The Lost Library of Richard Smythe (d.1563)

In connection with some work I am doing for Corpus Christi College, Oxford, I have had reason to look at a number of printed books, including a copy of The Contemplaycion of Synners, printed by Wynkyn de Worde at Westminster in July 1499:

Oxford, Corpus Christi College, Phi.C.1.6, fols.Aiv-Aiir
[By permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford]

The start of the text faces a woodcut depicting the work being presented to Richard Fox, as Bishop of Durham (1494-1501), who would later found Corpus Christi in 1517. The same woodcut appears on the recto of the first leaf and, as can be seen from the inscription in the lower margin, this copy was given to the College by Nathaniel Ellison in 1708.

Oxford, Corpus Christi College, Phi.C.1.6, fols.Ai r

[By permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford]

More interesting is the crossed-through inscription in the upper margin, however:

Oxford, Corpus Christi College, Phi.C.1.6, fols.Ai r

[By permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford]

George Dunn (1864-1912) of Woolley Hall and his price code(s)

"EXHUMATION" is in the process of preparing a much expanded second edition of his excellent The Price-Codes of the Book-Trade: A Preliminary Guide (2010) (cf. here). I have contributed a few new codes, but one has so far eluded us, so I present some of the evidence here in the hope that a reader might be able to solve the puzzle before the second edition goes to press.

George Dunn's books are usually easy to recognise: they typically contain a book-label as follows:

On the facing flyleaf there are sometimes bibliographical comments, and almost always an acquisition-note consisting of a price-code, his initials "G.D.", and the date:

λρη | G.D. | Oct. 1907

The price-codes usually consist of two or three minuscule letters of the Greek alphabet, but the numerals that they represent has never, to my knowledge, been decoded.

A Loose Flyleaf in Canberra

Sometimes the most unassuming fragments turn out to be among the most informative. Looking at images of recently-digitised manuscript fragments at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, my eye was caught by a flyleaf with the stencilled crest of Thomas Phillipps on the verso:

[Source]

and on the recto various late-medieval inscriptions:

[Source] 

An Unrecognised Book of Hours Made for Philip the Good [III]

I said in a previous post that I would give a list of the contents of Smith College, MS 288.

Smith College, MS 288, fol. 143r [source]

As the manuscript has a considerable number of unusual prayers, I provide here a detailed (but not exhaustive) list of its contents, so that, once indexed by Google and other search engines, researchers looking for unusual incipits may find this page.