The diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715-1726. Edited by C. E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright
first edition
1966 · London
by Wanley, Humfrey
London: Bibliographical Society, 1966. First edition, 2 volumes, 8vo, pp. xcv, [1], 207, [1]; [4], 209-518, [2]; 2 frontispieces, 1 a portrait, the other a facsimile of his handwriting; generally fine in original blue cloth, gilt-lettered spine. With the bookplates of Jacob Chernofsky, and ex-Seven Gables Bookshop. Humfrey Wanley is the subject of all of Chapter V in David Douglas's English Scholars (L., 1939): "In 1705 ... there was published as a supplementary volume to the Thesaurus of Hickes, a folio which bore Wanley's name on its title-page and which was the crowning achievement of his career [and was] the most valuable section of the Thesaurus. It later acquired fortuitously an additional importance from its detailed description of many manuscripts which perished in the fire which damaged the Cotton Library in 1731. And from the quality of its scholarship and the extent of its range it retains its value as an indispensable work of reference, and is today almost as useful as when it was written." (Inventory #: 31887)