Harvard, Widener Collection

HEW 6.10.6

The author's dedication exemplum presented to Edward Benlowes, inscribed on the title-page ‘Phineas Fletcher’ and including in the same roman hand a ten-line marginal note on page 59 of the Poetical Miscellanies (by Benlowes?), a quarto, in contemporary calf with Benlowes's arms in gilt. 1633.

FlP 22: Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island...together with Piscatorie Eclogs and other Poetical Miscellanies (Cambridge, 1633)

Bookplate of Clarence S. Bemens.

HEW 6.11.3

Autograph seventeen-line inscription by Chapman, presenting the volume to Henry Reynolds, with a few possibly autograph MS alterations in the printed text, in calf gilt. c.1624.

*ChG 20: George Chapman, Chapman, George. The Crowne of all Homer's Worckes Batrachomyomachia (London, [1624?])

Also inscribed ‘Jo: Gorges.’ and ‘I Ferdi Gorges have reade ouer this Booke’. Bookplarte of Harry Elkins Widener (1885-1912), American businessman and book collector.

The inscription is printed in Chapman's Homer, ed Allardyce Nicoll (New York, 1956), II, 503, and in Tannenbaum, p. 114, with a facsimile, Plate XIII. Facsimile of the inscribed page also in Cummings, p. 211.

HEW 7.9.13

A receipt to John Warner, signed by Congreve, 16 November 1721. 1721.

*CgW 136: William Congreve, Document(s)

Recorded (with the date erroneously cited as 21 November 1721) in Hodges, Letters, p. x.

HEW 7.11.13

An exemplum of the printed folio edition, with Sidney's inscription on the title-page ‘Philippo Sidneio. Patauij. 20. Junij 1574’ (when he was studying at Padua), in later red morocco gilt. c.1574.

*SiP 223: Sir Philip Sidney, Guicciardini, M. Francesco. La Historia d'Italia (Venice, 1569)

Inscription on a flyleaf, dated 30 March 1837, by Charles Marriott (1811-58), Sub-dean of Oriel College, Oxford. According to W. C. Hazlitt's annotated A Roll of Honour (1908, in the British Library) this volume appeared at ‘a public sale of the library of Beaumont of Whitley, near Huddersfield, in 1906’.

Discussed in William L. Godshalk, ‘A Sidney Autograph’, Book Collector, 13 (Spring 1964), 65. A facsimile of the inscription is in Hazlitt, p. 214.

PRM 669

Exemplum of the 1677 edition of Spenser's works owned and annotated by Matthew Prior (1664-1721), poet and diplomat. Late 17th century.

SpE 99: Edmund Spenser, Works (London, 1677)

Discussed in William Leigh Godschalk, ‘Prior's Copy of Spenser's Works (1677)’, PBSA, 61 (1967), 52-5.