A correction to the identity of ‘Mrs Furnivall’ in Harvard’s Houghton Library Archives
2018; Oxford University Press; Volume: 65; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/notesj/gjy100
ISSN1471-6941
Autores Tópico(s)Digital Humanities and Scholarship
ResumoHarvard University’s Houghton Library contains a manuscript entitled ‘Mrs Furnivall transcript copies of old plays’ (MS Eng 1660), described as ‘Manuscript transcript copies of pre-Shakespearian plays made by Mrs Furnivall, the wife of Frederick James Furnivall’.1 The texts included are Mankind, The salutation and conception, Nice Wanton, Hyckescorner, King Cambises, Gammer Gurtons Needle, Foure PP, and James IV. I came across this item while working on the John Matthews Manly papers in the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center.2 Manly (1885–1940) was a distinguished professor of English at the University of Chicago, and one of the two lead researchers on the Chicago Chaucer Project, which eventually produced a landmark edition of the Canterbury Tales and The Chaucer Life-Records. As the Harvard catalogue details, Manly gifted the manuscript of pre-Shakespearean plays to the library in 1899. The Biographical/Historical note explains that These volumes of transcriptions have only been attributed to a ‘Mrs Furnivall’, but in the foreward to John Matthews Manly’s volume Specimens of the pre-Shaksperean drama …, he states that the manuscript transcriptions were made by Mrs. Furnivall, and he names her as Agnes Furnivall. We have been unable to determine who Agnes Furnivall was. As of this date (October 2010) this repository does not know who is responsible for these transcriptions, but we lean toward Teena Smith and await help from readers for confirmation.
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