an introduction
13
Hockley kept the book for over half a century until his death, after which the manuscript turns up as lot 380 in the Sotheby’s sale of Hockley’s book collection, conducted on April 6–7, 1887. The manuscript resurfaces in a sale by Maggs Brothers in 1929, at which the British author Edward Harry William Meyerstein (1889–1952) purchased it. Meyerstein had an interest in occultism since childhood, and he accumulated what one biographer called “one of the most important collections of manuscripts and books [on magic] ever in private hands.” 40 He placed the date “July 8, 1929,” on the manuscript, and wrote a short poem, “Fairy Lore,” at the end of Part 1. The book was sold with Meyerstein’s library at Sotheby’s of London on December 15–17, 1952, as lot 474. The Folger Library purchased it from Day’s (Booksellers) Ltd. in Highfield in 1958. The second part of the manuscript comes from the collection of Robert Lenciewicz (1941–2002), the noted artist. It was sold as a “manuscript grimoire” with portions of Lenciewicz’s collection at Sotheby’s on July 12, 2007, to the B. H. Breslauer Foundation, who donated it to the Folger.
On the Manuscript The manuscript published herein as the “Book of Oberon” (BoO) is listed as Manuscript V.b.26 at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. The original measures approximately 35 by 23 centimeters (13.8” by 9”), and it is written in black and red ink on vellum. Before the library’s acquisition, the work had been split into two parts, one of 191 pages bound in half calf in the nineteenth century, and the other of 30 pages, bound in tan calfskin. The physical manuscript has undergone several changes over time. In addition to the aforementioned separation, the manuscript has also lost pages and been paginated on two occasions. We have little idea as to the exact dates for these, save that they all were completed after 1583, which is the last date given in the manuscript, and that all, save perhaps for the final separation, occurred before Raphael’s acquisition of the book in 1822. The changes are listed below in order of occurrence: 1. Composition of the manuscript, at least some in separate quires 2. Insertion of notes in cursive script in some unfinished quires 3. Compilation and foliation of the same in brown ink 40. Edward Harry William Meyerstein, Of My Early Life, 1889–1918 (London: N. Spearman, 1957), 25.