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POETIC COMMONPLACE BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS OF THOMAS GRAY, 1716-1771 from Pembroke College, Cambridge

Thomas Gray’s autograph Commonplace Book is published here in full for the first time, together with further manuscript drafts of poems and essays, diaries and annotated volumes from his library, which are now held in Pembroke College, Cambridge, his home from 1756 to 1771. These sources allow a thorough examination of his development as a poet and prose writer and provide insights into his views of travel and natural beauty.

The three substantial volumes that make up the Commonplace Book commence in c1736 when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge with Horace Walpole. They were compiled following John Locke’s recommendations, including notes and essays under all manner of headings, poems written by Gray and copies of verse that he admired, lists of books owned and read and indexes. They continue for the whole period of his literary career. This included the three years, 1738-1740, when Gray travelled across Europe with Walpole, visiting Paris, Rheims, Geneva and much of Italy. A highlight was the crossing of the Alps which impressed Gray deeply. "Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry." It covers the period of his first poetic output in 1741, the death of his friend, the poet Richard West, Gray’s fruitful sojourn in Stoke Poges, the Elegy, his return to Cambridge and his latter-day work on English and Icelandic poetry.

The volumes include important autograph versions of the Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard (much revised, with the ‘Redbreast’ stanza and notes), the Eton Ode (here entitled ‘Ode, on a Prospect of Windsor, and the adjacent Country, in 1743’), the Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat (‘who fell into a China-Tub with Gold-fishes in it and was drown’d), the Ode on the Spring, and the Ode to Adversity. In all there are nearly 60 major poems featured with a further 11 in the loose manuscripts held by Pembroke.

The volumes also include his transcription of poems by Walpole and Richard West, and numerous translations from the Greek and Latin by Gray. There are essays on ‘the use of Rhyme’, ‘Norman Architecture’, ‘History’ and on Greek literature and philosophers, as well as notes on geography, natural history and English metre.

The loose manuscripts supplement the volumes with further prose writings such as his Latin Essays, notes on Roman history, notes on Melpomene, Muse of Tragedy, and on marriages. Two additional diaries include observations in the later period of his life in 1755-6 and 1760, making notes on callers and events, book purchases, natural catastrophes, his own health and the progress of flora.

The annotated volumes from his library show something of the range of his reading and his relationship to his books. They include MacPherson’s Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Pennant’s British Zoology, Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary, Ramusio’s Voyages (in Italian), Bergeron’s Voyages to Asia (in French), Gruner on Swiss Glaciers (in French), Gerard’s Herball and the Selected Remains of the Learned John Ray.



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