POETIC COMMONPLACE BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS OF THOMAS GRAY, 1716-1771

From Pembroke College, Cambridge

Publisher's Note

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) made Pembroke College his Cambridge home for sixteen years from 1756 to his death in 1771 having left Peterhouse, where he had graduated, after failing to obtain redress from the college authorities following a student prank.  He found the company at Pembroke convivial and in the year following his move, 1757, he completed his famous Odes which were printed by the Strawberry Hill Press and received considerable acclaim.  Later in the same year he declined the Poet Laureateship and in the ensuing years he concentrated far more on the study of botany and history, examining and trying his hand at the verse forms of Welsh and Norse poetry and travelling about the country to visit friends.  Visits to the Lake District in 1766 and 1769 prompted Gray to write an account of his Tour which was published posthumously in 1775 and did much to draw attention to the natural beauty of that region.  In 1768 he co-operated with the publication of the first collected edition of his Poems and accepted the honour of being appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge.  He delivered no lectures, but did pen his Ode for Music to mark the installation of the Duke of Grafton as the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.  Gray died in his rooms at Pembroke on the 30th July 1771, having been taken ill at dinner in hall six nights before.  He was buried in the church yard at Stoke Poges which he had celebrated in his Elegy, written between 1742 and 1750.  He shared a vault with his mother and aunt who had been laid to rest there some years before.

By the terms of his will, Gray left all of his “books, manuscripts, coins,  music, printed or written, and papers of all kinds” to his friend, the Reverend William Mason, Precentor of York and a Fellow at Pembroke “to    preserve or destroy at his own discretion”.  Fortunately, Mason chose to preserve for the most part and the papers helped him to compile The Poems of Mr Gray, to which are prefixed Memoirs of his Life and Writings by W Mason (York, 1775). The papers were subsequently passed to Richard Stonehewer, a friend of Gray, who presented the Commonplace Book to Pembroke.  The remainder then passed to John Bright, a relative of Stonehewer, who had them sold at four auctions (Evans, 1845; and  Sotheby’s, 1847, 1851 and 1854).  As a result of the sales, many of Gray’s manuscripts were dispersed, but many also arrived back at Pembroke which can justly claim to have the most important collection of Gray’s manuscripts and books in the world.  This collection is now published in its entirety for the first time.

Pride of place must go to the Commonplace Book, bound in three large volumes, which Margaret M Smith, editor of the Index of English Literary Manuscripts Vol III, 1700-1800. Part 2 (Gay-Phillips), (Mansell, London, 1989), describes as “the single most important repository of Gray’s autograph verse and prose”.  It was started by Gray in about 1736 when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge with Horace Walpole.  It was 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.  It was continued for the whole period of his literary career and Mason added  transcripts of additional poems after Gray’s death.  It covers the three years, 1738-1740, when Gray travelled across Europe with Horace 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 and poet Richard West, Gray’s fruitful sojourn in Stoke Poges, his fame with the Elegy, his return to Cambridge and his latter-day work on English, Welsh and Nordic 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 Spring, and the Ode to Adversity.  The volumes also include his transcriptions of poems by Walpole and Richard West, and numerous translations from the Greek and Latin classics by Gray.  Also Essays on “the use of Rhyme”, “Norman    Architecture”, and on Greek Literature and Philosophy, as well  as notes on geography, natural history and English Metre.  The detailed list of contents provides a description of further contents.

Additional, loose manuscripts held at Pembroke provide versions of another 11 of his poems and supplement the Commonplace Book with further prose writings such as his Latin Essays, notes on Roman history, notes on Melpomene, Muse of Tragedy, and on marriages.  Two 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 reveal much about his reading  habits and his interests.  Johnson remarked “that his mind had a large grasp; that his curiosity was unlimited, and his judgement cultivated”.  In the words of Mason “There was hardly any part of human learning in which he had not acquired a competent skill, in most of them a consummate mastery”.  The volumes include the Selected Remains of the Learned John Ray, Bergeron’s Voyages faits principalement en Asie dans les XII,       XIII, XIV et XV siecles, Pennant’s British Zoology, Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary, and further works concerning glaciers, British history, zoology, botany, geography and voyages of discovery.

Taken together, these sources allow for a thorough examination of Gray’s development as a poet and prose writer and help us to understand his many influences, as well as providing insights into his accomplishments as a scholar and into his views on such subjects as poetry, travel and natural beauty.

This Guide provides both a brief listing of Contents of Reels (for quick  reference) and a detailed list giving a breakdown of the major items included within the Commonplace Book.  We have also provided a  substantial chronology for the period from 1660 to c1825 which attempts to place English Literature in the broad context of European Literature,     British and World History and major scientific and artistic achievements.  For Gray (whose references appear in bold in the chronology) it illustrates his relationship to those who influenced him, his contemporaries, and those who he influenced.  It is hoped that it will prove to be of value.

Special thanks must go to Clive Trebilcock, Fellow and Librarian, Pembroke College, Cambridge, for his comments on this guide, and to all of the Library staff at Pembroke, for their help in preparing this project.

Select Bibliography

Margaret M Smith (ed) Index of English Literary Manuscripts vol III, 1700-1800, Part 2 (Gay-Phillips) (London, 1989)

James Downey and Ben Jones (edd) Fearful Joy.  Papers from the Thomas Gray Bi-Centenary Conference at Carleton University (Montreal, 1974)

Roger Lonsdale (ed)  The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins, Oliver Goldsmith (London, 1969)

H W Starr and J R Hendrickson (edd) The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray, English, Latin and Greek (Oxford, 1966)

Paget Toynbee and Leonard Whibley (edd) Correspondence of Thomas Gray (3 volumes, Oxford, 1935, reissued with corrections and additions by H W Starr, Oxford, 1971)

Edmund Gosse (ed) The Works of Thomas Gray

(4 volumes, London, 1884)

William Powell Jones  Thomas Gray, Scholar: The True Tragedy of an Eighteenth-Century Gentleman (Cambridge, Mass, 1937)

R W Ketton-Cremer  Thomas Gray (Cambridge, 1955)

William Mason (ed) The Poems of Mr Gray, to which are prefixed Memoirs of his Life and Writings by W Mason (York, 1775)

Samuel Johnson  Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets

(London, 1779-1781, edited by G B Hill,  Oxford, 1905)

Clark Sutherland Northrup  A Bibliography of Thomas Gray

(London, 1917)

H W Starr  A Bibliography of Thomas Gray, 1917-1951

(Philadelphia, 1953)

Thomas Gray  Poems by Mr Gray (Published by Dodsley in London and Foulis in Glasgow in 1768 with slight variations)

The poet’s own approved edition of his poems.  Please refer to the chronology for details of the few other works published by Gray during his lifetime and for the major editions up to 1854.

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