Manuscripts of Jacques Philippe D'Orville

Manuscripts of Jacques Philippe D'Orville. His chief collections were made with a view to editing Theocritus and the Greek Anthology. The bulk of the manuscripts are not ancient, and largely consist of collations in printed books, and transcripts and notes, with many papers of Scipio and Albericus Gentilis, and much of D'Orville's own correspondence.

Jacques Philippe D'Orville (1696-1751), classical scholar, was born at Amsterdam of a French Protestant family, and educated at the University of Leyden. From 1723 to 1729 he travelled in France, England, Italy and Germany, with the object of acquainting himself with the remains of classical literature and art and with the best living scholars. He was at Oxford 18-26 August 1718, 28 July-3 September 1725, and 13-15, 18-19 June 1751. From 1730 to 1742 he was Professor of History, Eloquence and Greek at Amsterdam, being succeeded by Petrus Burmannus the younger, with whom he edited the Miscellaneae Observationes in auctores veteres et recteiores , 1732-9. From 1740 to 1751 D'Orville edited alone Miscellaneae Observationes creticae novae . Both series contain many references to the D'Orville manuscripts, which had been gradually acquired. D'Orville's other chief works were an edition of Charito (1750, 1783) and his Sicula , a history of Sicily (1762-4, posthumously printed).

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).

The collection was purchased almost intact from J.Cleaver Banks for 1025, a sum raised by subsidiary items to about 1095, in 1804.

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

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. IV, nos. 16879-17496.

D'Orville's only surviving son Jean was born in 1734, and to him the whole collection passed at his father's death in 1751. Eventually it was trasferred to London, passed to a grandson also named Jean, and was sold to J. Cleaver Banks.

See also D'Orville Manuscripts (MSS. D'Orville 620-33). For papers relating to Gentili Alberico see Papers of Sir Thomas Erskine Holland (MSS. Eng. misc. c. 125-6; Ital. c. 20)