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Charles Montagu (c. 1662–1722), Earl (later Duke) of Manchester, played an important role in furthering the establishment of Italian-style opera in London. He gained knowledge of opera and continental singers and musicians on his Grand Tour and three diplomatic missions abroad. This article prints relevant portions (some for the first time) from his correspondence and other printed and manuscript sources to expand our knowledge of his involvement with opera in London, Vienna, France and Italy. The correspondence suggests why his advice and assistance were sought by John Vanbrugh and later by the Royal Academy of Music and adds to our knowledge of the history of opera in London in its so-called 'critical decade'. Most important was his mission to Venice in 1707–8. Although no evidence has emerged that Manchester met Handel in Venice or extended to him an invitation, he was responsible for the recruitment of Nicola Grimaldi (called 'Nicolini'), painters and other singers to London. Even at this early stage, opera in London was part of an operatic system that extended across Europe, involving not only musicians and impresarios but also ministers of state and foreign diplomats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that narrative elements can be found throughout the history of English scientific writing. Narratives can be linked to specific genres; thus, learned texts for medical doctors were different from those directed to lay audiences (Taavitsainen, 2022). This article sets out to analyse a specific type of medical narrative, that of recipe collections, focusing for the purpose on the text housed in London, Wellcome Library, MS 213. The manuscript dates from the beginning of the seventeenth century (1606, more specifically) and gathers recipes "experienced and tryed by the speciall practize of Mrs Corlyon" (Moorat, 1962-1973)i. The codex belonged to Alethea Howard (née Talbot), Countess of Arundel. The main aim of the study is to identify and examine narrative forms and functions as well as particular features in the collection of recipes held in MS Wellcome 213, which can contribute to the knowledge of recipes written by and for women during the early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who deserves credit for the map of detailed soundings taken in the James River in the summer of 1617, the foundation for all subsequent navigation in Virginia for the next half century? This essay proposes that the chartmaker is not a pirate, as previously suggested, but one Marmaduke Raynor, a trained and experienced seaman who might have been commissioned by the Virginia Company of London as part of a new initiative. The original map is no longer extant, but was copied, perhaps surreptitiously, and then used by the famous Dutch mapmakers of the Vingboons family for their chart of the 'Powhatan River' of 1639. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students of early American literature, especially those who like satire, may be familiar with Jonathan Odell (1737-1818), Anglican priest, physician, and Loyalist poet. Students of Laurence Sterne probably will not be. Yet there are a series of remarkable conjunctions between the two writers, showing Sterne's reach to the colonies, as well as Odell's ability to maintain contact with the London literary world despite living most of his life on another continent. This essay examines the influence Sterne had on Odell, especially on his satiric poetry. There is no claim within that the two men's politics were similar. In fact, that is unlikely. But their taste in literature was indeed coincident -- an appreciation of Swift and Pope, for example -- and that was reflected in Odell's alluding to various well-known components of Sterne's canon in his poetry, and especially in his repeated selection of Yoric[k] as a pseudonym and persona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the key role played by commercial architects in the reconstruction of London, England after the second world war. Also cited are the independence of the city as a political constituency that allowed it to avoid local government reforms and retain electoral rights for businesses, as well as the complex relationships between architects, financiers, occupiers, and real estate developers after the war.

During the Second World War, the Ministry of Information occupied London's Senate House. The University of London Library continued to function in the building, primarily to serve the Ministry. A wartime diary, memoirs and general correspondence supplement library committee reports and minutes to record this period of the library's history unusually richly, and this article uses archival sources to describe the library's operations during the war. It thereby not only opens up a hitherto unexplored area of the library's history, but sheds light on daily institutional life in central London, and on the human side of the Ministry of Information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harris's List of Covent-Garden Ladies, published annually from 1760 until its suppression in 1794, has long held a place in studies of censorship or the Georgian underworld. In the past few decades it has figured as well in more specialized discussions of the demography of London prostitution and of eighteenth-century perceptions of women, but to date little attention has been paid to the actual publishing history of the List. The present article explores several aspects of that history, beginning with the origin and evolution of Harris's List, and with those involved in its early stages; subsequent sections survey the marketing of the List and the booksellers who published, stocked, and in one instance pirated it, and finally the 1794-95 proceedings against the final publishers of Harris's List, James Roach and James Aitken. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the performance, representation and reception of images of American slavery prompted by fugitive slaves William Wells Brown and William and Ellen Craft's visit to the Great Exhibition in London, where they displayed themselves alongside American sculptor Hiram Powers' Greek Slave. In order to appreciate the visual rhetoric and modes of spectating-upon which the fugitive slaves drew, the author examines their performative intervention in the context of other nineteenth-century performances and displays of racialised bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ProQuest's Early European Books is an ambitious long-term project to make available the complete holdings of early books at major European libraries, including their rarest and most valuable items. Volumes from 1455-1700 are being digitized in high-resolution colour on site at national libraries in Florence, Copenhagen and The Hague, and at the Wellcome Library in London, with new bespoke methods being developed to accommodate the specialist nature of early books. The project aims to interoperate with other digitization and research initiatives in this field to become a focal point for research in the area and to enable new overviews, comparisons and analyses of the printed output of the early modern era. ProQuest's provision of complimentary national access means that all the books digitized at the Wellcome Library will be freely available throughout the UK from launch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent International London Book Fair focused heavily on the new technologies of e-publishing and digitisation. We asked technology historian and bibliophile Nick Spurrier to introduce E&T readers to the little-known world of library engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers an overview of research collections in the Laban Library and Archive in London, England. The Laban collection contains personal papers, notated scores, drawings, slides and books by Rudolf Laban, a teacher, philosopher, dancer, choreographer, author and experimenter, and his associates in Germany, in Manchester and Addlestone in Surrey, England. Additional archival collections are the Sylvia Bodmer Collection, the Simone Michelle Collection which documents the life and career of modern dance teacher Simone Michelle, the Dorothy Madden Collection which focuses on American modern dance culture, and the Peter Brinson Collection which documents the life of touring company Ballet for All. The development of Labanotation was also an important aspect of Laban's work.

John Lawrence Geib has remained an often-cited but poorly known builder of keyboard instruments since the eighteenth century. Although historians have noted his patent for an escapement mechanism used on early English square pianos after 1787, little has been written about him, and much of that has now proven to be incomplete or untrue. A letter written by Geib to Benjamin Franklin has recently been made public. It outlines his early years in London and provides the foundation for further research into the remaining records and extant instruments. This information allows one to draw amore complete and historically correct picture of Geib and to place him in perspective with the other builders operating at the time. This article gives new details about his principal invention - the escapement mechanism - and the nature of his business during his early years in London. A full reproduction of the patent is included as an appendix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through discussion of a historical project to recreate Primitive Mysteries at Laban in London, the 1931 dance work is examined and placed in its context in Graham's career. Possible sources of inspiration derived from Catholic and New Mexican Pueblo culture are discussed, as is the relationship of the work to American modernism in art and dance. Through the use of a Labanotation score, films of the dance, the first-hand experience of Graham dancer Susan Sentler, and published sources, the work has been recreated for Laban dance students in its premiere outside the United States. The article uncovers the significance of the experience in deepening students' understanding of Graham's art and technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than a century John Snow's iconic map of an 1854 cholera outbreak in the Broad Street area of Soho, London, has been the very definition of how to discover the source of a disease. Some now argue, however, that the map was merely an illustrative and not very imaginative graphic. Here we argue that this position is incorrect. Snow's mapping of the Broad Street outbreak produced a spatial argument that was a critical evidentiary statement. This position requires us to ask, If that is true, is the map in part responsible for Snow's inability to convince contemporaries of his argument that cholera was water-borne and not airborne? In doing so, we use mid-nineteenth-century methodologies to demonstrate that the problem was not in the map but in Snow's handling of the data. This review of a seminal study in the history of disease studies not only informs historical perspective but, in its conclusions, speaks to the utility of medical mapping in contemporary disease studies, where spatialization of a disease event remains a critical method of investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides information on CILT resources library in central London, England. This library covers language teaching collections. The estimated number of CD-ROM available in the library is indicated. Special collections in the library are presented. Schedule of the library's opening hours is given.

The article features the Library at the Laban Centre for Contemporary Dance in London, England. The library offers information resources related to dance for the students and staff of the Centre. There is a large collection of photographs, books and periodicals in major languages in the Peter Williams Collection and The Laban Collection. Additionally, it has collected press cuttings, reports and ephemera from major British newspapers since 1984, audio visual materials, and bibliographical aids.

Previews `INSIDE,' the search and delivery service offered by the British Library's Document Supply Center (DSC) which is based in Yorkshire, England. Information on the Document Supply Center; Aims of `INSIDE'; Features of the database; Development of methods to search the database; Availability of INSIDE on the internet; DSC expansion plans for the service.

This essay uses Mohegan minister Samson Occom's 1766 journal entry on the mockery of his preaching by London "Stage Players" to explore connections between Indigenous peoples, the London theater, and empire in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. I examine stagings of and by Indigenous people in theatrical and paratheatrical performances that drew English audiences into enactments of the colonial relation and exposed anxieties about empire's transformational ambitions. Occom's ministerial performances (and the players' mockery) can be read as one act of a long-running colonial drama that both enacts and challenges what Elizabeth Maddock Dillon has termed "intimate distance." I argue that Occom's performance as an "Indian Preacher," more than earlier stagings of Indigenous visitors, challenged notions of intimate distance that circulated in the wake of the Seven Years' War. The players' mockery serves not to marginalize Occom, but to position him as a key player in a circum-Atlantic performance of empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents news briefs regarding archives and information resources on bibliographical history as of December 2009. The move of the Bibliographical Society's Archive to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England is announced. The housing of the Society's library at Senate House in London, England is also mentioned. The publishing of an electronic version of the journal is discussed.

The article offers information on issues related to collections. It says that the "Changed Press Marks of the Private Case" microfilm documents the paper records of around 800 books in the British Library which have changed category or press-mark from Private Case Books to a less restrictive classification within the library scheme. Meanwhile, the Museums and Galleries History Group will conduct its first symposium in London, England in summer 2003.

The article reports on the closure of the National Art Slide Library (NASL) which is based at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, England. The NASL will be closed in April 1992 and will be relocated at Leicester Polytechnic. The public cannot access the service from the date of closure until September 1993. It is hoped that the proposed rationalization and development of the NASL will offer an improved countrywide loan service. The closure allows other publicly funded loan collections in the area to press for additional funding to address educational demand and need.

Presents information on the leaflet `Guidance to Exporters of Cultural Goods,' award received by the British Library, and the Phillimore Prize 1993. Description of the leaflet; Grant received by the Britist Library from Getty Grant Program; Specified field that received the Phillimore Prize 1993.