes of course (though not relatively very often) one has difficulty in making up one’s mind whether the author made a correction or the printer a mistake. There are quite gross errors in almost every edition of Boswell which ought not to have been perpetuated.

This is so far as I have got, but I hope to finish Part III in a day or so.

I will return the whole thing as soon as I can.

N.B. I have overlooked one or two notes.

Part II, chapter ii, p. 11

My uncut copy of Peacock’s Misfortunes of Elphin has the rough margin of the sheet at the top of the page, and the insets (the book is a duodecimo imposed for cutting) are much shorter at the top than the rest of the book.

Chapter iii, p. 3

I do not understand the expression ‘Printer, i.e. presumably publisher’. Ought you not to make it clearer why you presume this? {8}

RWC

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The handwritten message has been transcribed first above, though it is pinned between the last two of the other sheets. The additional notes are typed, except for a few corrections and additions (see below). The numbering of these sheets appears to indicate that one sheet is missing from the beginning. Chapter references repeated from the previous entry are omitted in the MS, but they have been supplied above in square brackets.

{1} Cf. Introduction to Bibliography, pp. 71-2.

{2} McKerrow has added the note: ‘(A fair number still)’.

{3} Cf. Introduction to Bibliography, p. 102, note.

{4} ‘x’ altered from ‘c’.

{5} Chapman has struck through the following sentence here: ‘(This wants verification; but my Library paper, p. 75, says ‘watermark’ or ‘watermarks’).’ The reference is to Chapman’s ‘Notes on Eighteenth-Century Bookbuilding’ in The Library, 4th series, iv, 175 (sic).

{6} This sentence was added by hand.

{7} This sentence was added by hand in the margin.

{8} There are pencil lines, or ticks, through this paragraph.

{9} There is a pencil line, or tick, through this paragraph.
 
† Sic.

In German. Typed with autograph.

Letter headed 'The Institute for Advanced Study, School of Mathematics, Princeton, New Jersey'.

14 Vencatachalamudaly Lane, Triplicane [Thiruvallikeni], Madras [Chennai]. - Has been given a scholarship of at least one year of £250 a year which will be extended for a year if the reports from Cambridge are favourable. Is starting on 17 Mar. from Madras and will travel by sea all the way. Has written today to Mr Hardy. Asks Neville to 'take me or at least send some-body to London as I am new to anything and everything'; apologises for the trouble taken on his behalf by Neville.

'Delighted to see you on Tuesday'.

(Includes a reproduction of an engraving from Johann Stumpf’s Gemeiner Loblicher Eydgenossenschaft Stetten. Cf. An Introduction to Bibliography, p. 41.)

Caernarvon - The day after WW left Cambridge he reached Jones [Richard Jones]. He spent the next week sightseeing: Portsmouth, Stonehenge and several cathedrals. On his travels he picked up four of his pupils and they all proceeded on to Snowdon where they were joined by the rest of his group: 'The Celts do not please me any better on a nearer view, they seem a very primitive and single headed but a very stupid race'. If the 'new tales of my Landlord' are published could JCH get Deighton [Cambridge book publishers] to send them hither. He would also like Monk's pamphlet [James H. Monk, A Vindication of the University of Cambridge, from the Reflections of Sir J. E. Smith, 1818] and the new number of the Edinburgh Review if it is out. WW received a letter from Monk offering him the Lectureship [Mathematics] which he thinks he will accept.

Way's 4 page letter accompanied by a further sheet with his handwriting and 8 sheets with notes and drawings of coats of arms.

The research notes consist of Boughey's notes, letters, and publications from others relating to various aspects of the College's history, as well as the publication of the history. The papers appear disordered from their original state but because there are some runs of like material they have been left as found. Boughey’s note passing them on to R. V. Laurence may be found as item 399, with a covering note and instruction at items 410-411.

The letters are from W. Emery Barnes (items 220-221), W. H. D. Bird (item 415), F. C. Burkitt (item 330), J. W. Clark (items 400-401), C. M. Neale (item 308), John Peile (items 325, 327), Alexander Pulling (item 427), and Alfred E. Stamp (item 372). Letters from Robert Bowes (item 386), J. W. Clark (items 63, 250, 390), F. E. Robinson (items 231, 233, 235, 242-244, 247, 252-253, 383-385, 387, 394) and Hutchinson & Co. (items 224-226, 230, 248-249, 251) concern the publication of the history. These are accompanied by a draft of Boughey’s letter to Hutchinson & Co. (item 245) and Boughey’s original memorandum of agreement with F. E. Robinson dated 4 Nov. 1897 (item 246).

Printed material consists of a card advertising Rouse Ball's History of the First Trinity Boat Club (item 207), five of J. W. Capstick’s halftone photographs of the 1st Eastern General Hospital in Nevile's Court and on the Backs (item 209), G. F. Cobb’s A Brief History of the Organ in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge (item 356), three printed catalogues from F. E. Robinson & Co. dated 1898-1901 and notices by F. E. Robinson from the same period (items 227-230, 232,237, 240-241), The Roof-Climber’s Guide to Trinity (item 366), the first paper of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Undergraduates, February 1838 (item 170), an offprint of Robert Sinker’s The Statue of Byron in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (item 414), and Vincent Henry Stanton’s Some Makers of Trinity College. A Sermon Preached in the Chapel of Trinity College Cambridge, on December 9, 1898 (item 442).

Notes were written on verso of letters, including one from Herbert P. S. Devitt asking for leave (item 19), a letter from W. H. D. Rouse to Mr Stewart dated 3 Oct. 1902 (item 39), a book recommendation ticket for the library (item 38), and a Trinity gate bill sent to the Senior Dean for Monday night Aug. 25, n.y. (item 41). Two unusual items are clipped pieces of an early manuscript (item 406).

Duplicated typescript, corrected, with four duplicated maps. A reconstruction of the fields of Grantchester as they were before enclosure.