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The manuscript formerly known as the Thomas Killigrew Commonplace Book is actually
a
Miscellany containing copies of 406 songs and poems originally written between
the
late 1500s and the early 1700s by authors such as William Congreve, John Donne,
John
Dryden, and William Shakespeare among many others, some of whom are not yet
identified. The texts were copied in the hand of various unidentified persons,
possibly including Thomas Killigrew, and compiled from the late 1600s through
the
early 1700s. All songs and poems are written in English with the exception of
one in
French. |
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Most of the copies lack author attribution in the manuscript, although sixty authors
have been identified from print copies. The manuscript copies often differ from
the
printed versions. At least 80 of the 192 anonymous poems were printed in collections
of drollery or wit from 1655 to 1682. The dominant types of poetry are pastoral
lyric and bawdry, with some dramatic verse both tragic and comic, political satire,
and elegy. The political sentiment is mainly royalist, but at least one example
(folio 103) expresses leveling sentiment, though satirically. |
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The following container list provides a summary of the volume contents arranged
alphabetically by author with anonymous works listed at the end by title/first
line.
Author names, titles, and first lines are chiefly as given in a 1974 dissertation
by
Nancy Cutbirth. Citations to page or folio numbers and to Cutbirth identification
numbers are given, as well as citations to identification numbers appearing in
the
online Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts
(CELM). Author attributions follow Cutbirth
unless otherwise noted. Notes also indicate attributions listed as questionable
by
Cutbirth as well as attributions from a 2001 list provided by Adam Smyth that
identifies works published in printed miscellanies. The author attributions have
been compiled from Cutbirth, CELM, or Smyth without
confirming their accuracy. (Current authorized forms of author names from the
Library of Congress Authorities or the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography have been used
as available.) Titles and first lines are taken directly from the manuscript and
preserve the spelling there. The Cutbirth, CELM, and
Smyth lists also provide variant versions of first lines. (See the sources listed
below for fuller citations to the works by Cutbirth, CELM, and Smyth.) |
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The manuscript pages are not continuously paginated or foliated. The first 26 pages
are unnumbered, but designated in the container list as pages i-xxvi; the next
nine
pages are numbered in the upper outside corner and appear here as pages 1-9; the
next and largest group are numbered only on the recto of each folio, upper right,
and are referenced here as 9v-151v; and the final 12 folios (all blank but the
penultimate one) are numbered on the recto lower left, and listed here as
152r-165v. |
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The Killigrew manuscript came to the Ransom Center in 1961 via the Stark Library,
which was acquired by The University of Texas at Austin starting in 1925. It was
formerly owned by Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872) and was designated Phillipps 9070.
Phillipps is thought to have acquired the manuscript from Thomas Thorpe (1791-1851)
in 1836 (his number T 1811). The volume itself bears the signature of a Sir Robert
Killigrew, who presumably owned the manuscript in 1702. |
