Add MS 58215

THOMAS MANNE: anthology of contemporary verse, including poems by Henry King, his brother John King and other members of Christ Church, Oxford, etc.; circa 1624-1638, with later additions to circa 1646. Partly imperfect. Partly Latin and French. Fair copies. Manne (b.1582, d.1641) served as senior Chaplain of Christ Church in the 1620s and early 1630s. The main sequence (ff. 7-114v), which includes nothing that is datable with certainty to after 1633, begins on ff. 7-61 in the bold formal italic that he developed after the mid-1620s, but continues on ff. 61v-101v in a more cursive script. Subsequent additions were made in several other hands (ff. 72v; 99v and 104, 104v; 102, 102v; 103, 103v; 105-111v; 112, 112v; 113-114v), the latest datable item (ff. 104, 104v) belonging to 1646. A second section, copied from the opposite end (ff. 190v-169, vol. rev.), concludes with a series of poems composed in 1638. Altogether some two dozen poems by Henry King are distributed throughout the main section, two of them being imperfect owing to loss of leaves between the present ff. 74v, 75 and 112v, 113. All are collated in Margaret Crum (ed.), The Poems of Henry King (Oxford, 1965), where the manuscript is designated TM. The subscription 'R. Dorset' made in King's own hand to three out of a group of four poems (ff. 75-76v) denotes his patron Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset. Another thirteen pieces are by, or have been attributed to, Henry's brother John, while the rest are the work of Richard Corbett, Ben Jonson, Thomas Carew, Thomas Randolph, Sir Henry Wotton, along with various unidentified authors. The second section includes other pieces by graduates of Christ Church. For further descriptions and lists of contents, etc., see Sotheby's sale-cat. 26 June 1974, lot 3013, and facing plate of the first page (f. 7); Peter Beal (ed.), Index of English Literary Manuscripts, Volume II, 1625-1700, pt. I (1987), pp. 592 and pp. 596-644 passim; and Mary Hobbs, Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts (1992), pp. 82-85. Manne also transcribed the two collections of King's poems now Bodleian MS. Eng. poet. e. 30 and the privately-owned Stoughton MS. (a photocopy of which is Bodleian MS. Facs. d. 157). A scribe identified merely as his 'imitator' was responsible for another that is now Additional 62134. Name of 'Ann Littleton' inscribed in ink at head of second section (f. 190v, vol. rev.) may be that of third wife (1651) of Sir Thomas Holt of Aston Hall. See also Thomas Rodd's 'Catalogue of Books, Manuscripts, and Autograph Letters', [June 1848], p. 31, sub 'King', and the sale-cat. of his stock at Sotheby's, 4 Feb. 1850, item 500, when sold to J. O. Halliwell (later Halliwell-Phillipps). Subsequently bought at the sale of the Rev. Thomas Corser's library, at Sotheby's, 25 June 1873, lot 325, by the bookseller Pickering. Later owned by Philip Robinson. Purchased at Sotheby's, Phillipps sale, 26 June 1974, lot 3013.

Paper; ff. ii+192. Both sections of text paginated sporadically in modern pencil. 205mm x 148mm. Oval excision at centre of front flyleaves (ff. 1-3) which are pasted together. Pages throughout ruled with red-ink margins. Pencilled notes in 18th-19th cent. hand read 'The author of these Poems had a brother named H. K.' (f. 2) and, on paste-down leaf (f. i) inside front cover, 'King (Henry Bishop of Chichester) Poems . . . Corbet &'. Some of King's poems identified by pencilled 'H K' in margin by head. Booksellers' price-codes pencilled on ff. 2 and 3v. Main watermark similar to Heawood nos. 951-983 but surmounted by crown. Near-contemporary binding of smooth brown calf over boards carrying on each cover a blind-stamped compartment consisting of a triple rule. Spine, partly rebacked, with four raised bands. Untrimmed doublures blind-stamped with single rule and bearing remains of two red silk ties. Fore-edges mottled.