{"id":265,"date":"2010-08-31T17:45:21","date_gmt":"2010-08-31T21:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/?p=265"},"modified":"2010-08-31T17:45:21","modified_gmt":"2010-08-31T21:45:21","slug":"unfinished-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/2010\/08\/31\/unfinished-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Unfinished business"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two recent Early Modern acquisitions share a common theme: abandoned projects of important authors. In 1757, the publisher Robert Dodsley commissioned Edmund Burke to produce a compact, single-volume history of England, sensing a market unserved by the expensive multi-volume sets then available. Burke worked slowly (having also taken on the editorship of the <em>Annual Register<\/em>) but steadily on the project for several years, turning over to Dodsley sections of the manuscript as they were completed. <a href=\"http:\/\/discovery.lib.harvard.edu\/?itemid=|library\/m\/aleph|012114178\">The first 48 pages<\/a>, beginning with the Roman invasion of Britain, and ending in 388 A.D., had already been printed when the project was scrapped around 1762.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/files\/2010\/08\/000004.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/files\/2010\/08\/000004-807x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Edmund Burke, An essay towards an abridgment of the English history, *EC75.B9177.760e\" width=\"475\" height=\"602\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-271\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/files\/2010\/08\/000004-807x1024.jpg 807w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/files\/2010\/08\/000004-236x300.jpg 236w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/files\/2010\/08\/000004.jpg 1219w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 475px) 100vw, 475px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Thomas Percy left a number of unfinished projects at his death, including an intended edition of the works of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (1628-1687). The <a href=\"http:\/\/discovery.lib.harvard.edu\/?itemid=|library\/m\/aleph|012547331\">section of the works including the 1672 play The Rehearsal <\/a>was printed probably at some time in the 1760s, but the unpublished sheets languished for many years in the warehouse of John Nichols, where they were eventually destroyed in an 1808 fire.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/files\/2010\/08\/000009.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/files\/2010\/08\/000009-1024x920.jpg\" alt=\"George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, The Rehearsal, *EC75.P4128.770r\" width=\"475\" height=\"427\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-273\" srcset=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/files\/2010\/08\/000009-1024x920.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/files\/2010\/08\/000009-300x269.jpg 300w, https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/files\/2010\/08\/000009.jpg 1311w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 475px) 100vw, 475px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Both works are understandably rare: ESTC lists just four other copies of <a href=\"http:\/\/estc.bl.uk\/T33446\">Burke&#8217;s <em>Abridgment<\/em><\/a>, and has no listing at all for the Percy work, although a copy is known to survive at the Bodleian Library at Oxford.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two recent Early Modern acquisitions share a common theme: abandoned projects of important authors. In 1757, the publisher Robert Dodsley commissioned Edmund Burke to produce a compact, single-volume history of England, sensing a market unserved by the expensive multi-volume sets then available. Burke worked slowly (having also taken on the editorship of the Annual Register) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":245,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[769],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john-overholt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":277,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions\/277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/hydeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}