Harley MS 6534 - Anonymous reader's notes of various printed texts

GEMMS Manuscript ID
GEMMS-MANUSCRIPT- 61
(old series: GEMMS-MANUSCRIPT-1268)
Title
Anonymous reader's notes of various printed texts
Shelfmark
Harley MS 6534
Creation Date
ca. 1633 - 1633
Repository
Contents Note

A quarto containing notes taken from various seventeenth-century printed texts, from devotional works to the essays of Francis Bacon, written in a single secretary hand. Notes have also been taken from the printed sermons of Henry Smith; owing to the order in which they have been written and the page numbers indicated in the margins, it is likely that the reader used the 1604 edition of his collected sermons for the sermons on ff. 27r-90r.

Material Features

157 leaves. Quarto. Modern half crushed morocco on cloth boards gilt.

Provenance

'Mr Elliston of St Albans' may have been the scribe for British Library, Harley MSS 6534-6536. See A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts, in the British Museum (1808), Vol. III, p. 374.

Acquisition

The Harleian Library was founded by Robert Harley, First Earl of Oxford (1661-1724). According to Cyril Ernest Wright, Robert Harley 'was primarily interested in English historical and political material and in volumes of sermons and theological controversy, sharing in the latter the taste of his Harley ancestors'. See Wright, p. xxxiv.

Source of Data

A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts, in the British Museum (1808), Vol. III, pp. 373-74; CELM; Cyril Ernest Wright, Fontes Harleiani (London, 1972); Hannah Yip.

Other Note

It is conjectured in A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts that these notes were compiled c. 1633. A note on f. 86r reads as follows: 'Begun heere the 2d of Julye 1633'.

Sermons Contained
GEMMS record created
January 11, 2020
GEMMS record last edited
July 15, 2024