FIRST LINE INDEXES:
Manuscript Poetry in the Folger Shakespeare Library and Huntington Library

Publisher's Note

"Indexing by first line has long been accepted as the single most satisfactory point of entry to collections of manuscript verse.  Wider dissemination of the unique card-indices hitherto held solely in their libraries of origin across the world will enormously facilitate research in this rapidly developing field."

Hilton Kelliher

Curator of Manuscripts

British Library

First Line Indexes to poetic manuscript are essential reference tools for literary scholars. Such indexes take many years to assemble, but this labour saves later scholars a vast amount of time in carrying out a variety of searches. They are especially important for:

• Scholars working on editions of poets, who can track down many additional copies of chosen texts, enabling them to compare and collate variants;

• Scholars trying to identify the author and date of a particular work which is unidentified. Additional copies my have these details or can provide clues to authorship and date through the context of the poem amongst other items;

• Scholars assessing the frequency and dissemination of poetic works in manuscript and the culture of manuscript circulation.  First Line Indexes often provide clues concerning families of manuscripts and, in turn, to the date and production of manuscripts.

Margaret Crum's magnificent First Line Index of Manuscript Poetry in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1969) was justly welcomed as a huge step forward in this field.  However, other extant First Line Indexes have remained unpublished because of the cost and difficulties of realising a printed edition (including the manuscript Index of First and Last Lines in the Department of Manuscripts of the British library which was the original inspiration for the Crum Index).

Adam Matthew Publications now overcomes these difficulties by presenting a series of First Line Indexes on microfiche and microfilm.  Reproduced exactly as they appear in the original, we commence with the First Line Index of Manuscript Poetry in the Huntington Library, California, and the First Line Index of Manuscript Poetry in the Folger Library, Washington DC.

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