AMDigital Reference:MS Additional 8460

Cambridge University Library MS Additional 8460 is a miscellany of verse and prose compiled primarily by Elizabeth Lyttelton, a daughter of Sir Thomas Browne. Examples of Lyttelton's handwriting are found in the correspondence of her father (Bodleian Library MSS Rawl. D. 391 and Rawl. D. 108), corroborating this manuscript as autograph. Lyttelton compiled the manuscript in at least two main phases, given slight differences in her penmanship (her earlier entries are neater and in lighter ink): these earlier entries consist primarily of religious verse, Englished extracts from the classics, proverbial couplets, and fragments from Sir Thomas Browne's writing. Lyttelton probably began compiling this manuscript in the mid to late 1660s, when she is first mentioned in her father's letters as helping him organize his papers (Keynes, Works, IV, p. 29, letter 21 (13 August 1668)). Sometimes filling in blank spaces left in her earlier transcriptions (see, for example, Items 2.2 and 2.5), Lyttelton returned, probably after 1685 (the date of the her mother's death, an elegy for whom she records on p. 103 rev., Item 6.1), to write a mixture of religious and secular poetry and prose. The latest dateable item in the miscellany is 1710 (see Item 6.25). The manuscript is paginated by a later hand from pages 1-174, but Lyttelton wrote first on pp. 1-45 and then reversed the manuscript, making the final page a new first page. Thus this catalogue entry follows the order of items from pp. 1-45, then from pp. 174 rev.-46 rev. But Lyttelton had to work around an earlier hand who transcribed sermon notes and other material on pp. 171 rev., 170 rev-104 rev., and 102 rev (see Items 4, 5, and 6.2). This was the work of her mother, Dorothy Browne (as Rebecca Rees has discovered, personal communication with this Perdita researcher; article forthcoming). Dorothy Browne appears to have used the volume first, leaving many pages blank and two pages partially blank (pp. 171 rev. and 102 rev.) which Lyttelton has filled in. Another hand, that of Lyttelton's younger sister Mary, has signed the first and last pages of the volume (pp. 1, 174 rev.). The manuscript itself is quite plain, a small quarto whose only ornamentation is double ruling in blind and spotted red edging to the pages. It was not a fancy presentation volume but instead a record of a woman's reading and of her interactions with writers in her family's circle, at the centre of which was her father. One of the most interesting items in the manuscript is a list of books that Lyttelton read to her father. It is headed "The books which my daughter Elizabeth hath read unto me at nights till she read ym all out" and lists twenty-eight items, then the phrase "some hundreds of sermons", and ends with a note: "Many other Books, Treatises, discourses of severall kinds, which may amount unto halfe the quantety of halfe the books in folio, which are before set down" (pp. 44-45, Item 2.33). Most of the books listed are on the subject of travels to or history about the countries of Turkey, China, type="place" reg="India">India, America, and Italy. They also read histories of Great Britain, Queen Elizabeth, and King James (by Baker, Camden, and Speed), Foxe'sBook of Martyrs, and classical writers such as Plutarch and Suetonius. The wording of the title suggests that she copied the list from a document in Browne's own hand. A few of Lyttelton's extracts come from books the Brownes owned: Katherine Philips's Poems, 1669 (Item 6.26), Charles Aleyn'sThe Battailes of Crescey and Poictiers, 1633 (Item 6.28), Peter Heylyn'sCosmographie in Four Books, 1670 (Item 6.29), and Foxe'sBook of Martyrs (Items 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.38). Some of the entries in Lyttelton's miscellany might have been composed by her father. Lyttelton has attributed a passage on consumptions to "TBMD" (Item 2.32) and at the end of a poem on a tempest at sea she has noted, "Writt by my Father at the Crowe Inne in Chester at his Coming from Ireland," (Item 6.8). Geoffrey Keynes has suggested that a poem depicting a floral summer scene might have been written by Browne (Item 6.24). Keynes has also identified three passages that Lyttelton transcribed from one of Browne's commonplace books (Items 6.17, 6.19, and 6.20). Several of the writers included in Lyttelton's miscellany might have been included because they were known to her family: Dr. Edward Reynolds (he was a friend of Sir Thomas Browne's, Item 2.12), Thomas Flatman (his cousin knew Browne, Item 2.25), Sir Philip Woodhouse (he might have been the father of Sir Thomas Woodhouse, with whom Browne corresponded, Items 2.23, 2.28, 6.9-6.9.2), John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (Lyttelton's brother Edward Browne was Rochester's physician during his last illness, Item 6.32), and Richard Corbett (he knew Sir Thomas Browne, Items 6.45, 6.46. 6.50). She includes two elegies on family members: her mother, Dorothy Browne (Item 6.1) and her nephew, William Fairfax (Item 6.49). Lyttelton also includes some anagrams on her own name and lines celebrating her marriage to Captain George Lyttelton (Item 6.13). Poetry and prose by the following writers are also included in Lyttelton's miscellany: John Dillingham (Item 2.2), Dr. Evans (Item 2.5), Thomas Heywood (Items 2.7-2.7.3, 6.14), Robert Boyle (Item 2.8), Edmund Elys (Item 2.9), John Norris (Items 2.10, 2.13, 2.19, 2.21), Walter Ralegh (Items 4, 6.47), Henry Wotton (Items 6.10, 6.12, 6.44), William Cartwright (Item 6.21), Chief Justice Sir William Scroggs (Item 6.23), Richard Fanshawe (Item 6.27), Joshua Sylvester (Item 6.30), John Taylor (Item 6.34), John Donne (Item 6.39), and Samuel Sheppard (Item 6.41). Several poems and extracts from poems in this manuscript were located using the Chadwyck-Healey English Poetry Full-Text Database. Another manuscript containing transcriptions by Elizabeth Lyttelton is Bodleian Library MS Rawl. D. 391. On fols 81r-88r she transcribed letters written by her father to her brother Thomas in 1661; Lyttelton's transcriptions date from after 1681, when she moved to Guernsey. Lyttelton was very interested in preserving her father's words: she transcribed these letters, she noted his reading material and some of his writings in her miscellany, and she was instrumental in publishing his Christian Morals in 1716. But her manuscript is also a rich testament to her own reading, her intellectual interests, her contacts with important writers, and her interactions with manuscript culture. It is perhaps fitting that she gave her manuscript to her cousin Edward Tenison in 1714 (p. 174), keeping it in the family, a milieu where her literary activities had flourished

Reproduction of: Miscellany in verse and prose, c.1665-1714..

Cambridge University Library

Religious literature > Authorship.