Lady Mary Wroth (1587?–1651/3)

Verse

Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (‘When nights black mantle could most darknes prove’)

A ‘sonnet sequence’ of 103 poems and songs, first published in The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (London, 1621). Edited (with additional poems in MS) in Roberts, Poems (1983), pp. 85-145. Pritchard, pp. 21-126.

*WrM 1

Autograph fair copy of early versions of the sequence, with occasional revisions, comprising 102 of the 103 poems subsequently printed in 1621 (omitting Roberts's ‘[P4]’, “Forbeare darke night, my joyes now budd againe”), together with six additional poems in the sequence not printed then; headed ‘$ Pamphilia to Amphilanthus $’.

In: Autograph manuscript of poems by Lady Mary Wroth, in her stylish italic, iv + 65 quarto leaves, in modern black leather gilt. Early 17th century.

Later owned by Isaac Reed (1742-1807), literary editor and book collector; by Richard Heber (1774-1833), book collector; and by Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt (1792-1872), book and manuscript collector (Phillipps MS 9283).

Edited from this MS in Roberts, Poems, pp. 85-142, with a facsimile of f. 43r on p. 78. Facsimile of f. 43r also in DLB, vol. 121, Seventeenth-Century British Nondramatic Poets, First Series, ed. M. Thomas Hester (Detroit, 1992), p. 299. Facsimile of the first page in Heather Wolfe, The Pen's Excellencie: Treasures from the Manuscript Collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, DC, 2002), p. 125. Discussed, with reference to the use of $-fermés, in Heather Dubrow, ‘“And Thus Leave Off”: Reevaluating Mary Wroth's Folger Manuscript, V.a.104’, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 22 (2003), 273-91; in Susan Lauffer O' Hara, ‘Reading the Stage Rubrics of Mary Wroth's Folger Manuscript of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus’, in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, IV, ed. W. Speed Hill (Tempe, AZ, 2006). pp. 265-77; and, comparing the MS with the 1621 edition, in Ilona Bell, ‘Mary Wroth's Revisions: Art or Cover-Up?’, The Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies Newsletter, Spring 2008, pp. 13-16.

Folger, MS V.a.104, ff. 1r-63v passim.

Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Song. 2. (‘All night I weepe, all day I cry, Ay mee’)

A shortened version of this song appears in Wit's Recreations (London, 1645). Roberts, Poems, [P14] (pp. 93-4). Pritchard, p. 35.

WrM 2

Copy, in a musical setting.

In: A quarto songbook, in a secretary and italic hand, 193 leaves (including ten blanks). Compiled by Robert Taitt, schoolmaster and precenter in the Church of Lauder, Berwickshire. c.1676-90.

Later in the library of Charles Kay Ogden (1889-1957), psychologist, linguist and book collector. Formerly T 135Z. B724 1677-89 Bound.

Discussed in Walter H. Rubsamen, ‘Scottish and English Music in the Renaissance in a Newly-Discovered Manuscript’, Festschrift Heinrich Besseler (Leipzig, 1961), 259-84

Clark Library, Los Angeles, MS. 1959. 003, Cantus 129: ff. 151, 148.

WrM 3

Copy of the shortened version of the song, untitled.

In: A folio formal verse miscellany, comprising c.406 poems, many of them song lyrics, in various neat hands, compiled probably over a period, 8 blank leaves (pp. [i-xvi]) + 10 unnumbered pages of poems (pp. [xvii-xxvi]) + 9 numbered pages (pp. 1-9) + ff. [9v]-151v + 12 leaves at the end blank but for a poem on the penultimate page (f. [11v]), in contemporary calf gilt. Once erroneously associated with Thomas Killigrew (1612-83), whose hand does not appear in the volume. Mid-17th century-c.1702.

Inscribed (f. [ir]) ‘Sr Robert Killigrew / 1702’. Later in the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt (1792-1872), book and manuscript collector: Phillipps MS 9070. Sotheby's, 19 May 1897, lot 455.

Discussed, with a facsimile example, in Nancy Cutbirth, ‘Thomas Killigrew's Commonplace Book?’, Library Chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin, NS No. 13 (1980), 31-8.

University of Texas at Austin, Ms (Killigrew, T) Works B Commonplace book, f. 40v.

Railing Rimes Returned upon the Author by Mistress Mary Wrothe (‘Hirmophradite in sense in Art a monster’)

Twenty-six lines of verse, answering line-for-line Lord Denny's verse attack (WrM 36). First published in Josephine A. Roberts, ‘An Unpublished Literary Quarrel concerning the Suppression of Mary Wroth's “Urania” (1621)’, N&Q, 222 (December 1977), 532-5.

WrM 4

Copy, headed ‘To thy Lady Mary wroth for writeing the Countes of montgomerie Vrania’, subscribed ‘by the L. D’.

In: A folio verse miscellany, 206 pages (plus blanks), rebound in 1832 (by Charles Lewis) with an independent miscellany (Huntington, HM 198, Part II). Including 52 poems by Donne (many on pp. 64-109, 167-74 initialled ‘L.C.’ [? Lord Chancellor], as are some poems by others), 11 poems by Carew, ten poems by Corbett, and 11 poems by or attributed to Herrick, in a single neat hand throughout; the poems dating up to 1637. c.1637.

Later scribbling and inscriptions including the names ‘Edw Denny’ [presumably Edward Denny (1569-1637), Baron Denny of Waltham and first Earl of Norwich], ‘Charles Cocks’, ‘Edward Randolphe’ and (on p. 162) ‘Thomas Cassy’. Later owned by Joseph Haslewood (1769-1833), bibliographer and antiquary (sold in the Haslewood sale, London, 1833, lot 1329, to Thorpe); by Edward King (1795-1837), Viscount Kingsborough, antiquary (his sale in Dublin, 1 November 1841, item 624); and by Henry Huth (1815-78), book collector (his library catalogue, 1880, IV, pp. 1159-64), and sold at Sotheby's, 17 July 1917 (Huth sale), lot 5873.

Cited in IELM, I.i (1980) and II.i (1987), as the ‘Haslewood Kingsborough MS (I)’: DnJ Δ 25, CwT Δ 28, CoR Δ 10, and HeR Δ 5. A complete microfilm is at the University of Birmingham, Shakespeare Institute (Mic S 15). Discussed in C.M. Armitage, ‘Donne's Poems in Huntington Manuscript 198: New Light on “The Funerall”’, SP, 63 (1966), 697-707. A facsimile of part of p. 63 in Marcy L. North, ‘Amateur Compilers, Scribal Labour, and the Contents of Early Modern Poetic Miscellanies’, EMS, 16 (2011), 82-111 (p. 101).

Huntington, HM 198, Part I, p. 164.

WrM 5

Copy of Wroth's verse response to Denny's poem, in a mixed hand, in a pair of conjugate folio leaves of verse. c.1622.

Edited from this MS in Roberts, N&Q, 222 (1977), 534.

University of Nottingham, Cl LM 85/3 (ii).

‘Sweete solitarines, joy to those hearts’

First published in The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (London, 1621). The First Part of the Countesse of Montgomeries Urania, ed. Josephine A. Roberts (Binghamton, NY, 1995), pp. 133-4. Roberts, Poems, [U9] (pp. 151-3). Pritchard, pp. 135-7.

WrM 6

Copy of an early version, apparently in the hand of George Garrard, headed ‘Penshurst Mount’.

In: A folio composite volume of miscellaneous papers in verse and prose, in various hands and paper sizes, 170 leaves, mounted on guards, in modern half-morocco. Including eleven poems by John Donne, three of them (ff. 10r-14v, 55r, 76r-7r) in the italic hand of his friend Sir Henry Goodyer (1571-1627); ff. 95r-8r in the same hand as the Leconfield MS (DnJ Δ 5) and constituting part of what was probably a quarto MS ‘book’ of Donne's satires; f. 132r-v constituting a set of six verse epistles by Donne, the text related to the Westmoreland MS (DnJ Δ 19). Early-mid-17th century.

From the ‘Conway Papers’ belonging chiefly to Sir Edward Conway, Baron Conway of Ragley, later Viscount Killultagh and Viscount Conway of Conway Castle (c.1564-1631), and to his son, Edward, second Viscount Conway (1594-1655). Later owned by John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), politician and writer, and presented 10 January 1860.

Cited in IELM, I.i, as the ‘Conway MS’: DnJ Δ 40. Cited as A23 by editors. Facsimile of f. 62r in Michael Roy Denbo, ‘Editing a Renaissance Commonplace Book: The Holgate Miscellany’, in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, III, ed. W. Speed Hill (Tempe, AZ, 2004). pp. 65-73 (p. 71).

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 153.

British Library, Add. MS 23229, ff. 91r-2v.

‘Was I to blame to trust’

Verses in The Second Part of the Countesse of Montgomery's Urania, ed. Roberts, et al. (Tempe, Arizona, 1999), p. 137. Roberts, Poems, [N14] (pp. 205-6). Pritchard, pp. 215-16.

WrM 7

Copy, in a hand similar to that of Sir Henry Goodyer (1571-1627), untitled.

National Archives, Kew, SP 14/115/34*v.

Verse and Prose

The First Part of the Countess of Montgomery's Urania

First published as The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (London, 1621). Edited by Josephine A. Roberts, as The First Part of the Countesse of Montgomeries Urania (Binghamton, NY, 1995). Poems alone edited in Roberts, Poems, and in Pritchard, pp. 127-99.

*WrM 8

Autograph fair copy of early versions of nine of the poems subsequently printed in the 1621 Urania.

In: the MS described under WrM 1. Early 17th century.

Edited from this MS in Roberts, Poems (U12-14, U17-18, U24, U32, U34, and U52, on pp. 154-9, 163-4, 170-2, 183-92).

Folger, MS V.a.104, ff. 31r, 33v, 34v, 42r, 49v, 55r, 57r, 64r-5r.

WrM 9

Exemplum of The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (London, 1621) with a three-line MS verse conclusion to the work, following the final incomplete printed sentence ‘And’, added in pencil in an unidentified hand. Early-mid-17th century.

The MS conclusion edited in Renée Pigeon, ‘Manuscript Notations in an Unrecorded Copy of Lady Mary Wroth's The Countess of Mountgomeries Urania (1621)’, N&Q, 236 (March 1991), 81-2.

Library of Congress, PZ3. W946 English Print.

*WrM 10

Autograph corrections and revisions by Mary Wroth to the printed text, in an exemplum of The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (London, 1621). c.1621.

Later owned by Hugh McDonald (his inscriptions (‘Dublin, 12 May 1784’ and ‘1783’); by Fitz Edward Hall (DCL at Oxford 1860); and by W.B. Chorley. Sold in 1948 by the bookseller Howard C. Howe, Waukegan, Illinois.

These authorial alterations are discussed and all incorporated in Josephine Roberts's edition, where a facsimile of sig. 3Y1r-v appears on p. cxvii.

Private owners in the UK, Urania.

WrM 11

A printed exemplum of The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania (London, 1621) with manuscript annotations and additions, notably an eight-line conclusion to the work, in an unidentified cursive predominantly italic hand. c.1620s.

Inscribed names of ‘Mary Plumbley 1663’ and ‘R. de Milles’. Acquired in 1933 from Stevens and Brown Ltd, London.

The MS conclusion edited in Renée Pigeon, ‘Manuscript Notations in an Unrecorded Copy of Lady Mary Wroth's The Countess of Mountgomeries Urania (1621)’, N&Q, 236 (March 1991), 81-2. Discussed, with facsimiles, in Susan Light, ‘Reading Romances: The Handwritten Ending of Mary Wroth's Urania in the UCLA Library Copy’, Sidney Newsletter & Journal, 14/1 (Summer 1996), 66-72.

University of California at Los Angeles, SRLF PR 2399 W94u 1621.

The Second Part of The Countess of Montgomery's Urania

Edited by Josephine Roberts; completed by Suzanne Gossett and Janel Mueller (Tempe, Arizona, 1999). Poems alone edited in Roberts, Poems, and in Pritchard, pp. 200-20.

*WrM 12

Autograph manuscript, closely written in her italic hand with frequent revisions, comprising two ‘books’ in two folio volumes, the first untitled but with the colophon ‘heer ends the first booke, of the secound part of the Countess of Mountgomeries Vrania’, the second volume headed ‘The secound booke of the secound part of the Countess of Montgomerys Vrania’, the pages numbered by Wroth according to bifolium (so each of her ‘foll’ numbers represents four pages), the first volume 67 leaves (plus blanks), the second volume 62 leaves (plus blanks), both in later half-calf marbled boards. 1621.

In: Autograph MS of the Second Part of Lady Mary Wroth's Urania, in two folio volumes. 1621.

Inscribed inside the front cover of Vol. I ‘Charles Morgan’.

Edited from this MS in Roberts's edition, with facsimiles of Vol. I, ff. 1r, 15r, 35r, and Vol. II, ff. 1r, 22r, and 62r, after p. xliv. Facsimile of Vol. I, f. 1r also in Roberts, Poems, p. 81, and facsimile examples in Carolyn Ruth Swift, ‘Feminine Identity in Lady Mary Wroth's Romance Urania’, in Women in the Renaissance, ed. Kirby Farrell, Elizabeth H. Hageman, and Arthur F. Kinney (Amherst, 1988), 154-174 (pp. 156-7).

Newberry Library, Chicago, Case MS fY 1565. W95, The MS as a whle.

Dramatic Works

Love's Victory

Play including songs and verse. Extracts edited in James O. Halliwell, A Brief Description of the Ancient and Modern Manuscripts Preserved in the Public Library, Plymouth (London, 1853), pp. 212-36. Edited in full in Lady Mary Wroth's Loves Victory The Penshurst Manuscript, ed. Michael G. Brennan (Roxburgh Club, London, 1988[=1990]).

*WrM 13

Autograph MS, almost entirely in Wroth's formal italic hand, 49 quarto leaves, in contemporary dark red morocco gilt. Probably copied from the Huntington MS (WrM 14). c.1620.

A complete facsimile of this MS, with transcription, in Brennan's edition. Illustration of the cover in Josephine A. Roberts, ‘Deciphering Women's Pastoral: Coded Language in Wroth's Loves's Victory’, in Representing Women in Renaissance England, ed. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (Columbia & London, 1997), pp. 163-74 (p. 166).

The Viscount De L'Isle, Penshurst Place, [no shelfmark].

*WrM 14

Autograph MS, on 21 folio and quarto leaves, in vellum boards. A working MS in alternating formal and cursive styles of hand and differing shades of ink, entitled ‘Loues victorie’, with numerous autograph deletions, revisions and additions, incomplete and imperfect, lacking various lines including the opening of Act I and the last part of Act V. Early 17th century.

Probably ‘the original MS. in the possession of Sir E. Dering, Bart. 4to’ recorded by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (1820-89) in 1853. Quaritch's sale catalogue, December 1899, item 1116. Owned in 1901 by William Augustus White (1843-1927), American banker and collector. Purchased from A.S.W. Rosenbach (1876-1952), Philadelphia bookseller and scholar, 6 September 1923.

Extracts (538 lines) were edited by Halliwell possibly from a (now lost) transcript of this MS made by his wife in 1845, and this later transcript may be the ‘MS 102’ recorded as being once in the Plymouth Proprietory Library. Differing arguments for provenance are presented in Josephine A. Roberts, ‘The Huntington Manuscript of Lady Mary Wroth's Play, Love's Victorie’, HLQ, 46 (1983), 156-74; in Brennan's edition, pp. 17-20; and in two articles by Arthur Freeman: a review of Brennan's edition in The Library, 6th Ser. 13 (1991), 168-73, and ‘Love's Victory: A Supplementary Note’, The Library, 6th Ser. 19 (1997), 252-4.

The MS is discussed also in Josephine Roberts, ‘The Huntington Manuscript of Lady Mary Wroth's Play, Loves Victorie’, HLQ, 46 (1983), 156-74, and the songs edited from this MS in Roberts, Poems, pp. 210-15.

Facsimile examples of ff. 1r and 5r in Roberts, HLQ, 46, pp. 157 and 160; in Roberts, Poems, pp. 79-80; Facsimile of f. 43r also in DLB, vol. 121, Seventeenth-Century British Nondramatic Poets, First Series, ed. M. Thomas Hester (Detroit, 1992), pp. 305-6; of f. 1r in Margaret Anne McLaren, ‘An Unknown Continent: Lady Mary Wroth's Forgotten Pastoral Drama, “Loves Victorie”’, in The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print & Counterbalancing the Canon, ed. Anne M. Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky (Amherst, MA, 1990), pp. 276-94 (p. 277); and facsimiles, with transcriptions, of ff. 1r and 20v in Reading Early Modern Women, ed. Helen Ostovich and Elizabeth Sauer (New York & London, 2004), pp. 422-5.

Huntington, HM 600.

Correspondence

Letter(s)

*WrM 15

Autograph letter signed, to Queen Anne, from Baynards Castle, 25 April [c.1608]. c.1608.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 233-4 (No. I).

The Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House, Cecil Papers 130/174.

*WrM 16

Autograph letter signed by Wroth, to Sir Robert Sidney, from Loughton, 19 March 1613[/14. 1614.

Edited, with facsimiles, in Margaret J. Arnold's articles ‘Editing a Recent Mary Wroth Letter’, in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, III, ed. W. Speed Hill (Tempe, AZ, 2004). pp. 103-14, and ‘An Unpublished Letter of Mary Wroth’, ELR, 35/3 (Autumn 2005), 454-8.

University of Kansas, MS Crawford 177.

*WrM 17

Autograph letter signed by Wroth, to her father Sir Robert Sidney, from Penshurst, 17 October 1614. 1614.

Among papers of the Sidney family, Viscounts De L'Isle, of Penshurst Place, Ashford, Kent.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 234-5 (No. II).

Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, U1475 C52.

*WrM 18

Autograph letter signed by Wroth, to Sir Dudley Carleton, Baynards Castle, 19 April [1619]. 1619. 1619.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, p. 235 (No. III).

National Archives, Kew, SP 14/108/56.

*WrM 19

Autograph letter signed by Wroth, to Sir Dudley Carleton, from Baynard's Castle, 25 April [1619]. 1619.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 235-6 (No. IV).

National Archives, Kew, SP 14/108/73.

*WrM 20

Autograph letter signed by Wroth, to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, 15 December 1621. 1621.

In: A large folio composite volume of state letters, in various hands and paper sizes, 393 leaves, in 19th-century morocco gilt. Collected by the Hon. George Matthew Fortescue.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, p. 236 (No. V), with a complete facsimile on p. 77. Facsimile examples also in Josephine A. Roberts, ‘The Huntington Manuscript of Lady Mary Wroth's Play, Love's Victorie’, HLQ, 46 (1983), 156-74 (pp. 157, 159).

Bodleian, MS Add. D. 111, ff. 174r-5r.

WrM 21

Copy, in an undentified hand, of a letter by Wroth to Sir Edward Denny, 15 February [1621/2]. c.1621.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, p. 237 (No. VI).

The Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House, Cecil Papers 130/117.

WrM 22

Copy of a letter by Wroth to Sir Edward Denny, in a neat secretary hand, 15 February [1621/2]. c.1622.

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 237.

University of Nottingham, Cl LM 85/2.

WrM 23

Copy of a letter by Wroth to Sir Edward Denny, in a mixed hand, here dated 21 February 1621/2. c.1622.

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 240.

University of Nottingham, Cl LM 85/4.

WrM 24

Copy (possibly autograph) of a letter by Sir Edward Denny, to Lady Mary Wroth, 26 February 1621/2. 1622.

Edited from this MS in Roberts, Poems, pp. 238-9.

The Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House, Cecil Papers 130/118-19.

WrM 25

Copy of a letter by Sir Edward Denny, to Lady Mary Wroth, in a neat secretary hand, 26 February 1621/2. c.1622.

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 238.

University of Nottingham, Cl LM 85/1.

WrM 26

Copy, in an unidentified hand, of a letter by Sir Edward Denny to Lady Mary Wroth, 26 February 1621/2. c.1622.

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 238.

Warwickshire County Record Office, CR 2017/C48/2(a).

WrM 27

Copy, in an unidentified hand (with ? an autograph signature), of a letter by Wroth to Sir Edward Denny, 27 February 1621/2. With a copy of a letter apparently by Denny to Wroth. 1622.

Among papers of the Feilding family, Earls of Denbigh, of Pailton House, Warwickshire.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 240-1 (No. VIII).

Warwickshire County Record Office, CR 2017/C48/2(b).

WrM 28

Copy of a letter by Sir Edward Denny to Lady Mary Wroth, [February-March 1621/2].

Edited from this MS in Roberts, Poems, pp. 240-1 (No. IX).

Warwickshire County Record Office, CR 2017/C48/2(c).

WrM 29

Copy, in an unidentified hand, of a letter by Wroth to Sir William Feilding, first Earl of Denbigh, [March 1621/2]. c.1622.

Among papers of the Feilding family, Earls of Denbigh, of Pailton House, Warwickshire.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, p. 242 (No. X).

Warwickshire County Record Office, CR 2017/C48/2.

WrM 30

Copy of a letter by Sir Edward Denny to Lady Mary Wroth, [February-March 1621/2]. c.1622.

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 241.

The Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House, Cecil Papers 130/121.

WrM 31

Copy of a letter by Sir Edward Denny to Lady Mary Wroth, in a mixed hand, [February-March 1621/2]. c.1622.

This MS recorded in Roberts, Poems, p. 241.

University of Nottingham, Cl LM 85/5.

*WrM 32

Autograph letter signed by Wroth, to Sir Edward Conway, from Loughton, 7 March [1622/3]. 1623.

In: A folio guard-book of independent Jacobean state papers, stamped foliation 1-179.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 242-3 (No. XI). Facsimile example also in Josephine A. Roberts, ‘The Huntington Manuscript of Lady Mary Wroth's Play, Love's Victorie’, HLQ, 46 (1983), 156-74 (p. 158).

National Archives, Kew, SP 14/139, item 53.

*WrM 33

Autograph letter signed, to Sir Edward Conway, from Loughton, 30 January [1623/4]. 1624.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 243-4 (No. XII).

National Archives, Kew, SP 14/158/65.

WrM 34

Draft of a letter by Sir Edward Conway, to Lady Mary Wroth, 27 September 1624. 1624.

Edited in Roberts, Poems, p. 244.

National Archives, Kew, SP 14/172/59.

WrM 35

An autograph letter signed by Sir George Manners, to Lady Mary Wroth, asking to read her manuscript of [Part two of] Urania, 31 May 1640. 1640.

In: Letterbook of Sir George Manners.

Recorded in HMC, 12th Report, Appendix, Part IV, Rutland, Vol. I (1888), p. 520. Edited in Roberts, Poems, pp. 244-5.

The Duke of Rutland, Belvoir Castle, ‘Letterbook of Sir George Manners’, f. 132r.

Miscellaneous

To Pamphilla from the father-in-law of Seralius (‘Hermophradite in show, in deed a monster’)

Twenty-six lines of verse by Lord Denny fiercely attacking Wroth's published romance and prompting her verse retaliation (WrM 4). First published in Josephine A. Roberts, ‘An Unpublished Literary Quarrel concerning the Suppression of Mary Wroth's “Urania” (1621)’, N&Q, 222 (December 1977), 532-5.

WrM 36

Copy in: An octavo verse miscellany, in a single neat predominantly italic hand, 72 leaves, in old leather. Probably compiled by one ‘H.S.’, a Cambridge man. c.1640s-50s.

Later owned by the Rev. Philip Bliss (1787-1857), antiquary and book collector, with his bookplate and inscription ‘1806 Purchased of Lansdown of Bristol’. Bliss sale, 21 August 1858, lot 192.

British Library, Add. MS 22603, f. 64v.

WrM 37

Copy of Denny's poem attacking Wroth's Urania,chiefly in a mixed hand, the last two lines possibly squeezed in in another hand, in a pair of conjugate folio leaves of verse. c.1622.

Edited from this MS in Roberts, N&Q, 222 (1977), 533-4.

University of Nottingham, Cl LM 85/3 (i).

WrM 38

Copy in: An octavo verse miscellany, including 13 poems by or attributed to Herrick, almost entirely in a single small predominantly italic hand, 250 pages (plus numerous blanks), originally in contemporary calf, but now disbound. Inscribed four times on a flyleaf ‘Tobias Alston his booke’: i.e. probably Tobias Alston (1620-c.1639) of Sayham Hall, near Sudbury, Suffolk. His half-brother Edward (b.1598) was a contemporary of Herrick at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, while his cousin, Edward Alston, later President of the College of Physicians, was a contemporary of Herrick at St John's College, Cambridge, some of the other contents also relating to Cambridge, besides some relating to Suffolk. The date 1639 occurs on p. 241, and pp. 243-50 contains verses written in two later hands (to c.1728) and some prose pieces written from the reverse end. c.1639 [-c.1728].

Names inscribed on a flyleaf including Henry Glisson (later Fellow of the College of Physicians); Thomas Avral(?); Horace Norton; Henry Rich; and James Tavor (Registrar of Cambridge University). Later owned by one John Whitehead, and by Dr Mary Pickford. Sotheby's, 27 June 1972, lot 309.

Cited in IELM, II.i (1987), as the ‘Alston MS’: HeR Δ 7. A complete set of photocopies of the MS is in the British Library, RP 772. Facsimile of pp. 6-7 in Sotheby's sale catalogue (see HeR 176, HeR 405) where the MS is described at some length. See also letters by Peter Beal and Donald W. Foster in TLS (24 January 1986), pp. 87-8.

Yale, Osborn MS b 197, p. 117.