Bosworth Manuscripts

Scope and Content

Manuscripts of Joseph Bosworth including:  

  • Copies and translations of Anglo-Saxon charters compiled by Benjamin Thorpe (1782-1870), 1866-70
  • Letters relating to Benjamin Thorpe's manuscripts, 1871-2
  • Collations and transcripts of manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle by Benjamin Thorpe, 1860-5
  • Drafts of the Anglo-Saxon and modern English dictionary published by Bosworth in 1838

Administrative / Biographical History

Joseph Bosworth (1789-1876) was an Anglo-Saxon scholar and lexicographer. He was Rawlinson Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford. Details are given in the Dictionary of National Biography.

Access Information

Entry to read in the Library is permitted only on presentation of a valid reader's card (for admissions procedures see http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/specialcollections).

Acquisition Information

The manuscripts were given to the Library by Bosworth's executors in 1876, apart from MS. Add. A. 236, which came in 1878.

Note

Collection level description created by Emily Tarrant, Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts.

Other Finding Aids

Falconer Madan, et al., A summary catalogue of western manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford which have not hitherto been catalogued in the Quarto series (7 vols. in 8 [vol. II in 2 parts], Oxford, 1895-1953; reprinted, with corrections in vols. I and VII, Munich, 1980), vol. V, nos. 29091-107.

Related Material

See also Volumes Containing Joseph Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (MSS. Eng. lang. b. 1-11)