The Institute of English Studies
History of the book, manuscript and print studies and textual scholarship research
The return of Sir Thomas Phillipps’ Italian manuscripts to Italy
On what would have been Sir Thomas Phillipps’ 229th birthday, Dr Federico Botana examines Italian manuscripts from the Phillipps library that were acquired by Italian collections in the twentieth century. Since the early 1900s, Italian librarians, curators and...
Sir Thomas Phillipps’ Swiss manuscripts
As part of our exploration of the manuscripts owned by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Dr Angéline Rais examines the fate of the Swiss manuscripts owned by Phillipps. Although Sir Thomas Phillipps spent a year in Switzerland in 1822–23 and purchased there more than 250...
Whose manuscript is it anyway? French efforts to return ‘their’ manuscripts from the Phillipps collection
In this week-long exploration of Sir Thomas Phillipps’ manuscripts and their fate, Dr Hannah Morcos investigates the attempts to repatriate French manuscripts from the Phillipps collection. A significant proportion of the manuscripts amassed by Sir Thomas...
Where have all the Phillipps manuscripts gone?
Continuing our exploration of Sir Thomas Phillipps’ remarkable manuscript collection, Toby Burrows (University of Oxford; University of Western Australia) examines the fate of the collection - @TobyBurrows The vast manuscript collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps...
Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872): a manuscript collector and his legacy
At the start of a week examining the remarkable manuscript collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, Dr Laura Cleaver of the Cultivate MSS project introduces the man, his collection and his legacy. The church of St Eadburgha, in the Cotswolds village of Broadway, contains...
Smollett Scintillates at 300
Smollett’s legacy George Cruikshank, Illustrations of Smollett, Fielding, and Goldsmith, in a Series of Forty-One Plates (London: C. Tilt. 1832), [S.L.] IV [Cruikshank, G. – 1832] The prolific Regency and Victorian caricaturist and illustrator George Cruikshank...
Smollett Scintillates at 300
Smollett’s contemporaries Henry Fielding, The Covent-Garden Journal (London: Mrs. Dodd, 1752), [S.L.] I [Fielding – 1752] fol. Although Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett may never have met each other in person, they were aware of each other and each other’s work....
Smollett Scintillates at 300
Smollett as translator Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote, trans. by Tobias Smollett (London: A. Millar et al., 1755), [S.L.] I [Smollett – 1755] fol. Smollett was as a translator as well as an author. Most of his...
Smollett Scintillates at 300
Smollett Scintillates at 300 If attendees were flocking to the University of London’s Senate House to attend the IES conference ‘Tobias Smollett at 300: The Work of Writing’, Senate House Library would be regaling them with books pertaining to Smollett to examine. As...
“The most beautiful manuscript in the world”: The Return to Italy of Borso d’Este’s Bible in 1923
On the 138th birthday of Milanese industrialist, publisher and bibliophile Giovanni Tréccani, CULTIVATE MSS’s Dr Federico Botana traces the European travels of one of Italy’s most celebrated Renaissance manuscripts – revealing how Tréccani’s persuasive talents, a...