Egerton MS 3884 - The Melford Hall Manuscript

GEMMS Manuscript ID
GEMMS-MANUSCRIPT- 100
(old series: GEMMS-MANUSCRIPT-1420)
Title
The Melford Hall Manuscript
Shelfmark
Egerton MS 3884
Creation Date
ca. 1620 - 1759
Repository
British Library
Contents Note

This is a previously unknown manuscript of John Donne's poetry, found at Melford Hall, Suffolk, by Gabriel Heaton of Sotheby's in 2018. Containing over 130 poems by Donne, it is the second largest known collection of the poet-preacher's verse in manuscript. The volume also contains verse by Francis Beaumont, Thomas Carew, and Sir Thomas Overbury, in addition to several unattributed mid-seventeenth-century poems. These are professionally inscribed in a neat italic hand (iron gall ink on gilt edged paper), with corrections and revisions throughout in a second hand. Towards the back of the volume are 89 pages of notes on sermons, principally by Robert Meldrum (c. 1653-1699), dating from the 1670s, written in a later seventeenth-century hand, as well as several popular songs copied in the mid-eighteenth century.

Material Features

365 pages. Quarto. Contemporary gilt panelled calf with oval centrepiece; gilt edges. Italian paper; ruled in dry-point; peacock watermark. Restored for sale by Brockman Bookbinders.

Associated People
Provenance

The sermon notes reveal that, by the 1680s, the manuscript was in Scotland, either at Yester House, seat of the Hay family, then Earls of Tweeddale, or in the village of Gifford, East Lothian. However, the only previous owner which has been formally identified is Sir William Parker of Melford Hall, 7th Bt. (1769-1830), owing to the armorial bookplate within the volume.

Acquisition

This manuscript was originally sold for £475,000 at auction (£387,500 plus auctioneer's premium) to an overseas bidder (Sotheby's, 10 December 2018, Lot 110). The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport subsequently announced a temporary export bar on the work in 2019 to save the manuscript for the nation; following which, the British Library raised the funds from several organisations and individuals to secure the acquisition of this manuscript, including the T. S. Blakeney Fund, the Bridgewater Fund, the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the British Library Collections Trust, the Friends of the National Libraries, and the American Trust for the British Library.

Source of Data

British Library online catalogue; Hannah Yip.

Other Note

Digitisation of the manuscript was funded by the Collections Trust.

Sermons Contained
Sermon Reports Contained
URLs
http://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/english/tag/melford-manuscript/ Daniel Starza Smith, ''Penned it wins a sacred grace': John Donne and the Melford Manuscript', KCL blog (8 December 2020).
http://blogs.bl.uk/english-and-drama/2020/12/new-acquisition-john-donne-and-the… Alexander Lock, 'New Acquisition: John Donne and the Melford Hall Manuscript', British Library blog (7 December 2020).
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2018/english-literature-online-l… Sotheby's Catalogue entry for the Melford Hall Manuscript.
http://www.gov.uk/government/news/rare-seventeenth-century-poetry-manuscript-at… Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport press release.
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Egerton_MS_3884 Digitised copy of British Library, Egerton MS 3884.
GEMMS record created
January 9, 2021
GEMMS record last edited
July 15, 2024