Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1910-1933 (Creation)
Level of description
Extent and medium
12 items, in 3 folders
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Ronald Brunlees McKerrow was born in Putney in 1872, the son of a civil engineer, and was educated at Harrow, King’s College, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge. After leaving university he spent three years teaching English in Tokyo before beginning a period of intense literary and bibliographical study, largely at the British Museum, two important results of which were his edition of the works of Thomas Nashe (1904-10) and his Notes on Bibliographical Evidence (1914). The latter, revised as An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1927), became a standard work. From 1914 McKerrow also gave lectures in English literature, and later bibliography, at King’s College, London. In 1917 he was appointed managing director of the publishers Sidgwick & Jackson, and this was his main occupation till his death, but he was also honorary secretary of the Bibliography Society from 1912 to 1934, editor of the Review of English Studies (which he founded) from 1925 to 1940, and editor of The Library from 1934 to 1937. In 1929 he accepted an invitation to prepare an edition of Shakespeare for the Clarendon Press, but, though he prepared a good deal of material, only a general textual introduction ever saw print.
Repository
Archival history
These letters and papers were found loose in McKerrow’s annotated copies of three of his own publications, namely an offprint of ‘Some Notes on the Letters i, j, u and v in Sixteenth Century Printing’, reprinted from The Library, July 1910 (Adv. c. 25. 80), and his editions of John Weever, Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion, 1599 (1911) (Adv. c. 25. 81), and Greenes Newes both from Heauen and Hell, 1593, and Greenes Funeralls, 1594 (two texts in one volume) (1911) (Adv. c. 25. 82). These books were among a number of books and papers donated to the Library by McKerrow’s son Malcolm in September 1994.
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
The letters and papers in this group all relate either to the books from which they were removed or to similar literary and bibliographical subjects. Two of the books were part of an abortive series of reprints. This series was first brought to the notice of the public in 1910 in a prospectus (2/1) in which McKerrow announced his intention of producing a short series of reprints of Elizabethan and Jacobean tracts, to be published for the editor by Sidgwick and Jackson and printed at the Oxford University Press. Subscribers were sought for the initial set of six volumes, and de-tails of the first five were given (the sixth was to be announced later), but McKerrow pointed out that, although the first two volumes would be is-sued in any case, he could not proceed further with the project unless he received the names of at least 150 subscribers. The first two books—editions of John Weever’s Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion, 1599, and of Greenes Newes both from Heauen and Hell, 1593 and Greenes Funeralls, 1594 (two texts in one volume)—were in sub-scribers’ hands by September 1911 (2/4) and a notice of the proposed series appeared in Notes and Queries in November (2/5), but the condition for its continuance was apparently not met, for no further volumes were issued. McKerrow’s account of subscriptions (2/2) indicates—if it is complete—that orders for only sixty-five sets were received.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
The documents are arranged in three files, according to the publication from which they were removed. Within each of these files the items are arranged in chronological order.
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Conditions governing reproduction
Language of material
Script of material
Language and script notes
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Finding aids
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Related units of description
The printed books from which the present papers were removed are Adv. c. 25. 80–2. The main series of McKerrow’s papers is catalogued under the reference MCKW, and other of McKerrow’s papers are catalogued as Add. Ms. a. 355 and Add. Ms. a. 457.
Notes area
Alternative identifier(s)
Access points
Subject access points
Place access points
Name access points
Genre access points
Description identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
In descriptions of ‘extent and medium’, a ‘single sheet’ is a single unfolded leaf of paper comprising 2 pages; a ‘folded sheet’ is a sheet of paper folded once, comprising 2 leaves and 4 pages.
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation revision deletion
This catalogue was compiled by A. C. Green in 2008.