Thomas Gray's Commonplace Book Edited by Ruth Abbott.

£260 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Dedicated and presented to the Master and Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge, by John Armitage and the Honourable Robert Lloyd George. Also presented to members of The Roxburghe Club by the Honourable Robert Lloyd George 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 by Dr Ruth Abbott of St John’s College, Cambridge.. “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 ancien

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