Elizabethan Poetry in Manuscript – An Edition of British Library Harley MS 7392(2)

Humfrey Coningsby (1567–1610) was heir to a manor in Neen Sollars, Shropshire and belonged to the branch of an ancient family whose members had once been Barons of Coningsby in Lincolnshire. He was a great traveller, setting off on his last journey, bound for Venice, in 1610 and, as the tomb memorial records, “was never after seene by any of his aquaintance on this side, the seas, or beyond, nor any certainty known of his death, wher, when, or how.” Jessica Edmondes works in the collections management department at the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford.  

Abbreviations and conventions
List of illustrations
Introduction
Physical description
The hands: A-G
The identity of the compiler
Oxford University (November 1581 to September 1583)
Inns of Court (ca. 1584)
The travels
Padua and Hungary: April 1594-98
Constantinople: February? 1599-April 1600
Final journeys
Other people associated with Hy
Robert Allott
St Loe Kniveton
Joyce Jeffreys
The poets and scribal communities
Edward Dyer and Philip Sidney
Spenser, Ralegh, and Gorges
The Earl of Oxford and his client-poets
Nicholas Breton
The “Holborn set”: the metropolitan literary milieu
Verse forms and features
Subjects, themes, and genres
Organization and headings
Dating the anthology
Scribal habits
Authorial and other attributions
Entries subscribed with the compiler’s initials
Entries identified as ballets
Correcting and perfecting
Editorial conventions
Note on the collations
Note on the cypher
Text of BL Harl. MS 7392(2)
Commentary
Appendices 1-4
Bibliography of Manuscripts with Poems in Hy
Early Modern Printed Books Cited in Full in This Edition
Works Cited in This Edition by Author-Date System
Index of First Lines Modernized
Author Index