Monthly Archives: January 2017

Investigating Anthony Wood’s ballad collection in the Bodleian Library: The Miser image

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I am starting to engage with the Anthony Wood ballad collection at the Bodleian library, beginning with the volume that has the 1688/9 version of The Beginning, Progress and End of Man  {MS} E 25(10). The Bodleian also has a large online ballad project comprising many volumes at http://balladsblog.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

 

It has advanced search techniques, including image search in some cases, but being able to examine the fragile volume and turn over each of the 159 broadsides compiled in the volume is a special privilege. One task I have set myself is to see some of the other images’ locations in the turn-up book, here in the collection context of Wood’s ballad collection.

 

I found one instance of a woodcut being reused that appears in the Beginning, Progress and End of Man, but not in the version in the Wood Collection. It is no. 49 “The Young-Man’s Tryal: or Betty’s Denial” London: printed for John Andrew at the White-Lyon in the old Baily 1655.

Images from Broadside Ballads Online, Courtesy of Bodleian Library

 

 

This image (except for the depiction of the ground the man is standing on) appears identical to the untransformed image in the earliest known published text of the same name produced in London by B. Alsop for T. Dunster in 1650. It is housed in the British Library, and a poor quality image is available on microfilm and on EEBO.

 

We have a high quality digital image on the “Learning as Play” site: http://sites.psu.edu/play/image-gallery/1650-british/

 

 

What a thrilling start to my “turning-up turn-up books” project!

Anthony Wood

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Today I started my literary pilgrimage about Anthony Wood, the 17th century antiquarian and Oxford historian. He collected the turn-up book The Beginning, Progress and End of Man in 1788/89  and placed it in his ballad collection. This collection of ballads is now an important part of the Bodleian collection. To my joy his house in Oxford is still part of Merton College. My next project is to see whether i can convince the head porter to allow me into the house!