3 - Manuscript miscellanies

Summary

In her manuscript miscellany, Ann Bowyer writes 'weomenkind ar man's woe', followed by 'o man wee weomen ar kind' (Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 51, fol. 4r). Directly beneath this is the rhyming couplet: 'Explod that S & giue yt women dew / Then you shall find our sentenc is most trew.' The large initials 'F:B' in the right margin could apply to both passages, raising several questions. Did a person (a family member?) with the initials F. B. write these lines, which Ann Bowyer later transcribed? Did the writer or scribe of these lines wish to engage playfully (or more seriously) with an anagram disparaging to women? Such lines demonstrate the potential interactive nature of manuscript compilation in the period, as readers and writers could transcribe, respond to and even alter what they chose to include in their own compilations. During the early modern period, much literary activity took place in handwritten form. One of the most valuable records we have of manuscript culture is the manuscript miscellany, each one a unique collection of writing culled from a number of sources. Often these miscellanies contained verse, sometimes identifiable as having been copied from printed sources, sometimes known to have circulated in some kind of manuscript transmission, sometimes unknown in any other versions. But these manuscript miscellanies can be difficult to characterize, since material in prose of all types (from sermons to personal records to material gleaned from historical sources) is also often found in their pages. Since the 1980s, the manuscript culture of the early modern period has become an important area of study. More recently, women's participation in this significant literary system has become an expanding field.