From Suffolk Maps to “King Harry”: Discovering the Eighteenth-Century Jesuit Book Collection
Hello! My name is Cyril Hamilton. I am a recent graduate of KCL’s Books that Matter MA, and I’ve volunteered at the archives for about nine months now. During my time as a British Jesuit Archives volunteer, I’ve primarily worked on listing the 18th century books and the 19th century pamphlets, though I did assist in shifting part of the collection around for a few weeks. In this blog post, I’d like to share with you some of my general impressions of the 18th century book collection, as well as notes on two items that particularly stuck with me.
The British Jesuit Archive’s collection of 18th century books span a wide variety of topics connected to Catholicism, from histories of martyrs to accounts from Jesuit missionaries. There are even anti-Jesuit texts in their collection! Even once the shine of getting to work with centuries-old books every Thursday dimmed slightly, the ink and pencil annotations and layers of bookplates gave a new magic to the proceedings. Many of these books were in libraries long before I got to them and hopefully will be there long after I’m gone. The chunk of the collection that I listed was primarily written in English, though Latin, French, Italian, and German also appeared. I enjoyed getting to practice my Latin and Italian and dip my toes further into French and German.
The only volume to defeat me entirely was a sammelband (a collection of originally separate works bound into one volume) (A/B/580). The spine had the title as Opuscula pro et contra Jesuitas (Little Works For and Against the Jesuits), and the texts within were primarily written in German, occasionally with a Latin translation. Some of the texts within related directly to the 1773 suppression of the Jesuits, while others were dialogues that featured a Jesuit character. There was also a map of Suffolk tucked into the front cover.
Unfortunately, due to a combination of extravagant fonts, the inclusion of texts without their publication information, and my own lack of proficiency in German, I was unable to successfully list the book in full. It is a fascinating collection of texts regardless, and I did enjoy paging through it. If I ever learn German, I will have to pay the Archive another visit!
The other notable book that I discovered while listing is Thomas Ward’s England’s Reformation, from the time of King Henry the Eighth, to the end of the Oates’s Plot. A Poem in four cantos. I fell in love almost immediately, and every subsequent edition I found while listing heightened my interest. The poem does indeed describe the history notated in its title, and the work sticks out to me for two reasons. First, Ward very frequently cites his sources. The Archive has four different printings of the work (from 1710, 1715, 1747, and 1782), and in each of these editions, the text is dense with notes from the author. He notes the author, book title, and sometimes even page number that he pulls his poetic statements from. In the text of the poem itself, Ward will drop large quotations from other sources, including Psalms and legal documents. Described in the publisher’s note as a ‘Burlesque’, the text is a fascinating blend of primary sources and layers of commentary.
Secondly, many of the rhymes are quite funny, which makes for an enjoyable reading and researching experience. My primary example that I give to friends is the first couplet of the poem: ‘I sing the Deeds of Great King Harry, / Of Ned his Son, and Daughter Mary’ (Englands Reformation, 1710). The rhyme feels slightly obvious and almost childish; it’s a bold start to the poem for a modern reader. Particularly interesting to me is that I didn’t notice at first that many people who speak with British accents wouldn’t think that those words rhymed at all. I’m American with an accent to match, and in that accent, ‘Harry’ and ‘Mary’ rhyme perfectly well, so I only noticed that the line seemed simplistic. It took a friend with a British accent reading the line and commenting that the words don’t even rhyme for me to notice. This mix-up suggests either that the line is even more awkward that I thought, or that the vowels in the words have changed over time in the UK.
While the poem itself it slightly out of my period (I’ve studied the early modern period primarily from 1500-1650), I’m eager to learn more about it and to see if its form is as unique as it seems. I have begun the project of editing it in my own time, and I hope to continue that project as a user of the Archives. While there are scanned copies of the text available online, it is wonderful to work with physical copies, particularly when the Archives has four different editions. The 1710 edition in the collection is particularly notable for the dense ink annotations throughout. Between those annotations and Ward’s notes, the text of the poem can feel outnumbered. It’s wonderful to page through a text and see that someone was thinking and writing about it, just as I am now.
Cyril’s reflections offer a wonderful example of the enthusiasm and curiosity that can grow from working with our collections. We are enormously grateful to him for his dedication and assistance over the past nine months, and particularly for the immense progress he has made in listing our eighteenth-century antiquarian book collection. His discoveries and observations remind us of the many stories and surprises still waiting to be uncovered in the British Jesuit Archives, and we look forward to welcoming him back as a researcher and user of the collections.
If you are interested in exploring any of the works mentioned in the above blog post, please contact us.
Comments