Module: Robert Curzon

IntroductionExercisesLibraryWorks Cited

Many of Curzon’s manuscripts were bequeathed by his daughter to the British Museum in 1917 and are now held in the British Library. Of his acquisitions in the Near East, the Greek and Slavonic manuscripts can be found in the Western manuscripts collection, under the shelfmarks Add. 39583-39671. Manuscripts from his collection in “oriental” languages (i.e., Coptic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic) are under the shelfmarks Or. 8729-8855. Older shelfmarks are sometimes “Parham” (the name of Curzon’s estate) or “Curzon.”

Overall, the documentation of these is poor and relatively few of the manuscripts are digitized. The “Western” manuscripts in the British Library are included in the catalogue of acquisitions between 1916–1920 (Bell 1933, see especially pages iii–xiii, 54–55, and the index s.v. “Curzon”). Descriptions of Curzon’s Coptic manuscripts can be found in Layton 1987 (under the British Library shelfmarks Or. 8770–8812, also see pages xliv-xlix) and of the Ethiopic ones in Strelcyn 1978 (beginning under the shelfmark Or. 8813). The latest published catalogues for other oriental languages were mostly printed before 1917 and thus do not include Curzon’s manuscripts (see the British Library finding guides for Arabic and Hebrew). Some scattered references to the Syriac manuscripts can be found in the preface of Wright’s catalogue (1870, 3:ix-x and note) and the unpublished handlist made by British library staff (1979, 2, see image above). There is also a catalogue of British private collections (1833–38?), possibly compiled by Sir Thomas Phillipps to whom Curzon wrote the “Libraries of the Levant” shown in the previous section. The catalogue lists in a single page (shown above) the acquisitions Curzon had made by 1837, before his 1837–38 trip to Mt. Athos and Egypt or his later diplomatic appointments to Constantinople and Erzurum (see Lane-Poole 2006).

Phillipps, Thomas. 1833. Catalogus Manuscriptorum in Bibliothecis Angliæ, Cambriæ, Scotiæ, et Hiberniæ, 1833. 1833-38? https://via.hypothes.is/http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100025751513.0x000001.
You can find a blog post about the correspondence between Curzon and Phillipps on the Grolier Club website .

The catalogue is also interesting because it inventories the collections of other manuscript hunters Curzon knew (see Cormack 2016). For an interesting example of how Curzon’s manuscripts were handled, see Emmel 1989.

Curzon’s own documentation, besides what he mentions in Monasteries, includes his Catalogue of Materials for Writing (1849, printed in only 50 copies!) and notes in the flyleaves and inside bindings of the manuscripts he acquired. (There are also letters and archival materials that appear in the online catalogues of the British Library and West Sussex Record Office but so far are not digitized and must be consulted in person. Among these the most interesting might be Curzon’s three travel journals from 1833–34 [London, British Library, Add MS 79529-79531] containing much that is not in the published version of Monasteries. See also the correspondence between Curzon and the Rev. Walter Sneyd, 1809-1888, collected and studied by Fraser [1974]. The catalogue of these letters, also made by Fraser, is available from the Sneyd Family Archive at the University of Keele.)

Contents

Exercise 1

Choose one of the following manuscripts and summarize what you can find out about Curzon’s acquisition of the manuscript based on his notes on the binding or flyleaves.

Exercise 2

See if you can find the same manuscript (as best you can tell) appearing in multiple places (Curzon’s writings, catalogues, etc.).

Curzon, Monasteries (1849)(Use this link to access manuscript passages tagged by other manuscript hunter students. You will need a hypothes.is account and permission to access the group)Curzon, Catalogue of Materials for Writing (1849)Phillipps, Catalogus (above, only manuscripts acquired by Curzon pre-1838)Bell 1933 (BL Western Manuscripts)British Library Archives and Manuscripts (digital catalogue, many manuscripts do not appear)

British Library Digitised Manuscripts (few manuscripts appear)
Layton 1987 (Coptic manuscripts, BL Or. 8770–8812)
Strelcyn 1978 (Ethiopic manuscripts beginning with BL Or. 8813)
BL Arabic, Hebrew Guides (use to find existing catalogues)
BL Syriac handlist

Library

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Works Cited and Further Reading

Bell, H. Idris. Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts 1916-1920. London: The Trustees [of the British Museum], 1933. https://via.hypothes.is/http://archive.org/details/CatalogueOfAdditionsToTheMSS191620. Cite
British Library. “Handlist of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum Acquired since 1899,” 1979. https://via.hypothes.is/https://ia600609.us.archive.org/30/items/BLHandlist/BL%20Handlist.pdf. Cite
Cormack, Robin. “‘A Gentleman’s Book’: Attitudes of Robert Curzon.” In Through the Looking Glass: Byzantium through British Eyes: Papers from the Twenty-Ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, King’s College, London, March 1995, edited by Robin Cormack and Elizabeth Jeffreys, 147–60. Aldershot: Variorum, 2000. https://books.google.de/books?id=KpqoDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT189. Cite
Curzon, Robert. Catalogue of Materials for Writing, Early Writings on Tablets and Stones, Rolled and Other Manuscripts and Oriental Manuscript Books, in the Library of the Honourable Robert Curzon, at Parham in the County of Sussex. William Nicol, Shakespeare Press, 1849. https://via.hypothes.is/https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5Qadpt57F8Y_AbfyjX5-Ej5mpZiG6c84CM7j3onm4YpYYn26HwJUaRw6xtHAYLfxgBLAcc_yU7PvQ2mRLZDPYKseyhNwN8ReCLKUUent8LSzRqyGgHYqSYUR6XQRLd67EV5JJ47U0q3UoWRI0nvfHHp_WbGbfnuKlRFPg1_6d86hj7sFvPTt3HcvDakB0GsAGomD-3fSFOB5XC5zDdyx-QxdMQaBhl9piuV526981ohozossv6H8H2JtVTCVm9U4wb7qUO73cfUfcWzaH4QZmlXJ5t84nNjVPjilorR9Np6Ar0QBzsPU. Cite
Emmel, Stephen. “Robert Curzon’s ”very Large Folio” Coptic-Arabic Gospel of Matthew, and Ms Coptic 1 in the Beinecke Library: A Question of Identity.” The Yale University Library Gazette 63, no. 3/4 (1989): 158–63. https://via.hypothes.is/http://www.jstor.org/stable/40858959. Cite
Fraser, Ian H.C. “Letters from the Hon. Robert Curzon Jnr., 1810-1873, to the Rev. Walter Sneyd, 1809-1888.” Doctoral Thesis, Keele University, 1974. (United Kingdom). https://via.hypothes.is/http://eprints.keele.ac.uk/4933/. Cite
Fraser, Ian H. C. “Sneyd Papers: Calendar of Correspondence to Walter Sneyd from the Hon. Robert Curzon.” Ref code:  GB 172  S[Rev.WS/Hon.RC]. Keele University Library Special Collections, Sneyd Family Archive. Accessed October 18, 2019. https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.keele.ac.uk/media/k-web/k-central-services/libraries/specialcollections/pdfs/gb-172-s-rev.ws-hon.rc.pdf. Cite
Lane-Poole, Stanley. “Curzon, Robert, Fourteenth Baron Zouche of Harringworth (1810–1873), Traveller and Collector of Manuscripts.” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Elizabeth Baigent. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6969. Cite
Layton, Bentley. Catalogue of Coptic Literary Manuscripts in the British Library Acquired since the Year 1906. London: British Library, 1987. Cite
O’Hogan, Cillian. “The Greek Manuscripts of Robert Curzon, Part I.” British Library Medieval manuscripts blog, March 10, 2015. https://via.hypothes.is/https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/03/the-greek-manuscripts-of-robert-curzon-part-i.html. Cite
O’Hogan, Cillian. “The Greek Manuscripts of Robert Curzon, Part II.” British Library Medieval manuscripts blog, March 28, 2015. https://via.hypothes.is/https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/03/the-greek-manuscripts-of-robert-curzon-part-ii.html. Cite
Phillipps, Thomas. Catalogus Manuscriptorum in Bibliothecis Angliæ, Cambriæ, Scotiæ, et Hiberniæ, 1833. 1833-38?, 1833. https://via.hypothes.is/http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100025751513.0x000001. Cite
Strelcyn, Stefan. Catalogue of Ethiopian Manuscripts in the British Library Acquired since the Year 1877. London: British Museum Publications Ltd, 1978. Cite
Wright, William, and William Wright. Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum Acquired since the Year 1838. Vol. 3. 3 vols. London: British Museum, 1872. https://via.hypothes.is/https://ia600301.us.archive.org/1/items/catalogueofsyria03brituoft/catalogueofsyria03brituoft.pdf. Cite

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