Add MS 78678-78693

UPCOTT’S COLLECTIONS

78678-78693. EVELYN PAPERS. Albums containing autograph letters and other manuscript items, 16th-19th cent., collected and assembled by Wiliam Upcott (1779-1845), with a few loose items also collected by him, early 19th cent. For Upcott and the Evelyn family, see also Add. MSS 78577-78584 and 78641-78642 above. The documents are arranged in sets of albums by the status or occupation of the writers, and within each album alphabetically by the writer’s name, or chronologically. In many cases an engraved portrait of the writer, most of the 19th cent., has been added. These albums represent only a fraction of Upcott’s extensive autograph collection, which is described in detail in three separate catalogues: his privately printed Original Letters, Manuscripts and State Papers, Collected by William Upcott (1836) (copy with additions by Upcott in Add. MS 78693 below); Catalogue of the Autograph Room, Entirely Filled with the Collection of Mr. William Upcott ... Third Exhibition, Liverpool Mechanics’ Institution, June and July 1844 (copy annotated by W. G. Hiscock in Add. MS 78583 above); and (for the sale of his collection after his death) Catalogue of the Collection of Manuscripts and Autograph Letters Formed by the Late William Upcott, Evans, 22-24 June 1846 (annotated copy in Add. MS 78584 B above, and see also Theodore Hofmann, et al., `John Evelyn’s Archive at the British Library’, Book Collector, 44 (1995), pp. 200-7). The albums described below were acquired by William John Evelyn at the 1846 Evans sale because they contained a number of letters originally of Evelyn family provenance and removed by Upcott while he was employed at Wotton in cataloguing the library (see Add. MS 78641-78642 above). For this he claimed to have had Lady Evelyn’s permission, but if this was so, the amount he removed exceeded anything she can have intended. At the same sale W. J. Evelyn acquired a number of other manuscript items of Evelyn provenance, which because of format or quantity Upcott had not incorporated into albums: lots 42, 59-63, 117, 147, 170, 172, 257-258, 428, 429, 431, in the annotated sale catalogue in Add. MS 78584 B. These have been restored to their place in the archive, in most cases with a note recording the Upcott connection. The present albums, which contain many letters not of Evelyn origin, have been retained in the form Upcott compiled them. Letters of Evelyn family provenance are listed in bold. Other lots from the 1846 sale, some (but not all) of them Evelyn strays, were acquired by Sir Frederick Madden for the British Museum; these are now Add. MSS 18740, 15857-15858, 15865, 15866, 15889, 15891-15899, 15904, 15907, 15908, 15913, 15914, 15917, 15935-15945, 15952-15954. The three catalogues of Upcott’s collection listed above indicate that it contained a number of other albums of original letters (arranged in categories of clergy, military and naval men, scientists, poets, etc.), which were not acquired either by the British Museum or the Evelyn family. This was probably because the individuals represented in them were chiefly of the 18th or19th century and only summary descriptions were given in the Evans sale catalogue. However the item by item lists of the contents of these albums in the catalogue of the Liverpool exhibition of 1844 make it clear that they also contained a significant number (at least twenty letters, all from important correspondents) of strays from the Evelyn archive. Several of these albums were acquired by Alexander A. Smetz of Savannah and appear in the Catalogue Raisonné of his Library (1860). Their present whereabouts has not been traced. The second and later series of albums relating to literary figures (following the first series in Add. MSS 78683-78685 below), lots 421-424 in the Evans catalogue, have been published in microfilm with an index by Chadwyck-Healey (ISBN 0 85964 015 9; BL press-mark MFR 1847-1853). On Upcott in general, see A.N.L. Munby, The Cult of the Autograph Letter in England (1962), pp. 13-32.

Sixteen volumes.