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Stephen Parks
The James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection traces its beginnings to the mid-1930s when James Osborn studied at Oxford University. There, inspired by the example of the eighteenth-century scholar-collector Edmond Malone, Mr. Osborn began to acquire the English manuscripts which comprise the core of the collection now housed in the Beinecke Library. Like Malone, whose collection of books and manuscripts is preserved in the Bodleian, Mr. Osborn sought documents for their value as literary and historical evidence, and like Malone, he intended that his collection would become part of a great library, available for the use of future generations of scholars. The Osborn Collection originally focused on English poetry, especially manuscript verse of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although it contained some significant earlier poems. Over the years, the scope has broadened to include letters and manuscripts of significant literary figures, and historical papers. Today the collection encompasses nearly every aspect of English literature and history from the reign of Mary Tudor to that of Victoria. By the end of the 1950s, the collection had outgrown the library space in the Osborn home, where nearly 200 liquor cartons packed with manuscripts filled closets and lined walls. Accordingly, boxes of manuscripts were deposited in a locked cage in Sterling Memorial Library, and from time to time ownership of portions of the collection was transferred to Yale. When the Beinecke Library opened in 1963, an office and generous storage area in the stacks became available. This space permitted arrangement and systematic cataloging of the collection to begin. Today the famous liquor cartons have been replaced by a bank of filing cabinets holding nearly 60 drawers, each containing about 500 single letters or documents. Ranges of shelves hold over 3,000 bound volumes of manuscripts and printed books, many of them annotated. Further shelves hold more than 600 boxes containing sizable individual collections of documents. Thanks to gifts from many generous friends and the endowment left by Mr. and Mrs. Osborn and by his sister, Miss Hazel Osborn, the collection continues to grow. Although poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries forms the nucleus of the verse collection, there are 15 pre-1600 manuscripts containing verse. These include manuscript copies of Geoffrey de Vinsauf's Poetria Nova of the late fourteenth century and Robert Mannyng's Handlyng Synne, about 1400. The Braye lute book of the late sixteenth century, besides providing a highly important source for English lute music, contains 29 poems, among them the unique text of the source for Benedick's song in Much Ado about Nothing. Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole, is represented by a fifteenth-century manuscript of The Pricke of Conscience (formerly in the collection of Sir Walter Greg) and by a newly discovered manuscript, in Latin, of his Commentary on Job. The latter, with a large calligraphic inscription in the hand of John Shirley, is a new addition to the corpus of manuscripts associated with this enthusiastic copyist and annotator of English medieval literary manuscripts. Seventeenth-century verse fills many volumes. Of these, two consist almost entirely of poems by John Donne. Other manuscript volumes containing works of single authors include the writings of the Earl of Rochester, Henry Colman, George Daniel, Thomas Stanley, Sir William Trumbull, Sir Thomas Urquhart, Sir Aston Cokayne, and John Cleveland. Notable collections of mixed authorship include the commonplace book of Tobias Alston, with early poems by Robert Herrick and others, and contemporary compilations of political and religious satire. Eighteenth-century manuscript volumes contain verse by Phanuel Bacon, Thomas Hull, both Dr. Burneys, Peter Pindar, William Hayley, and Isaac Watts, among others. Besides these bound volumes, 13 boxes contain loose manuscript sheets of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century verses. A first-line index of English manuscript verse before 1800 in the collection indexes each poem by first line, author (when known), and names mentioned. To date, nearly 6,000 poems not in the Bodleian Library have been indexed. Versions of poems also in the Bodleian have been noted in an interleaved copy of Margaret Crum's First-Line Index of English Poetry 1500-1800 in Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library. George Crabbe, Walter Savage Landor, Robert Southey, and John Clare are among nineteenth-century poets of whom there are substantial holdings. Letters and documents of authors, statesmen, antiquaries, and divines abound in the collection. Among eminent figures represented are Edmund Waller, John Evelyn, Abraham Cowley, Andrew Marvell, Sir William Davenant, John Locke, and John Dryden, along with a host of lesser fry. Sixty-five letters addressed to Sir Philip Sidney by scholars and statesmen whom Sidney knew during his continental missions of 1572-75 formed the basis of James Osborn's book, Young Philip Sidney. There are also an abundance of Sir William Temple's papers, and a considerable quantity of Narcissus Luttrell's notebooks, as well as dozens of printed volumes annotated by Luttrell. Historical manuscripts of the seventeenth century have long been a cornerstone of the collection. Materials of interest to the student of parliamentary history include speeches, journals, petitions, orders, and other state papers from the reign of Mary Tudor to that of William and Mary. The largest individual collection, the Stanford papers, consists of more than 3,000 documents, most of them preserved by John Brown, Clerk of the Parliament during the first twenty years of the reign of Charles II. The Gordonstoun papers deal chiefly with the Civil War, especially with Scottish participation. The Carlingford papers concern the Earl of Carlingford's mission in 1665-67 to the Emperor Leopold during the second Anglo-Dutch war. They include two dozen personal letters written twenty years earlier by the exiled Charles II to one of his companions in exile, whom he later created Earl of Carlingford. There are also various letters and papers concerning other members of Charles's circle. A gathering of documents of John Pym includes family papers as well as letters and documents dealing with his leading role in the government during the Civil War. For the later seventeenth century, diplomatic papers include more than 1,000 items by or relating to William Blathwayt (1649?-1717). Equally important are the papers of Edmund Poley (1655-1714), envoy at the courts of Sweden, Savoy, and Hanover (about 600 items). Several series of manuscript newsletters delineate day-to-day events and include nearly 500 addressed to Madame Pole of Radnor (1691-95) and 62 from John Biscoe to the Maunsell family (1696-1706). Among the early eighteenth-century literary papers in the collection, those of Pope's modest Boswell, Joseph Spence, form the largest and most important segment. These contain the original notes for the Anecdotes and two contemporary transcripts of the work. The Spence papers also include letters, diaries, and extensive material on the theory and practice of laying out gardens. Spence's friend William Shenstone is represented by 43 letters, plus related items concerning his estate, the Leasowes. Of Pope himself the collection has three oil portraits, eleven autograph letters, and two poems, one of them autograph. Other friends of Pope represented are Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Peterborough, Bishop Atterbury, Jacob Tonson, Ralph Allen, and Bishop Warburton. Of Sir William Trumbull, who encouraged Pope to translate Homer, there are several commonplace books containing legal and other memoranda, his own verse translations of the Psalms, and an essay on the practice of verse translation. The collection also includes portraits of Matthew Prior and Joseph Addison (the latter by Kneller, 1716), as well as many of their autograph letters. For Samuel Johnson there is one letter, along with a large quantity of Johnsoniana, including his earliest recorded conversation. There are notable groups of letters by Johnson's contemporaries: Mrs. Thrale (58), David Garrick (12, plus letters to him and a large group of related documents and verses), Edward Gibbon (7), Thomas Percy (53), and Charles James Fox (80). Indeed, most members of The Club are well represented. Nearly 50 items concern George Steevens, and there are nearly 100 pieces relating to Edmond Malone, as well as good holdings of Joseph and Thomas Warton. Of Lord Macartney, there are some 40 letters, as well as two boxes of papers concerning his embassy to Russia, 1764-67. The Edmund Burke papers contain over 200 letters by Burke, while the Ballitore papers, from the Shackleton and Leadbeater families, contain material related to Burke, who attended the school maintained at Ballitore by Abraham Shackleton and corresponded with his son. Another large holding is that of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, numbering 170 letters by and a further 100 letter to him, along with related items. The Burney collection, about 3,500 items, consists of letters and other papers of Charles Burney, Mus D., his son, and his daughter, Fanny Burney d'Arblay. Eighteenth-century literary men often left extensive literary remains. Fortunately we have been able to keep together some interesting segments. A large collection of letters and other papers formerly belonging to William Julius Mickle contains letters of many contemporary literary figures and many of Mickle's own literary manuscripts. Papers of Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall include the original materials for his published memoirs, with many additional unpublished anecdotes, travel journals, and correspondence. Holdings of William Hayley include 132 letters and about 160 related pieces. There are some 400 letters to or from the publishing firm of Cadell and Davies, and 18 boxes of correspondence addressed to the Nichols family of printers. The papers of the Reverend Norton Nicholls, best known for his friendship with Thomas Gray, consist of more than 350 letters to him from numerous correspondents and about 450 letters written by Nicholls to his family and friends concerning his student days at Eton and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, his continental travels, and his enjoyment of musical and cultural life in London. Historical manuscripts of the eighteenth century range widely. Special interest attaches to the 248 letters of Sarah Churchill, the shrewd and pugnacious Duchess of Marlborough (plus 28 of her husband, and related pieces). The Townshend papers span the century, containing numerous letters by members of this family of statesmen, from Charles, second Viscount Townshend, through Thomas Townshend, first Viscount Sydney. Another archive derives from Sir John Eardley-Wilmot, Chief Justice of Common Pleas. He maintained a wide correspondence, of which the collection has more than 400 letters addressed to him, as well as 122 of his own letters (to his son). Besides these there are nearly 200 letters addressed to the younger Wilmot, a member of Parliament for twenty years. The papers of Lord Chief Justice Sir William Lee fill 30 boxes and cover every aspect of the life of a prominent jurist and landowner of the mid-eighteenth century. An important later collection is the correspondence, 1811-29, of Sir Henry Clinton with his brother, Sir William Henry Clinton; military matters and parliamentary affairs are prominent topics in these 1,500 letters. Along with numerous letters by individual men of science, from John Beale to Sir Joseph Banks (68 letters, plus 28 addressed to him), we hold an important collection of the papers of Sir Charles Blagden, secretary of the Royal Society from 1784 until his death in 1820. His scientific papers (numbering over 1,000 items) contain mineralogical data, letters concerning surveys of France and England, observations of meteors and fireballs, and important experiments on the supercooling of water and the congelation of mercury. In addition, nearly 100 letters from Blagden to Lord and Lady Palmerston cover the period 1788 to 1804, and Blagden's personal diary ranges from 1776 to 1788. Several sections of the collection, such as the Nichols and Blagden papers, span the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Walter Savage Landor, born in 1770, the same year as Wordsworth, lived long enough to benefit from friendship with Browning. Seventeen letters from Browning to Landor's niece are some of the most interesting that Browning ever wrote. A few selected authors and statesmen of the nineteenth century have significant representations in the collection. These include Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, John Wilson Croker, William Cobbett, Joseph Hume, Sir Robert Peel, John Stuart Mill, and Robert Southey. Mention should also be made of 18 boxes of correspondence of Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, who was active in many of the learned societies of the mid-nineteenth century, and the papers of Frederic Locker-Lampson, Victorian man of letters, consisting of some 2,000 letters from numerous correspondents, which present a lively picture of the social and literary aspects of Victorian society. There is one important group of twentieth-century literary papers: those of James Osborn's friend William Force Stead. In 50 boxes, the papers contain childhood verses as well as manuscripts of later published works, both of poetry and of scholarship. Stead had numerous friends among the writers of his day, and his correspondence includes letters from T. S. Eliot, Edmund Blunden, and W. B. Yeats. James Osborn's own papers, amounting to 76 boxes containing carbon copies of outgoing letters filed with incoming correspondence, are also being consulted by researchers, since his wide correspondence chronicles the progress of English literary historical studies in the mid-twentieth century. Music manuscripts form a small but distinguished part of the collection. Numbering 57, they range from the Braye lute book already mentioned to the original score of Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946). Mrs. Osborn's special interest in music prompted her to purchase three Britten manuscripts, his Michael Angelo Sonnets and How Blest Are Shepherds, as well as the Young Person's Guide. Musicians have paid homage to three important manuscripts of Gustav Mahler: the autograph full score of his First Symphony (which restored the Blumine movement to Mahler literature), and a fair copy, with Mahler's corrections, of his Second Symphony. The autograph full score of Das klagende Lied, his first major composition, contains the previously unavailable Waldmarchen movement deleted by the composer in 1888 but never destroyed. In 1990 we were fortunate to acquire a manuscript which is apparently the only surviving autograph version, hitherto unknown to Mahler scholars, of the text of Das klagende Lied, and we have also acquired the autograph manuscript of Mahler's youthful fairy-tale opera Rübezahl, the music for which is lost. There are as well important manuscripts of Johann Sigismund Kusser, Alessandro Scarlatti, Charles Burney, C. I. Latrobe, Gustav Holst, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Scholarly editions, such as the letters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Edmund Burke, David Garrick, Charles Burney, Fanny Burney, and John Stuart Mill, testify to the significance of manuscripts in the Osborn Collection. Its richness will continue to be revealed as scholars explore some of the unmapped areas. Thus the Ballitore papers, mentioned in connection with Burke, are potentially valuable for the light they may shed on education in eighteenth-century Ireland, or Quaker life and thought in the same period. Similarly, the shelves of travel diaries, many of them anonymous records of English and continental journeys, contain evidence of the tastes, attitudes, and tribulations of travelers on the Grand Tour. The diaries also furnish descriptions of towns and individual monuments which may not survive today. The voluminous manuscript collections of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sermons will eventually reward the patience of a researcher interested, for example, in their political content, or in the changing styles of preaching over that period. Potential discoveries await the scholar who wishes to look beyond printed books into the documents of an era, in order to learn the characters and attitudes of our literary ancestors, along with the intellectual and social climate in which they lived. For further information about the Osborn Collection, see the account by Laurence C. Witten, 2d, in the Book Collector (Winter 1959), 383-96. Biennial reports on acquisitions, by Stephen Parks, appeared in the Yale University Library Gazette 44:3 (January 1970) and in even numbered years to 1980.  Comments:Ellen R.
Cordes, ellen.cordes@yale.edu |