Thomas Gray’s Commonplace Book is dedicated and presented to the Master and Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge, by John Armitage and the Honourable Robert Lloyd George. It was also presented to members of The Roxburghe Club as a set with Thomas Gray’s Commonplace Book (2024).
The poet and literary scholar Thomas Gray (1716-1771) kept throughout his adult life a Commonplace Book of excerpts from his voluminous and polymathic reading in many languages, both ancient and modern, which are interspersed with copies of original poems and translations by himself and his friends. Comprising three volumes, the originals have long been in the library of Pembroke College, Cambridge, Gray’s old college.
Presented here in full-size facsimile are a representative selection of his neat entries, including under ‘Carmina’ all the original poems and translations by himself and his friends, with each section introduced by an explanation of its contents, organisation and context.
“The selection from Gray’s Commonplace Book reproduced in this book showcases the diversity of his learning and linguistic talents. It highlights his wide-ranging literary knowledge, represented in quotations gathered for comparison from the great poets of ancient Greece and Rome and early modern Italy and England, and in summaries of French and Greek books. Illuminated here too is the vast scope of his inquisitiveness on topics ranging from the modern values of ancient coinage through the symbology of of the Ottoman Empire, classical versification, musical performances in antiquity, the arrangement of guests at ancient banquets, ancient Greek ethics, classical dancing and acting methods, ancient foodstuffs, the history of printing, Turkish and Christian beliefs about the afterlife, and obscure classical astronomers, poets, and historians whose work survives only in fragments, all represented in quotations that Gray copied from works in English, French, Latin, and Greek.” (Introduction).
The illustrations comprise four portraits of Thomas Gray, a portrait of William Mason by Joshua Reynolds, a watercolour of Eton College Kitchen by Paul Sandby, an engraving of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and a drawing of Pembroke College by J. M. W. Turner.
Thomas Gray’s Naturalist’s Journal 1767-1771 is dedicated and presented to members of The Roxburghe Club by The Honourable Robert Lloyd George.
Thomas Gray was, in his later years, a keen natural historian and for many years he would record his observations in part-printed pocket-books. However, from January 1767 until May 1771, three months before his death on 30 July, he was able to enter up his notes into copies of a more substantial oblong folio pre-printed publication, The Naturalist’s Journal created by the naturalist Daines Barrington. Each page contained printed tables with blank spaces for the date, place, time, aspects of the weather, and observations on the flowering or first appearances of trees and fungi, plants and mosses, birds and insects, fish and other animals, and miscellaneous observations. These spaces could then be completed by hand with any relevant information, as they were by Thomas Gray, albeit selectively rather than comprehensively.
Gray’s annotated copies of The Naturalist’s Journal are now in the possession of Robert Lloyd George. For this publication Dr Ruth Abbott of St John’s College, Cambridge, has selected sections of the Journals, each of which is introduced by an explanation of its contents and context.
The selections comprise : 1-24 January 1767 [Cambridge], 14 June-12 September 1767 [Tour to Yorkshire], 27 December 1767 - 13 February 1768 [Cambridge], 14 February - 12 March 1768 [Cambridge], 29 May - 3 September 1768 [Tour of Kent], 11 September - 8 October 1768 [Tour of Suffolk & Norfolk], 28 May - 1 July 1769 [Cambridge], 16 July - 28 October 1769 [Tour to the Lake District & Lancashire, 5 - 25 November 1769 [Cambridge], 1 July - 4 August 1770 [Tour to the Welsh Borders], 1 October - 24 November 1770 [Cambridge], 16 December 1770 - 16 February 1771 [Cambridge & London], 21 April - 18 May 1771 [Cambridge].
The eighteen illustrations include reproductions of four portraits of Gray, an engraved portrait of Horace Walpole, watercolour views of Windsor Castle and Chepstow Castle by Paul Sandby, Guido Reni’s drawing for the ‘Tanari Madonna’, a watercolour of Yarmouth by Thomas Hearne and a watercolour Thirlmere by Francis Towne. There is a folding map of England & Wales by Rachel Glenn charting Gray’s travels from 1767-1771.
Both volumes were designed by Humphrey Stone. Typeset in Baskerville. Endpapers by Compton Marbling. Printed by Gomer Press, Wales. Bound by Ludlow Bookbinders.
ISBN 978-1-901902-16-7 - £400
Also available separately: Thomas Gray’s Commonplace Book ISBN 978-I-901902-18-1 - £260
Also available separately: Thomas Gray’s Naturalist’s Journal 1767-1771 edited by Ruth Abbott (Presented to Members of The Roxburghe Club, 2024). ISBN 978-I-901902-17-4 - £170
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