Steevens, George. Excerpts from The Sowdon of Babylon, after 1750 | Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Title: Steevens, George. Excerpts from The Sowdon of Babylon, after 1750

ID: 01/02/02/POST-1650 MS 0044

Primary Creator: Steevens, George (1736-1800)

Other Creators: Greg, W. W. (1875-1959)

Extent: 1.0 Volume

Date Acquired: 10/28/1949

Subjects: English poetry - Middle English, 1100-1500

Languages: English,Middle(1100-1500)

This volume (11 pages) contains excerpts from the 15th-century English romance The Sowdon of Babylon, copied by George Steevens (1736-1800), an English scholar and literary editor. The final excerpt, written on a separate piece of paper and pasted in, appears to be in a different hand.

Walter Wilson Greg purchased the excerpts, already bound into a single volume, from James Tregaskis in 1897. Greg added a brief preface with information on the manuscripts' provenance, noting former ownership by Richard Heber and Sir Thomas Phillipps.

See Administrative/Biographical History and Administrative Information for more information.

George Steevens (1736-1800) was born in Poplar, London, to George Steevens (1701-1763), a ship captain, and Mary Perryman. As a young boy, Steevens attended Eton College, going on to study at King's College, Cambridge in 1753. He left without a degree in 1756 and settled in London, where he soon became acquainted with Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), an English author and lexicographer. Steevens contributed to Johnson's The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765) and later issued his own edition,Twenty of the Plays of Shakespeare (1766), which earned him a reputation as an editor of Shakespeare.

Source

Sherbo, Arthur. "Steevens, George (1736-1800)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online edition. Oxford University Press, 2006. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/26355

English poetry - Middle English, 1100-1500

Repository: Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Access Restrictions: The collection is open for research.

Use Restrictions:

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Acquisition Source: Stechert

Related Materials: MS 140, Robert Garrett Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts (Princeton University Library)

Finding Aid Revision History: Revised by Meg Hixon (November 2016) and Dana Miller (December 2023).

URL: https://i-share-uiu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CARLI_UIU/17ks9l7/alma99520267112205899