Call Number:

Ms. Codex 1800

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

1 volume

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Ms. Codex 1800, Commonplace book, 1798, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania

Date:

1798 (inclusive)

Form:

Manuscripts, English -- 18th century, Quotations, Excerpts, Commonplace books, and Codices (bound manuscripts)

Abstract:

A volume containing a collection of copied excerpts and quotations chiefly regarding the history of Great Britain, Rome, and the Byzantine Empire. The codex is written on 180 numbered pages by an unknown compiler. "Extracts 1798" is written on the spine.

This marbled paper-covered volume with "Extracts 1798" written on the leather spine contains a collection of copied excerpts and quotations on 180 numbered pages by an unknown compiler. The marbled paper used to cover the boards has printed text from portions of two works. On the front cover is half of page 92 from An enquiry into the prices of wheat, malt, etc. sold in England, printed about 1765. The back cover has a half page of another work on money in sixteenth-century England. The volume comprises a collection of passages and quotations with citation notes below each excerpt. The extracts concern history, philosophy, and theology with some passages from works on medicine, literature, and geography. The compiler chiefly recorded items from The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon and The history of England by David Hume. Other excerpts in the volume include Domestic medicine by William Buchan, William Finch's Brampton lectures, and the Harleian miscellany. There are also passages copied from contemporary novels, lectures, plays, poems and sermons.