C S Knighton, Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College

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C S KNIGHTON (ed), Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College: Cambridge: Supplementary Series II. Collections 1 (Boydell & Brewer, 2018, 525pp)

More than forty years ago Robert Latham, as Pepys Librarian, commenced a project to catalogue the great library of Samuel Pepys at Magdalene. This volume is the ninth to be published and is the second in the Supplementary Series which was began in 2004 by Latham’s successor, Richard Luckett, at the suggestion of Dr Charles Knighton, now Principal Assistant Keeper of Archives at Clifton College, Bristol, and a widely published authority on Pepys. With the active encouragement of the current Pepys Librarian, Dr Jane Hughes, Charles Knighton continues a distinguished series with a publication that is indispensable to the fuller understanding of Pepys’s extraordinary collection.

Before this modern undertaking, the only general catalogue was that made by John Jackson, in two volumes, under his uncle Pepys’s direction. This consists of an alphabetical index with both class and subject catalogues, with the books numbered from 1 (the smallest) to 3,000 (the largest). Nonetheless, Pepys's books have been catalogued in other ways and on many occasions during his lifetime and in the centuries since. Pepys attended closely to the arrangement of his books, as he pondered the range of his acquisitions, adding new titles and disposing of others. He was greatly concerned to catalogue his collection, renumbering many of his prized volumes when he moved them between shelves. His bookcases protected books arranged by size, but the size, appearance and, crucially, the original cataloguing, of many volumes disguised their construction: many volumes contain dozens of small pamphlets and printed items, gathered together under a generic title given to them by their proud collector.

The cataloguing of these miscellaneous works has been the task of the Supplementary Series of the modern catalogue to the Pepys collection. This new Catalogue volume contains three sections: Maritime, comprising the four Pepysian volumes of Sea Tracts and one of Naval Pamphlets; Religious, comprising the eight volumes of Sermons Polemical, the three of Liturgick Controversies, one of Sermons on the Death of Queen Mary, and the ten of Convocation Pamphlets; and finally Political, comprising a volume of Parliamentary Votes and Papers, and seven of Narratives and Tryals. Each separately bound volume of pamphlets has its own original catalogue number, with a number in brackets

after it, representing the position of the pamphlet in the volume. So, for example, the four volumes which Pepys named Sea Tracts are classmarks 1077, 1078, 1079 and 1080, and although all the separate pamphlets within these volumes are already briefly listed in the Pepys printed books catalogue and its census volume, this new Collections volume describes them in far greater detail. Moreover, each section is prefaced by a marvellously informative account of the scope and history of the constituent items, and a guide is given to their original numbering and collecting history (as well as fascinating attendant information). Each entry for the individual tracts and pamphlets is a model of bibliographical detail and concision. Among many corrections to existing descriptions of the material are telling reproaches to modern revisions to older and more accurate scholarship. The catalogue is also beautifully illustrated, with numerous reproductions of prints found within the Pepys collection, the majority drawn from Pepys’s albums of engraved ‘heads’.

If I were to single out one part of the Catalogue for special attention, it would be that devoted to the many volumes of Sermons Polemical. Within these are 172 pieces by 129 individuals. During the eighteenth century many guides to book collecting and library associations urged the avoidance of works of ‘polemical divinity,’ but in this earlier age, Pepys seems to have revelled in it. Most of the sermons he bought reflected the religious and indeed political upheaval of his childhood, and most were preached before parliament in the 1640s. As with other sections, the entries for the sermons highlight numerous bibliographical puzzles for those who wish to follow the trail, and a fascinating side-line is the relationship between the ‘pirate trade’ in sermon publication and the use and development of shorthand. As Knighton writes in the introduction to the Religious section, we can too easily misunderstand or even overlook Pepys’s interest in sermons and his criticism of them. Partly this is because his diary mentions sermons he heard – and the many through which he slept – but rarely offers much commentary upon them. Most reflections occur in the early 1660s, when, as Knighton muses, ‘the earnestness of youth was still with him’ but Pepys’s comments are often opaque. An exception came with his censure of James Duport, later to be Master of Magdalene, who gave ‘the most flat, dead sermon, both for matter and manner of delivery, that I ever heard’.

Those interested in Pepys and his collection will be hugely indebted to Dr Knighton. These days, most new catalogues are digital and available online. While this enables searching opportunities beyond the traditionally printed catalogue, a searching session in front of the screen can often be a soulless exercise, and one usually unaccompanied by any detailed explanatory guide to the collection under review. Not so with this sumptuous volume, elegantly conceived and printed, faithfully matching others in the series, and continuing the series’ extremely high standards of scholarship, presentation and display. J R R