Manuscript Studies
Papers of palaeographers
Papers of Cyril Ernest Wright (MS 893)
This collection comprises of three boxes of photographs, accompanied by notes and correspondence of manuscripts, collected by Cyril Ernest Wright c1933-1972. The first section of the collection contains papers, plates, photocopies, photographs, translations and notebooks containing notes of certain Middle English manuscripts held in The British Library, Oxford Bodleian Library, Durham Cathedral and Cambridge University Library. There are also some items of correspondence concerning Middle English Manuscripts (1948-1977). The second section contains photographs taken from Italian Renaissance manuscripts, notebooks of notes concerning manuscripts in various Dutch, Italian and English libraries and museums. Section 3 contains photographs of manuscripts, plates and proofs for Fontes Harleiani: a Study of the Sources of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum. In the final section of the collection is a list of Harley Manuscripts in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Library.
See: M.J.Grant, The C.E.Wright Papers in the University of London Library: a handlist, University of London Library (1982)
Short biography of Cyril Ernest Wright (1907-1980)
Cyril Ernest Wright was educated at George Watson's College, Edinburgh. He received an MA in English Language and Literature with first class Honours in 1929 from Edinburgh University. At Clare College, Cambridge he received first class Honours in Archaeological and Anthropological Tripos in 1931 and in 1936 he was awarded a PhD for his thesis on The Cultivation of Saga during the Dark Ages. His career was spent in the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum where he became assistant keeper in 1933. After being seconded to the Telegraphic Censorship and Home Office during the War, Wright returned to the British Museum to take up the post of Deputy Keeper of manuscripts in 1955. He was Senior Deputy Keeper from 1961 to his retirement in 1972. Wright was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1941 and served on several of the Society's committees including the Croft Lyons Committee from 1957 until his death. He was a member of the British Records Association from 1940 to 1970. He contributed to 30 publications during his career on subjects such as Icelandic, Anglo-Saxon, and Middle English literature, on palaeography and on heraldry; and the history of collectors and libraries, from the dispersal of the monastic libraries to the collections of the eighteenth century.
Publications by Cyril Ernest Wright
Bald's Leechbook: (British Museum Royal manuscript 12D. xvii). Copenhagen, 1955. Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile; v. 5
The cultivation of saga in Anglo-Saxon England. Edinburgh, 1939.
The Diary of Humfrey Wanley, 1715-1726. London, 1966.
The Dispersal of the monastic libraries and the beginnings of Anglo-Saxon studies: Matthew Parker and his circle: a preliminary study. Cambridge, 1951.
English heraldic manuscripts in the British Museum. London, 1973.
English vernacular hands from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. Oxford, 1960, 1969.
'Manuscripts and papers of Robert Southey.' Offprint from the British Museum Quarterly, XIX, no. 2, 1954.
'Portrait of a bibliophile VIII: Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford, 1689-1741.' In The Book Collector, vol. 11, no. 2, 1962.
'The Rous Roll: the English version.' Reprinted from the British Museum Quarterly, vol. XX, no. 4, 1956.
'Three Dering Manuscripts.' Reprinted from the British Museum Quarterly, vol. XVIII, no. 4, 1953.
'Willement's roll.' Reprinted from the British Museum Quarterly, vol. XIX, no. 3, 1954.
