Persian MS 358 (The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, The University of Manchester)

Persian Manuscripts

Summary of Contents: This first of two volumes, together with Persian MS 359, presents the first seventeen chapters of an English ornate prosimetrical translation of Leily and Mejnoon completed by British poet, orientalist, and painter, Charles Fox (1749–1809). One of the earliest attempts to render a complete work of Persian poetry into English, Fox references a volume in his collection that he claims was anonymously written in 949 AH (1542–1543 CE), which his friend and subsequent owner Rev. Adam Clarke (1762–1832) later identified as by Hilālī. Fox completed his translation over the course of several years and continually amended it, hence the current manuscript appears executed on many variant papers and inks at different times. After completing the work, he travelled to London in 1802 to seek a publisher, but he failed to find one, hence it remains unpublished.

Author and Bibliographic antecedent: Hilālī, Badr al-Dīn, d. ca. 1528–1529;
هلالی، بدر الدین

Author and Translator: Fox, Charles 1749–1809

Title: Leily and Mejnoon

Title: The history of love, exemplified by a poetical picture of the afflicted lovers

Incipit: (beginning) Folio 1a: Title page[indecipherable pencil... "dyest"?]
داستان عشق آن نکار موزون مخزن یعني
لیلی و محنون
The History of Love
exeplified by
A poetical Picture of the affected Lovers
Leily and Mejnooj
translation from the original Persian
Manuscript,
By Charles Fox.
لیلیي اسن حیات جاوداني * لیلي است نشاط زندگي‌ | در عشق یگانه شو چو مجنون * مجنون زمانه شوچو مجنون

Explicit: : ...Eternal as the love that fix'd it there.

Colophon: No colophon, but completed by Fox before 6 Oct. 1802, when British poet Robert Southey (1774–1843) reports to publisher and author Joseph Cottle (1770–1853) that Fox had then arrived in London seeking to publish it.

Language(s): Persian

While the exact whereabouts of the original manuscript that Fox references now appears unaccounted for, Clarke's son describes it in his catalogue, p. 177, np. 153.

Physical Description

Form: codex

Support: Various straight-grained laid papers handmade in Britain, including watermarks of ‘Jospeph Coles’, of papermaker Jospeph Coles Sprague (fl. 1788–1826) who then owned and operated the St Cuthberts Mill in Wells, Somerset dated 1800, and another undated mark of Edmeads & Pine, of Ivy Mill in Maidstone, Kent.

Dimensions (leaf): 192 × 116 mm.

Text area varies.

Foliation: Unfoliated except for some individual chapters.

Collation

Variant quires and singletons await analysis. No Catchwords.

Condition

Text in good condition.

Layout

Written in 1 column with variant lines throughout.

Hand(s)

Written in a range of clear and hasty hands by Charles Fox .

Additions: Bookplates and Pasted Items:

The Left pastedown bears an unidentified (possibly Straker?) pasted catalogue entry .
The Left pastedown bears the Sotheby's sale entry for the set, as well as the ‘Bibliotheca Lindesiana’ bookplate with shelfmark ‘1/K’, ‘Bland MSS No. 578’ with the name and number crossed out and ‘Persian’ and ‘358’ written aside.

Binding

Probably uniformly bound as a set for Rev. Adam Clarke shortly before his death, together with Persian MS 355 to 357.

Oversewn on three recessed cords with wove paper watermarked ‘J. Whatman 1831’, manufactured by the Whatman Paper Mill in Maidstone, Kent, then owned and operated by William Balston (1759–1849) added as endpapers at beginning and end. Untrimmed, endbands omitted. Covered in half British-tan coloured calfskin leather with medium-brown shell-patterned marbled paper sides.

Spine panels paletted with single fillets, with the title of the set, volume number, and translator's names tooled with handle letters in the second to fourth panels down, respectively.

199 × 128 × 31 mm.

Binding in fair but stable condition, with spine surface cracked, board edges and joints abraded, upper headcap broken, tailcap lost, corners bumped. Opening to the gutter margins restricted due to oversewing.

History

Origin: Completed by Charles Fox (1749–1809), in either Bristol; and/or Bath; before 6 Oct. 1802 CE.

Provenance and Acquisition

Subsequently acquired at the sale of Fox's library by Methodist minister Rev. Adam Clarke (1762–1832), who had the set bound into their present form. After Clarke's death, his son Jospeh Butterworth Bulmer Clarke (d. 1855) inherited the volumes and describes them in a catalogue published in 1835.

The next year on 20 June 1836, Clarke's son auctioned his father's collection through the London firm of Sotheby & Son where bookseller William Straker (fl. 1831–1856) purchased it for £2 10 shillings.

Probably sold by Straker to scholar Nathaniel Bland (1803–1865), after whose death, London bookseller Bernard Quaritch (1819–1899) sold his oriental manuscripts in 1866 to Alexander Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford (1812–1880).

Purchased by Enriqueta Rylands (1843–1908) in 1901 from James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford (1847–1913).

Bequeathed by Enriqueta Rylands (1843–1908) in 1908 to the John Rylands Library.

Record Sources

Bibliographical description based on an index created by Reza Navabpour circa 1993, derived from a manuscript handlist by Michael Kerney, circa 1890s and his Bibliotheca Lindesiana, Hand-list of Oriental Manuscripts: Arabic, Persian, Turkish, 1898.

Manuscript description by Jake Benson in 2023 with reference to the volume in hand.

Availability

To book an in-person or online appointment to consult the manuscript, visit Using the Special Collections Reading Rooms. For any other enquiries please email uml.special-collections@manchester.ac.uk.

Bibliography

Persian MS 359

Robert Southey to Joseph Cottle, 6 Oct. 1802. 'The Collected Letters of Robert Southey, Part Two: 1798-1803'. Edited by I. Packer and L. Pratt Romantic Circles (Aug. 2011), No. 725. Accessed: 20 Apr. 2023

W. P. Courteney and P. Carter, 'Charles Fox 1740?–1809' Oxford National Dictionary of Bibliography 24 May 2007). Accessed: 19 Apr. 2023.

J. B. B. Clarke, A Historical and Descriptive Catalogue of the European and Asiatic Manuscripts in the Library of the late Dr. Adam Clarke, F.S.A., M.R.I.A. (London: J. Murrary, 1835), p. 98, no. CCXXIIV.

Paul Kaufman, ‘Charles Fox: An Early Interpreter of Persian Poetry’ Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1835), pp. 79-86.

Sotheby and Son, Catalogue of the Highly Interesting and Valuable Collection of European and Asiatic Manuscripts of the late Dr. Adam Clarke, F.S.A., M.R.I.A. (London: [Printed by Compton and Richie], 1836), p. 82, no. 594.

Funding of Cataloguing

Iran Heritage Foundation

The John Rylands Research Institute

Subjects

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