Add MS 78415

EVELYN PAPERS. Vol. CCXLVIII. `Womans Worth. Or a treatise shewing & proving by sundry reasons that women doe excell Men. Authoris nomen pagina queque probat collegiae Omnium Animarum [All Souls College]'; [early 17<sup>th</sup> cent.]. Copy, 1638, in more than one scribal hand, of a manuscript in the Bodleian Library; the `imprint' reads, `Oxford: Imprinted as yet never, onely a M.S in the Library of that famous university, 1638'. With scribal pagination `1-107’. Pages have borders ruled in pencil, with the heading `Women’s Worth’ on each in rather untidy decorative pen-work. This volume is listed as item 4 in the Manuscripts section of John Evelyn’s library catalogue, Add MS 78632, f. 129 below, and was possibly obtained by him while he was at Oxford. The work draws upon Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s De nobilitate et praeccelentia foeminei sexus. The Bodleian copy, which is attributed to William Page (1590-1664), Fellow of All Souls, is also mentioned in a letter to Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, from Bodley’s Librarian, Dr Thomas Barlow, 21 May 1663, printed in Letters and Poems in honour of the Duchess of Newcastle ([London], 1676), p. 69. Another 17^th cent. copy is held by the Wigan Archives Service, Leigh, Lancashire. Formerly Evelyn MS 187.

ff. iii + 56. Contemporary binding of speckled calf, gilt-ruled. 160 x 115mm.