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Exciting news alert A new John Donne manuscript has been acquired and digitised by the British Library! Here's a thread by the wonderful @BooksAndGuts containing everything you need to know about it right now... 1/17 https://twitter.com/bl_modernmss/status/1335899944289497093
This manuscript was unknown to scholarship until it was found in a *box of papers* at Melford Hall, Suffolk in 2018. 2/17 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/30/unknown-john-donne-manuscript-discovered-in-suffolk
It is one of the largest and earliest surviving collections of poetry by Donne. It contains over 130 poems, including some his most famous works, such as Sunn Risinge and The Storm. The manuscript also includes six unpublished and unattributed poems! 3/17
The manuscript still has its 17th century binding 
 Just look at this beauty!! (
 The Melford Hall Manuscript (Egerton MS 3884) with seventeenth-century binding 
British Library Board) 4/17
 Just look at this beauty!! ( The Melford Hall Manuscript (Egerton MS 3884) with seventeenth-century binding British Library Board) 4/17
The manuscript doesnât just contain Donne poems... It also has additions in later hands like notes on the sermons of Robert Meldrum (1581-1613) and some songs written in the mid-eighteenth century. So the evidence suggests the manuscript was used over a long period of time! 5/17
Originally purchased by a buyer outside of Britain, the sale was blocked by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport which placed a temporary export bar on the work. This gave the UK institutions time to gather funds and match the ÂŁ466,000 asking price. 6/17
Why was this done? Because the manuscript was deemed to be closely connected to our nationâs past, and of outstanding importance to the study of art and history. This raises a couple of interesting points⊠7/17
1) Exactly how comfortable are we with the government having the power to block the movement of important cultural items out of Britain, when many of our institutions hold stolen items of national, cultural, and even religious importance to other nations? 8/17
Whilst we can rejoice at the BL acquiring this wonderful manuscript and making it accessible to all via digitisation, export bars like this one highlight the inequity of treatment between British artefacts and those which Britain holds on to. 9/17
2) This manuscript is not an autograph copy of Donneâs work (very few extant examples exist) but a scribal copy. The fact this manuscript is deemed of cultural worth may represent an overdue appreciation for early modern scribal culture. 10/17
This appreciation is indebted to late 20th century work on manuscript and scribal theories, and shows how academic interest can affect value. Similarly, annotated texts have more value today than in the past - historically, signs of use would have been cropped or washed off 11/17
Donne shunned print, preferring to circulate his poems within an exclusive coterie of trusted readers. This manuscript is significant as it provides previously unstudied evidence of the transmission and circulation of Donneâs poetry. 12/17
Letâs also appreciate the textâs legibility. It is gorgeously readable! Not only does its digitisation make it super accessible but the digitised copy is a great resource if you want to dip your toe into early modern manuscripts and palaeography ( © British Library Board) 13/17
 © British Library Board) 13/17
This is such an exciting manuscript and sure to yield lots of scholarship in the coming years. Hats off to the British Library for making it accessible to everyone regardless of location with their digitisation! 14/17
See more about the manuscript in the news here https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/06/the-book-of-love-400-year-old-tome-of-john-donnes-poems-is-unveiled 15/17
For more information on the export bar see the BL press release https://www.bl.uk/press-releases/2020/december/british-library-acquires-rare-seventeenth-century-manuscript-of-john-donne-poetry 16/17
And a massive thank you to @bl_magnacarta and @letterlocking for their help putting this all together! There will be more links about this manuscript posted soon and we'll be sure to add them to this thread 
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