Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Minor Poems of Joseph Beaumont: 1616-1699
The unique manuscript of Dr. Joseph Beaumont's minor poems is the property of Professor George Herbert Palmer, of Harvard University. Professor Palmer bought the book in September 1911, from Mr. Bertram Dobell, the London bookseller and publisher, who purchased it at one of the sales of the Sir Thomas Phillipps collection. Beyond that point it seems impossible to trace the manuscript. A thick quarto volume, whose leaves, coloured red on the edges, measure 71/2 x 53/4 inches, it is covered with calfskin. On the back is printed in gilt, Poems, 1643, making it probable that this is not the original binding, but one supplied when it came into the Phillipps collection, or earlier, as the author was then evidently unknown. The closeness of the binding, also, precludes the likelihood that the pages were written after the book was in its present form. The number of leaves is 173, of which four at the beginning and six at the end are blank. The verso of the last leaf and the lower half of the recto are also unwritten. The manuscript is especially well preserved; in only two pages is the margin slit, and nowhere is it much discoloured. The paper itself is stiff, with a hard writing surface, and non-absorbent.
Two different hands appear in the manuscript, that of Beaumont in the body, and a later hand in correction, in all probability that of the editor of the selective 1749 edition, J. G., as it occurs only in poems marked for publication there. Pigot says these initials stand for John Gee, M.A., Master of Peter-house.
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