John Evelyn

Abbreviations

de Beer

The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer, 6 vols (Oxford, 1955).

Bray

Memoirs, illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, Esq. F. R. S., ed. William Bray [and William Upcott], 2 vols (London, 1818).

Hiscock (1951)

W. S. Hiscock, John Evelyn and Mrs Godolphin (London, 1951)

Hiscock (1955)

W. S. Hiscock, John Evelyn and his Family Circle (London, 1955).

Keynes

Sir Geoffrey Keynes, John Evelyn: A Study in Bibliophily with a Bibliography of his Writings [1st edition, Oxford, 1947], 2nd edition (Oxford, 1968).

Miscellaneous Writings

The Miscellaneous Writings of John Evelyn, Esq. F. R. S.…now first collected, with occasional notes, ed. William Upcott (London, 1825).

Sampson

John Evelyn, The Life of Mrs Godolphin, ed. Harriet Sampson (Oxford, 1939).

Wheatley (1893)

Henry B. Wheatley, Appendix [on John Evelyn] to ‘The Present Condition of English Bibliography, and Suggestions for the Future’, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 1 (1893), pp. 61-90 (pp. 77-90).

Wheatley (1906)

Diary of John Evelyn Esq., F.R.S. to which are added a selection from his familiar letters and the private correspondence…Edited…by William Bray, [and William Upcott], new edition by Henry B. Wheatley, 4 vols (London, 1906).

Introduction

John Evelyn is principally remembered for his extensive Diary — the most celebrated and most historically informative English diary of the seventeenth century after for that of his friend Samuel Pepys — a journal which, however, remained virtually unknown until the selective edition by Bray and Upcott appeared in 1818. More recently, Evelyn has been celebrated, largely through Keynes's bibliography, as a great bibliophile and some attention has begun to be paid to his wide-ranging original writings. In his lifetime Evelyn published some thirty-two books (including translations from several languages) on topics as diverse as the cultivation of fruit trees and the Jansenist controversies, as well as making occasional contributions to the work of others. His very numerous unpublished writings include poems and plays, as well as essays, notes and unfinished literary fragments. In addition, he conducted a voluminous correspondence and held various offices of state which resulted in the production of even more documentary material.

The Christ Church Evelyn Collection

The bulk of Evelyn's extant papers, including most of his Diary (EvJ 215-217), was preserved from 1949 to 1995 as the Evelyn Collection at Christ Church, Oxford. This collection, then comprising 605 numbered manuscripts or manuscript volumes, in addition to a multitude of unnumbered papers of differing sizes, was probably the greater part of the archive that Evelyn left at his death in Wotton House, Surrey. It ranged from extensive autograph writings to miscellaneous estate and family papers, some in other hands, including many manuscripts of others' composition which Evelyn simply owned. Besides suffering some damage through the effect of damp in the cellars at Wotton, where the papers were put for safe keeping (Keynes, p. 22), the archive is not intact since an unspecified, though probably quite limited, number of manuscripts appear to have disappeared over the years through neglect or dispersal. When the antiquary William Upcott (1779-1845) visited the eccentric Lady Evelyn (d.1817) in 1813 — at which time, incidentally, he discovered the Diary — he found (so he claimed) that she had been allowing her household to cut up some of the papers for dress patterns and he did not scruple to accept from her (out of sixteen trunks of such documents) packets and basketsful of papers when she learned that he was interested in ‘old Letters’ and ‘hand writings’ (Keynes, p. 29; de Beer, I, 53-4; and an account by Upcott written 15 June 1833 wassold at Sotheby's, 10 July 1986, lot 54, to Quaritch). Certainly, whatever his method of acquiring them, Upcott had many of Evelyn's papers and books among his own collections afterwards. A number appear in the privately-printed catalogue of Original Letters, Manuscripts, and State Papers, Collected by William Upcott (1836), and sixty-three lots of books and manuscripts of Evelyn are listed in the catalogues of the posthumous sale of Upcott's collections conducted by Sotheby's, in the Evans sale rooms on New Bond Street, on 15-19, 22-4 and (pictures) 25-7 June 1846. Many of these lots were actually bought back for the Evelyn family: see the summary of the sale in the Gentleman's Magazine, 26, ii (1846), 491-6. This brief account of dispersal also excludes considerations of those manuscripts which Evelyn sent to the printer (who on at least one occasion lost his original manuscript before it was used: see Keynes, p. 106), as well as those he may have disposed of during his lifetime. In a letter to Pepys on 6 December 1681, for instance, he refers to one such lost discourse ‘wherein I did attempt to shew how far a gentleman might become very knowing, and to good purpose, by the onely assistance of the modern languages’ (Keynes, pp. 21-2).

The British Library

The entire Evelyn Collection deposited at Christ Church was sold by the Evelyn family to the British Library in 1995. It now comprises 526 manuscript volumes (Add. MSS 78168-78693). Reassembled and usually rebound for conservation purposes, the papers have been catalogued by volume, principally by Frances Harris, and this is available online on the British Library's website.

Given the extent and availability of this cataloguing, most of the entries for Evelyn originally supplied in IELM, II.i (1987) are now outdated. For present purposes, few changes or additions to the entries are made, but most of them can now be supplied with their new British Library call numbers. A small number of items, mainly brief notes and the like, have not yet been identified, but will certainly be somewhere among the BL collection and will no doubt be found in due course. These items are listed below in a repository category of Christ Church, Oxford, Evelyn Collection, as ‘Untraced Evelyn Papers formerly at Christ Church, Oxford’.

In what remains only a selective and provisional guide to Evelyn's extant writings, the entries below are arranged in the following categories. Known manuscripts of works published in Evelyn's lifetime are recorded in the first part of the Prose section (EvJ 11-25), while separate categories are given to his Diaries (EvJ 215-23) and to a small corpus of Verse (EvJ 1-10) and Dramatic Works (EvJ 212-214) among his unpublished papers. The remainder of his unpublished writings, which occupy the majority of the entries, as well as those works in manuscript that were published posthumously, are listed below as ‘Miscellaneous Remains’ in the second part of the Prose section (EvJ 26-211) with titles or convenient subject headings supplied where necessary. These papers, which include commonplace books and devotional compilations (the latter usually written for Margaret Blagge [Mrs Godolphin]), comprise writings on scholarly, philosophical, historical, antiquarian, heraldic, grammatical, theological, economic, musical, horticultural, autobiographical and personal domestic subjects. They also include some of Evelyn's scientific writings — not least the remains of the unfinished scientific project on which he worked for some years, his Elysium Britannicum (EvJ 74-79) — these being a reminder of Evelyn's role as one of the earliest members of the Royal Society, to which he contributed original papers on such subjects as printing (EvJ 55-56) and paper-making (EvJ 86-90).

The majority of Evelyn's miscellaneous papers recorded below are autograph, but some contemporary copies have been given entries, including manuscripts in the neat calligraphic hand of Richard Hoare who, after 12 March 1648/9, was employed for many years as Evelyn's amanuensis (he was ultimately dismissed as unsatisfactory, it seems, and a number of his transcripts bear Evelyn's remarks declaring how full of errors they are). Many scores of other manuscripts in the Evelyn Collection, not recorded here, are written for the most part in other hands and represent collections of both Evelyn and his family rather than original compositions by him. These manuscripts, many of which contain Evelyn's autograph inscription and motto, include a multitude of historical and theological tracts, papers relating to naval matters, an important original correspondence between Charles I and Sir Edward Nicholas [see Bray, II, part ii], two commonplace books of Evelyn's cousin the dramatist Sir Samuel Tuke, and compilations of papers by other members of Evelyn's family, including notably his father-in-law Sir Richard Browne.

Presentation Volumes Inscribed by Evelyn

Many exempla of his own printed works, suitably inscribed, were presented by Evelyn to friends and influential figures, while in other exempla still he sometimes made autograph corrections to the text. In instances where such corrections and revisions virtually amount to projected new editions, separate entries are given below (whether locations are currently known or not: see *EvJ 1, *EvJ 12, *EvJ 21, *EvJ 25). Many other volumes containing autograph inscriptions, corrections or notes (the majority recorded in Keynes), but which have not been given separate entries, include the following:

Acetaria. A Discourse of Sallets (London, 1699).

Harvard [with a presentation letter to the Duchess of Beaufort]; Hodgson's, 16 December 1913 (Edward Dowden sale), lot 114 [inscribed to Sir Christopher Wren]; Sotheby's, 7 April 1930 (Dr Paulin Martin sale), lot 34, to J. D. Christie; H. A. Levinson, catalogue, April 1956 ([inscribed to Lord Chesterfield]); and Christie's, 13 July 1978, lot 1678, to Lawson (facsimile in the catalogue, Plate 13).

An Apology for the Royal Party (2nd edition, 3rd issue, 1659).

Cambridge University Library, Keynes.B.1.25 (Bibliotheca Bibliographici No. 2002 [inscribed to Colonel Morley]).

A Character of England (2nd edition, London, 1659).

British Library (292. a. 43).

The Compleat Gard'ner; or, Directions for Cultivating and Right Ordering of Fruit-Gardens and Kitchen-Gardens [trans. from Jean de La Quintinye] (London, 1693).

Hodgson's, 30 October 1930, lot 587, to Lee [inscribed to Lord Godolphin]; and Christie's, 13 July 1978, lot 1730, to Quaritch [inscribed to William Glanville, Jr: facsimile in the sale catalogue].

An Essay on the First Book of T. Lucretius Carus De Rerum Natura (London, 1656).

Clark Library, Los Angeles (*PR3433 E5Z4e. cop. 2) [inscribed to Lord Offley]; Harvard [inscribed to Edward Luttrell]; and Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys Library (1001) [inscribed to Samuel Pepys].

Fumifugium: or The Inconveniencie of the Aer and Smoak of London dissipated (London, 1661).

Christie's, 13 July 1978, lot 1683, to Weinreb.

The Golden Book of St. John Chrysostom (London, 1659).

Bodleian (Linc 8° A. 125 [inscribed to Dr Thomas Barlow]).

The History of the Three late Famous Impostors (London, 1669).

British Library (Eve. a. 25: bought at Christie's, 13 July 1978, lot 1684, with a facsimile in the sale catalogue).

An Idea of the Perfection of Painting [trans. from Roland Fréart, Sieur de Chambray] (London, 1668).

British Library (Eve. a. 19: [inscribed to Ralph Bathurst]. Bought at Christie's, 13 July 1978, lot 1723, with a facsimile in the sale catalogue; previously at Sotheby's, 29 November 1972, lot 352, and at Christie's, 23 November 1998, lot 79; and Harvard (*EC65.Ev226.668f [inscribed to Sir Peter Lely]).

Instructions concerning Erecting of a Library [trans. from Gabriel Naudé] (London, 1661).

Bodleian (Linc 8° B. 385 [inscribed to Dr Thomas Barlow]); and Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys Library (789 [inscribed to Samuel Pepys]).

Kalendarium Hortense: or, the Gard'ners Almanac (2nd edition, London, 1666).

British Library (G.2299 [inscribed to Lord Arlington]).

Kalendarium Hortense: or, the Gard'ners Almanac (7th edition, London, 1683).

Library Company of Philadelphia (Wing E 3497 66635.0 [inscribed to ‘My noble Ld’]).

Kalendarium Hortense: or, the Gard'ners Almanac (8th edition, London, 1691).

Harvard [inscribed to Dr Ashe].

The Mystery of Jesuitism; or The new Heresie of the Jesuites [trans. from Antoine Arnauld] (London, 1664).

British Library (C.53.bb.20 [inscribed to Sir Henry Herbert]; and Eve. a. 34 [bought at Christie's, 13 July 1978, lot 1717, with facsimiles in the sale catalogue, Plate 18, and in Keynes, p. 127]).

Navigation and Commerce, their Original and Progress (London, 1674).

British Library (713.b.3 [inscribed to Henry Slingsby]; C. 112. b. 11); Maggs's sale catalogue, June 1921 [inscribed to Sir Henry Capell]; McLeish & Son, sale catalogue, October 1950 ([inscribed to the second Baron Gorges of Dundalk]).

Numismata. A Discourse of Medals, Ancient and Modern (London, 1697).

British Library (C.71.g.3 [inscribed to Sir Hans Sloane]); Huntington (RB 65848); and Blackwell's sale catalogue A20 (1981), item 62 [inscribed to Lord Clarendon, bought from Christie's, 13 July 1978, lot 1697].

Of Liberty and Servitude [trans. from the Sieur de la Mothe le Vayer] (London, 1649).

Pierpont Morgan Library (W 3 B (annotations edited in the TLS, 5 April 1951)).

A Panegyric to Charles the Second (London, 1661).

Cambridge University Library, Keynes.Q.6.17(2) (Bibliotheca Bibliographici No. 2039).

A Parallel of the Antient Architecture with the Modern [trans. from Roland Fréart, Sieur de Chambray] (London, 1664).

Bodleian (Antiqu. A II. 1) [inscribed to the Bodleian Library]; British Library (Eve.c.20: Sotheby's, 31 October 1928, lot 818, to Thorp [inscribed to Sir Christopher Wren; bought at Christie's, 13 July 1978, lot 1726]; Christie's, 13 July 1978, lot 1727, to Quaritch [inscribed to John Beale: facsimile in the sale catalogue, Plate 20].

A Philosophical Discourse of Earth (London, 1676).

Cambridge University Library, Keynes.B.2.35 (Bibliotheca Bibliographici No. 2040).

Publick Employment and an Active Life…prefer'd to Solitude (London, 1667).

British Library (Eve.a.15 [inscribed to Boyle; bought at Christie's, 13 July 1978, lot 1704: facsimile in the sale catalogue, Plate 15]; Yale (Osborn pb 25), bought at Christie's, 12 October 1977, lot 62) [inscribed to his brother R. Evelyn]: facsimile in the sale catalogue, frontispiece; the inscribed front leaf found to be missing and the volume returned to Christ Church, Oxford.

Sculptura: or the History, and Art of Chalcography and Engraving in Copper (London, 1662).

British Library (Eve.a.19 [bought at Christie's, 13 July 1978, lot 1705: facsimiles in the sale catalogue, Plates 16 and 17]); Pierpont Morgan Library (7700 [inscribed to Sir Thomas Browne: a facsimile in Keynes, p. 119].

Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees (London, 1664).

Brick Row Bookshop, San Francisco, sale catalogue No. 28 (November 1926), item 191 [inscribed to Thomas Chiffing]; Christie's, 13 July 1978, lot 1707, to Marlborough: a facsimile in the sale catalogue [inscribed to Sir Edmund Bowyer]; lot 1708, to Maggs [inscribed to Dr Jaspar Needham]; 8 November 1978, lot 42, to Quaritch: a facsimile in the sale catalogue; 14 June 1979 (Arthur A. Houghton, Jr sale, Part I), lot 202, to Howell [inscribed to Sir George Carteret]; Blackwell's sale catalogue A20 (1981), item 26 [inscribed to Lord Chesterfield]. Keynes records (p. 132) other exempla presented to Sir Thomas Browne (lost), to John Hopkins and to Thomas Chaffinch.

Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees (2nd edition, London, 1670).

Library Company of Philadelphia (Wing E 3517 Log. 1730.F [inscribed to Elias Ashmole]); Christie's, 13 July 1978, lot 1709, to Sotheran [inscribed to Dr William Croone]; lot 1710, to Quaritch [inscribed to Dr Colwall]; lot 1711, to Drury [inscribed to John Hoskins]. Keynes records (pp. 132-3) other exempla inscribed for presentation to Sir John Narborough and to Sir Edward Bysshe, the latter now in the library of Robert Pirie, New York.

Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees (3rd edition, London, 1679).

British Library (Eve.b.31); Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys Library (237 [inscribed to Pepys]). Keynes records (p. 133) other exempla presented to Dr Ralph Bathurst, to Sir Francis North and to Charles Bertie.

Letters

Many other examples of Evelyn's hand survive in the form of personal letters. Evelyn conducted a voluminous correspondence over the course of his long life and several hundred letters by him are still preserved, many in the originals, many others in retained drafts or in copies in his letterbooks. These are in addition to an indeterminate number of letters sent to him by his many correspondents. Among the latter were some of the most distinguished writers and public figures of his time, including Samuel Pepys, to whom a very large number of the surviving letters are addressed. The main collection of Evelyn's correspondence is to be found in the autograph letterbooks (containing over 380 letters from 1679 to 1698) in the Evelyn Papers (British Library Add. MSS 78298, 78399, and 78579). A further volume, containing Evelyn's copies of select letters to particularly important persons from c.1644 to 1679 (including, inter alia, Cowley, Davenant, Waller, Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne) is in the private ownership of Lord Camoys, of Stonor Park (a negative microfilm, made in 1969, is in the Bodleian, MS Film 743). Over 1,430 letters sent to Evelyn by correspondents are also among the Evelyn Papers in the British Library, as well as in Add. MSS 15857-15858, 15948-15949, passim).

Other repositories possessing letters by Evelyn include the following:

Bodleian (MSS Ashmole 1115, f. 172r; 1136, ff. 114r, 115r; Aubrey 4, f. 28; Autog. c. 8, ff. 30r-6r; Rawl. A. 170, f. 64r; A. 171, ff. 316r, 328r; A. 179, ff. 8r, 84r; A. 190, f. 10r; A. 195, ff. 77r-8r, 249r-54r; Rawl. D. 391, f. 36r; Rawl. lett. 107, f. 192r; Tanner 27, ff. 37r; 28r, 191r; Tanner letters 37, f. 210r; Wood F.41, ff. 222r, 224r).

British Library (Add. MSS 15848, f. 64v; 15858, f. 40r; 15946, f. 47r; 15948, ff. 5r-37r, 155r; 15949, ff. 8r, 21r, 46r; 28104, ff. 18r, 21r; 28167, ff. 11r, 12r; Add. MS 70949, ff. 18r-19v (formerly Loan MS 60/2, item 3 (3)); Sloane MSS 3962, f. 282r; 4037, f. 69r; 4039, f. 404r; 4063, f. 102r; 4075, ff. 91r-7v; Stowe MS 755, f. 37r).

Cambridge University Library (MS Add. 5952).

Clark Library, Los Angeles (fE935L C697).

Eton College (MS 12a).

Harvard (*EC65Ev226.699aa; bMSS Eng 991; 992.5; 992.6; 1178; Lowell autograph).

Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Dreer Collection, Eng. Prose Writers; Gratz Collection, British Authors, Case 10, Box 29; British Statesmen, Case 9, Box 38).

Huntington (HM 25798).

Inner Temple Library (Petyt MS S38, Vol. 17, f. 91r).

The Marquess of Bath, Longleat House.

Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys Library (2237, pp. 1-2; 2421 (1); and 2873, pp. 53-5, 56-9, 65-89).

Maine Historical Society.

National Maritime Museum (LBK/8).

University of Texas at Austin (Pforzheimer MSS 35D-L).

Pierpont Morgan Library (MA 3266; MA 3385; R-V Autographs misc. English; Pepys, S. and Penn, W., Documents).

Robert S. Pirie, New York (letter to Wren: photocopy in the British Library, RP 161).

Princeton, Robert H. Taylor Collection, passim.

National Archives, Kew (SP 29 series, passim).

Royal Society (Letter Books E.1-E.6; LBC 1. 52; LBC supp. 3. 93; LBO supp. 3. 135; LBC supp. 3. 97; LBO supp. 3. 137; LBC supp. 394; LBO supp. 3. 107).

Yale (Osborn Files/Evelyn).

Many of Evelyn's letters are in private collections (recorded, for instance, in various HMC reports) or have appeared in sale catalogues in past centuries. Sale catalogues containing facsimile illustrations of letters by Evelyn include, inter alia: Samuel J. Davey's sale catalogue No. 31 (London, 1889), frontispiece. Maggs's sale catalogues No. 570 (1932), item 1603; No. 605 (1935), item 89; No. 634 (1936), item 655; and elsewhere. Sotheby's, 16 March 1937, lot 488; 23 July 1987, lot 248; and 24 July 1995, lot 487; Christie's, 14 June 1979 (Houghton sale, Part I), lots 203-5, and 11 June 1980 (Part II), lot 363. Christie's, New York, 6 February 1981 (Prescott sale), lot 107.

Other facsimile examples of letters by Evelyn may be found in Bray, I and II, frontispiece; Miscellaneous Writings, frontispiece; Lawrence B. Phillips, The Autographic Album (London, 1866), p. 19; Catalogue of the Collection of …Alfred Morrison, II (1885), 104-5; Garnett & Gosse (1903), III, 117; Seven Letters of John Evelyn, written between the years 1665 & 1703, [ed. Frances Evelyn Rowley Heygate] (privately printed, Oxford, 1914), pp. 6-7; British Literary Autographs, Series I, ed. Verlyn Klinkenbord et al. (New York, 1981), No. 49; A.M. Broadley, Chats on Autographs (London, 1910), p. 200; and Clara Marburg, Mr. Pepys and Mr. Evelyn (Philadelphia & London, 1935), after p. 8.

There is, understandably, no complete edition of Evelyn's letters, but, in addition to works already mentioned (particularly Bray), various texts have appeared in publications including the following: Robert Boyle, Works, [ed. T. Birch] (London, 1744), V, 397-403; Thomas Birch, History of the Royal Society of London (London, 1756), I, 13-15; Gentleman's Magazine, 67.i (1797), 218-19; William Belve, Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books (London, 1807-12), II, 430-1; London Magazine, 10 (1824), 589-92; Richard Bentley, Correspondence (London, 1842); J. E. Spingarn, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, II (Oxford, 1908), pp. 310-29; O. F. Morshead, ‘New Light on Pepys’, The Times (18 February 1927); Clara Marburg, Mr Pepys and Mr Evelyn (Philadelphia & London, 1935), Appendix; E. V. Unger and W. A. Jackson, The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library: English Literature, 1475-1700, 3 vols (New York, 1940), III, 1210-32; and Particular Friends: The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, ed. Guy de Bédoyère (Woodbridge, 1997). Some of Evelyn's letters are also printed in editions of his Diary.

Evelyn's Library

No less widely dispersed than his letters is Evelyn's library, which was plainly the predominant enthusiasm of his life. His importance as a bibliophile is now well established. Among much else, he published a translation of the Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque by Gabriel Naudé, successively librarian of Cardinals di Bagni, Barberini, Richelieu and Mazarin and of Queen Christina of Sweden (Paris, 1627) — viz. Instructions concerning Erecting of a Library (London, 1661) — and he drew up a plan for the library of the Royal Society (*EvJ 46, *EvJ 53). He observed: ‘I ever look upon a Library with the reverence of a temple’ (Keynes, p. 6). Besides visiting many of the finest European libraries of his day, he built up over the years a highly selective private library of at least 5,000 volumes. ‘He annotated his books profusely in the margin, and showed an almost modern passion for association copies’ (Keynes, p. 9). He generally entered in them a record of his purchase, his pressmark and his motto (‘Omnia Explorate, Meliora Retinete’; i.e. ‘Proove All things, Retaine the Best’: Keynes, p. 12); and he had most of his books bound in his own, sometimes elaborately tooled, bindings (see the discussion and illustrations in Keynes, pp. 24-8). Much is known about his library from several extant manuscript catalogues and other booklists and notes by him (EvJ 34-54), as well as a number of later family library catalogues relating to Wotton now in the British Library. Three catalogues of Evelyn's library — which may correspond with certain of the extant catalogues — were sold in the Upcott sale in 1846 as lots 60-2 (see Keynes, p. 13).

Evelyn himself sold more than 1,500 books when he moved to Wotton towards the end of his life. However, a goodly portion of these was evidently books inherited from his son, John, who died in 1699. Evelyn also disposed of a few books at an earlier date when, as a student, he presented eight theological volumes to Balliol College, Oxford, where they still remain (Keynes, p. 4). Like various of his papers, a number of his books later fell into the hands of William Upcott and appeared in the Upcott sale on 15-19 June 1846. They included works by Elias Ashmole, St Augustine, J. La Bona, G. Botero, Richard Corbett, B. Contino, G. B. Olevano, M. Parker, R. Plot, F. Mauriceau, a Euchiridion legum (1673), Instructions pour l'histoire (1677), Psalms of David (1630 and 1668), Form of a Prayer for Ireland (1693), and other miscellaneous tracts. Some other books separated from the main library have occasionally resurfaced in booksellers' catalogues over the years or are now housed in various public and private collections. The great bulk of Evelyn's library, however, remained with the Evelyn family and was later accommodated, like the Evelyn archive, at Christ Church. They included notably The Book of Common Prayer (London, 1638) which, according to Evelyn's inscription, is the ‘Booke which Charles the first M. B. did use vpon the Scaffold xxx Jan: 1649 being the Day of his glorious Martyrdom’. Detached and inscribed title-pages from some of Evelyn's books include examples in the Bodleian (MS Montagu d. 12, f. 315r); British Library (Add. MS 15948, f. 4*r; Add. MS 70949, f. 17r [formerly Loan MS 60/2, item 3 (2)]); Cambridge University Library, Sir Geoffrey Keynes Library (Bibliotheca Bibliographici No. 2084, and Huntington (HM 42760). With these exceptions, the greater part of the Evelyn library at Christ Church was ultimately dispersed in the series of great Evelyn sales at Christie's on 22-23 June, 30 November and 1 December 1977 and 15-16 March, 12-13 July and 8 November 1978.

The single greatest buyer at the Evelyn sales was the British Library, which acquired approximately 340 of the lots, now classified in a special ‘Eve.’ series. These books include such notable items as Evelyn's copiously annotated set of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1665-1704 (Eve.a.149) and his annotated exempla of works by, among others, Lancelot Andrewes (Eve.b.26 and 50), Robert Boyle (Eve.a.84), Dr Edward Browne (Eve.b.44), Sir Thomas Browne (Eve.a.166 and b.12), Abraham Cowley (Eve.b.28), Thomas Hobbes (Evea.14 and b.38), Richard Hooker (Eve.b.13), Sir Walter Ralegh (Eve.b.36), Elkanah Settle (Eve.b.7), Jeremy Taylor (Eve.a.55-56 and b.40 and b.55), and a volume of Augustan History once owned by Ben Jonson (Eve.c.3). Some other present locations of Evelyn's books include the following:

Cambridge University Library, Keynes.B.1.18 and Keynes.B.1.22 (William Croone, De ratione motus musiulorum, 1664, and J. and V. Nicolas, Scaligerana, 1667: Bibliotheca Bibliographici Nos. 2082-3); Harvard (*EC65.Ev226.Zz651t [an annotated Terence, 1651]); Huntington (RB 53556 [Sir Richard Baker, A Chronicle of the Kings of England, 1695: discussed in ‘John Evelyn and Colonel Herbert Morley in 1659-60’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 1 (1938), 439-46]); Library Company of Philadelphia (*STC 7302 1312.Q (S. Preston) [Franciscus Junius, The Painting of the Ancients, 1638]). Norwich Central Library (L 234905 [Sir Thomas Browne, Certain Miscellany Tracts, 1683]); Pierpont Morgan Library (2); and Rosenbach Museum & Library (EL2 .C851c 676 [The Compleat Angler, 1676].

Among the many auction and booksellers' catalogues that have included books from Evelyn's library are:

Thomas Rodd, catalogue (1824), item 4364 [Tacitus, 1622, owned by Evelyn at Oxford in 1638]; Sotheby's, 20 December 1838 (the Rev H.S. Cotton sale), lot 62 [Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler, 1676], to Rodd, and lot 72 [Charles Cotton, Memoirs of the Sieur De Pontis, 1694], to White; C.J. Stewart, London, sale catalogue of ‘Writers of the Seventeenth and later Centuries’ [c.1860] [exemplum in British Library, 11900.b.35], item 2428 [Philip Ellis, Sermon, 1686]; Alfred Russell Smith, London, sale catalogue, of ‘upwards of twenty-six thousand Ancient and Modern Tracts and Pamphlets’ (1874) [exemplum in the British Library, 11903. cc.12], item 7656 [Aristarchus, De magnitudinibus, 1572]; Maggs's sale catalogue No. 503 (1928), item 778 [Paolo Sarpi, Histoire du concile de Trente, 1686]; Quaritch's sale catalogue No. 196 (1900), items 3320-1 [Henricus Oraeus, Nomenclator praecipuorum…doctorum, scriptorum…Hanoviae, 1619, and the grammar Primigeniae voces seu radices linguae Graecae, 1619]; Sotheby's, 20 June 1938 (Ham House sale), lot 313 [John Raymond, An Itinerary contayining a Voyage made through Italy, 1648], to Beckett; Dawson, sale catalogues No. 208 (1960s), item 177 [Monumentum regale, 1649, etc.]; No. 213, item 415 [Mathias Prideaux, 1682]; 217 (May 1971), item 103 [George Sandys, A Relation of a Iourney begun An: Dom: 1610, 1637]; J. Pearson's sale catalogue ‘200 Books from the Libraries of …Book-collectors’ (n.d.), item 62 [Juris et judicii facialis, 1650]; Anthony Laywood, sale catalogues No. 48 (September 1977), item 138 [R.P. Castlemaine, 1666]; No. 51 (March 1978), item 112 [John Chrysostom, 1604]; and No. 55 (1978), item 158 [Thomas May, 1633]; Blackwell's sale catalogue A20 (1981) (numerous: see summary in The Book Collector, 30 (1981), 538); Quaritch's sale catalogues ‘English Books before 1701’ (October 1983), items 173 [Bacon, Henry the Seventh, 1629] and 347 [Milton, Poems, 1645]; No. 1043, ‘Four Centuries of English Books’ (December 1984), items 110 [Milton, as before] and 122 [Spelman, Archaeologus, 1626]; Pickering & Chatto's sale catalogue No. 652 (January 1984), item 341 [Ben Jonson, Workes, 1640]; Sotheby's, New York, 31 October 1985, lot 10 [Exquemelin, Bucaniers of America, 1684]; and Philip J. Pirages, sale catalogue No 45 (2000), item 18 [Roger Ascham, Familiarum epistolarum, 1590].

For surveys and discussions of Evelyn's library and its formation and catalogues, see, inter alia, Keynes (1968); John Bidwell, ‘Book-Sale Catalogues from the Evelyn Library, 1682-92’, in Fine Books and Book Collecting, ed. Christopher de Hamel and Richard A. Linenthal (Leamington Spa, 1981), pp. 62-4, with a facsimile; G. de la Bédoyère, ‘John Evelyn's Library Catalogue’, The Book Collector, 43 (1994), 529-48, including facsimile examples; and articles by Nicolas Barker, Michael Hunter, and others (with facsimile examples and including a checklist of Evelyn's books in the British Library) in John Evelyn in the British Library (London, 1995 [first published in The Book Collector, 44/2 (Summer 1995), pp. 147-238)]; and Mirjam Foot, ‘John Evelyn's Bookbindings’, and Giles Mandelbrote, ‘John Evelyn and his Books’, both, with numerous facsimile examples, in John Evelyn and his Milieu, ed. Frances Harris and Michael Hunter (London, 2003), pp. 61-70 and 71-94 respectively.

Various inscriptions and annotated pages in books from Evelyn's library are illustrated in the Christie's sale catalogues, in Keynes (pp. 10-11), and elsewhere.

Miscellaneous Documents

Among other items that have not been given separate entries here are Evelyn's autograph notes added to two manuscript works by John Aubrey in the Bodleian: one ‘The Naturall Historie of Wiltshire, 1685’ (MSS Aubrey 1, 2), where Aubrey records (MS 1, f. 3v) that he has ‘runne them all over againe with Inke’; the other his ‘Monumenta Britannica’ of 1665-93 (MSS Top. gen. c. 24, 25), of which there is a copy in the British Library (Add. MS 78659). Original contributions by Evelyn to Bishop Gibson's edition of Camden's Britannia (London, 1695) are among Gibson's collections in the Bodleian (MSS Dep. c. 225-6).

Other domestic and official papers partly written, signed or endorsed by Evelyn include various documents in the British Library (Add. MS 20731, ff. 2r-5v; Add. MS 70949, ff. 20r-2r (formerly Loan MS 60/2, item 3 (4)); Clark Library, Los Angeles (E935Z D311 1693 Bound; fE 935L C697); Harvard (bMS Eng 991; MSS Eng 992.3, Eng 992.4; and Eng 1178); Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys Library (287, pp. 549-50); and National Archives, Kew (SP 29/199/3; SP 29/210/47; SP 29/254/119; SP 29/279/100A; and SP 29/311/13).

Letters concerning the publication of Evelyn's ‘Memoirs’ in 1818 are in the British Library (Add. MS 15951). Transcripts of manuscripts used for de Beer's edition of the Diary in 1955 are in the Bodleian (MSS Eng. misc. c. 335-7).

Peter Beal
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