Beschreibung:

DONNE, John (1573-1631). Contemporary manuscript collection of poetry and prose, INCLUDING FIVE ELEGIES and the "Lecture Upon the Shaddowe"; the prose segment containing seven Problems, "An Essay on Valour," "The True Character of a Dunce," plus suppressed lines to Problem I, comprising two gatherings of inserted leaves bound following, respectively, exampla of Donne's Poems , 1633 and Juvenilia , 1633. Written in a single clear, cursive English italic hand, ca.1630-1633. 4 o (185 x 136 mm). Two gatherings: 18 pp. (poetry), 5 blank ll.; 18 pp. (prose), 3 blank ll. In ink on paper, the margins of each page neatly ruled in pale ink, generally containing 24-27 lines per page. The paper of uniform stock, with indistinct "Post or Pillar" watermark (type of Heawood 3485 to 3535, nearly all in English use, first quarter of the seventeenth century). A HIGHLY IMPORTANT VOLUME OF DONNE'S POETRY AND PROSE CONTAINING CONTEMPORARY MANUSCRIPT SOURCES OF WORKS OMITTED FROM THE 1633 COLLECTED EDITIONS. ONE OF THE LAST DONNE SOURCES IN PRIVATE HANDS A remarkable sammelband containing the first editions of Donne's Poems and Juvenilia (both with corrections and emendations in a contemporary hand), each followed by a manuscript gathering of texts omitted from those editions. The Berland sammelband constitutes one of the last manuscript sources for Donne remaining in private hands. (Virtually no autograph literary manuscripts of this seminal poet are extant, with the exception of two brief Latin epigrams written in books and a single autograph poem discovered in 1970 and now in the Bodleian Library.) Most of Donne's verse and much of his freer prose works, deemed unsuitable for publication during his lifetime, circulated widely in manuscript prior to the posthumous collected editions. The extensive manuscript sources (divided into several groups according to completeness and relative authority), are inventoried in the Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne , ed. G. Stringer et al, vol. 1. For additional information on the contents and textual significance of the Berland manuscript see John T. Shawcross, "Notes on an Important Volume of Donne's Poetry and Prose," in John Donne Journal , 9:2 (1990), pp.137-139. MANUSCRIPT VERSE: The 12-page manuscript supplement after Poems includes the following: 1. Elegy 1 [XVII] Love's Progress ("Who ever loves, if he do not propose The right true end of love...") 2. Elegy 2 [XVI] [On his Mistris] ("By our first strange and fatall interview, By all desires which hereof did ensue,...") 3. Elegy 3 [XI] [The Bracelet] ("Not that in colour it was like thy haire, Armlets of that thou mayst still lett mee weare...") 4. Elegy 4 [XX] [Love's Warre] ("Till I have peace with thee warre other men, And when I have peace, can I leave thee then?...") 5. Elegy 5 [XIX] [To His Mistris Going to Bed] ("Come, Madame come, all rest my powers defye, Untill I labour I in labour lye....") 6. Lecture Upon a Shadow. ("Stand still, and I will reade to thee A lecture Love in Love's Philosophie....") These added lyrics, all attributed with certainty to Donne, comprise elegies omitted from the 1633 collected edition although they were likely present in the manuscript used as copy-text for that collection. Shawcross notes that the "Lecture," included in all Group I manuscripts, is likely to have been inadvertantly omitted from the 1633 edition, and points out that the texts in the Berland manuscript have affinities with those in the Stephens Ms. in Harvard College Library (Ms. Eng. 966/6), a source which also includes non-canonical poems not present here. The Berland manuscript shows a number of differences in punctuation and significant textual variants, one occurring in the first couplet of Elegy XVI, which here reads "straung" rather than the "strange" reading found in most sources, and now generally accepted. Other differences are noted in the variorum edition. MANUSCRIPT PROSE: The 18-page additions to Donne's Juvenilia compr