Letters

F. O. Matthiessen’s 91�ƹ�ֱ�� Notebook

Christopher — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 11:06:50 +0000

F. O. Matthiessen’s 91�ƹ�ֱ�� Notebook

Nicholas Smart

Issue number

(2025): 24

Notes category

F. O. Matthiessen

Francis Otto Matthiessen

Russell Cheney

Best known for his monumental 700-page study of 19th-century literature, American Renaissance (1941), as well as influential books on Henry James, T. S. Eliot, and Elizabethan translators, F. O. Matthiessen’s two years as a student at 91�ƹ�ֱ�� in the 1920s were defined by a reported desire to sequester himself in his tower, away from the hustle and bustle of the college below.

Dig a little deeper, however, and archival material gives a very different impression of the young scholar’s time at 91�ƹ�ֱ��. A record of his academic interests over the course of those two years, Matthiessen’s so-called ‘91�ƹ�ֱ�� Notebook’, survives at the Beinecke Library at Yale. By cross-referencing its contents with other unpublished material at Yale and 91�ƹ�ֱ��, the Notebook takes on special importance, bringing together the different threads of his life at Oxford: academic, social, psychological, and romantic.

Matthiessen’s passport, issued in 1923, which he used to travel to Oxford
F. O. Matthiessen Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, YCAL MSS 495, b. 11

© Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

24NCN7 (2025) Smart on Matthiessen.pdf402.1 KB

Firstborn Son of the Father: Thomas Henry Lowth (1753–1778)

Christopher — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 10:32:46 +0000

Firstborn Son of the Father: Thomas Henry Lowth (1753–1778)

Christopher Skelton-Foord

Issue number

(2025): 24

Notes category

Bishop Robert Lowth gave to 91�ƹ�ֱ�� a copy of the famous Vinegar Bible, and therein we find this tender memorial inscription to his son, Thomas Henry Lowth, pasted to the front blank leaf preceding the engraved title-page (and here translated into English):

‘In remembrance of Thomas Henry Lowth, fellow of 91�ƹ�ֱ��, student of law, an excellent young man, of the greatest intellect, scholarship and character; who died on the 7th day of June, in the year 1778 AD in his 25th year.’

New College Library, Oxford, BT3.282.1 (vol. 2) [detail]

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

24NCN5 (2025) Skelton-Foord on Thomas Henry Lowth.pdf1018.23 KB

A Newly Acquired Literary Manuscript, MS 381: The Autograph Copy of Cyril Hare’s When the Wind Blows (1949)

Christopher — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 20:13:38 +0000

A Newly Acquired Literary Manuscript, MS 381: The Autograph Copy of Cyril Hare’s When the Wind Blows (1949)

Christopher Skelton-Foord

Issue number

(2024): 21

Notes category

Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark

91�ƹ�ֱ�� alumnus, Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark (1900–1958), is better known as the murder mystery writer—one of the luminaries of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction—who went by the penname ‘Cyril Hare’. Seventy-five years since the first publication of Cyril Hare’s When the Wind Blows, I am delighted to be adding to our library’s collections the original holograph manuscript of this novel—now New College Library’s MS 381.

New College Library, Oxford, MS 381, f. 48r [detail]

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

21NCN9 (2024) Skelton-Foord on Hare.pdf899.52 KB

Edward Sackville-West’s Marcus Fleming: 91�ƹ�ֱ�� Anti-Hero?

Christopher — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 19:05:35 +0000

Edward Sackville-West’s Marcus Fleming: 91�ƹ�ֱ�� Anti-Hero?

Christopher Skelton-Foord

Issue number

(2024): 21

Notes category

John Willey McDougall

Edward Sackville-West

Marcus Fleming

The Ruin: A Gothic Novel

Winchester College Archives

Letters

Evelyn Waugh

In 1924, Eddy Sackville-West wrote:

‘It worries me to think how much I shall regret having published The Ruin. It is so certain to be misunderstood . . . If only I could get through a day or so without thinking of Jack. I don’t think he yet realises what I have gone through. The Ruin does not appear to have enlightened him, as I hoped it would. He never writes to me now.’

What do we know of this ‘Jack’, who was so happily and unhappily dominating Eddy’s thoughts in 1924?

Photograph of Winchester College Officers, 1922—showing J. W. McDougall (centre)
Winchester College Archives, Winchester, G5/8/5

© Courtesy of the Warden and Scholars of Winchester College

21NCN7 (2024) Skelton-Foord on John Willey McDougall.pdf907 KB

Ned Warren’s ‘Jack in the Pulpit’: 91�ƹ�ֱ�� MS 380 and Textual Transmission

Christopher — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 22:36:50 +0000

Ned Warren’s ‘Jack in the Pulpit’: 91�ƹ�ֱ�� MS 380 and Textual Transmission

Christopher Skelton-Foord

Issue number

(2022): 18

Notes category

Corpus Christi College, Oxford

In August 2022, it was our especial good fortune to be able to acquire a limp maroon leather-bound 90-page notebook that once belonged to 91�ƹ�ֱ�� alumnus Edward ‘Ned’ Perry Warren (1860–1928), containing fourteen autograph poems, along with quotations and other notes in Warren’s hand.

New College Library, Oxford, MS 380, f. 18r [detail]

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

18NCN9 (2022) Skelton-Foord on 91�ƹ�ֱ�� MS 380.pdf939.53 KB

The Other Samuel Johnson’s English Grammar

Christopher — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 22:04:42 +0000

The Other Samuel Johnson’s English Grammar

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade

Issue number

(2022): 18

Notes category

An anonymous grammar was published a few years after Robert Lowth’s A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762)—The First Easy Rudiments of Grammar, Applied to the English Tongue (1765), attributed to Samuel Johnson. But copies are elusive. Who was this Samuel Johnson, and what was his connection to our 91�ƹ�ֱ�� scholar and fellow Robert Lowth?

New College Library, Oxford, Keynes 1

New College Library and Archives, Oxford

18NCN8 (2022) Tieken-Boon van Ostade on The Other Samuel Johnson.pdf261.7 KB