University of Hamburg

Cod. 115

Copy, entitled ‘Sodom A Play By The Earl of Rochester’, apparently transcribed from the ‘Antwerp’ edition of 1684, on 39 quarto pages, bound with a MS of Beverlandia Otia Oxoniensa. c.1710.

RoJ 641: John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, Sodom and Gomorah

Once owned by Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach (1683-1735), Frankfurt bibliographer and traveller.

Edited from this MS in Römer (1905). Discussed, with a facsimile of the title-page, in Prinz, pp. 393-4, and, with a facsimile of p. 22, in Edwards, BC (1976).

First published (?) at ‘Antwerp’ [i.e. London], (?)1684. The only known extant early printed exemplum is a probably early 18th-century octavo entitled Sodom, or the Gentleman Instructed. A Comedy. By the E. of R., sold at Sotheby's 16 December 2004, lot 54 (with facsimile pages in the sale catalogue), now in private ownership.

Edited from MS copies as Rochester's Sodom, ed. L.S.A.M. von Römer (Paris, 1904), and as Sodom (Olympia Press, Paris, [1957]). Love, pp. 302-33.

Of uncertain authorship. For discussions of authorship and texts, see notably Rodney M. Blaine, ‘Rochester or Fishbourne: A Question of Authorship’, RES, 22 (1946), 201-6; J. Thorpe, ‘New Manuscripts of Sodom’, PULC, 13 (1951-2), 40-1; A.S.G. Edwards, ‘Libertine Literature in Restoration England: Princeton MS AM 14401’, BC, 25 (Autumn 1976), 354-68, and ‘The Authorship of Sodom’, PBSA, 71 (1977), 208-12; Larry Carver, ‘The Texts and The Text of Sodom’, PBSA, 73 (1979), 19-40; John D. Patterson, ‘Does Otway ascribe Sodom to Rochester?’, N&Q, 225 (August 1980), 349-51; and J.W. Johnson, ‘Did Lord Rochester Write Sodom?’, PBSA, 81 (1987), 101-53.