Miscellany of Lady Anne Southwell [manuscript], ca. 1587-1636.

Folger card catalog title: Commonplace book
Miscellany containing poetry, prose, and notes
Southwell-Sibthorpe commonplace book
Workes of Lady Ann Sothwell

74 leaves ; 33 x 22 cm

Contains poetry, prose, and memoranda or notes of a domestic nature including: copies of 2 letters; inventories of her goods at Acton in 1631 (leaf 59); a list of Captain Henry Sibthorpe and Lady Anne's 110 books (leaf 65); and notes of servants engaged. Many of the poems are original works by Lady Anne, mostly on the Decalogue, consist of religious lyrics, elegies, epitaphs, dialogues, verse epistles, songs and sonnets, as well as transcribed poetry by other poets. The letters are one sent to her friend Cicely MacWilliams, Lady Ridgeway, to argue for the superiority of poetry over prose (leaf 3), and the other sent to Henry Cary, Viscount Falkland, 1628, to console him in his recall to England after serving as Lord Deputy of Ireland (leaf 4r). Also includes an epitaph for Lady Anne by her second husband Sibthorpe (leaf 73); receipts throughout, including 3 signed from John Sibthorpe for money spent the in Dutch wars in ca. 1588 (leaves 5r, 6). The portions of material compiled by and for Southwell seem to date from 1626 (the date on the first folio) to 1636 (when Southwell died).

Bound, leaves of variant sizes.
The main hand in the manuscript is not Southwell's. Most of the contents have been written by several contemporaneous hands and one earlier hand. Sometimes the hand is scribal with autograph additions (leaves 2r, 5v, 13r, 22v, 29v, 31v-35r, 39r, 42v-43v, 47v-55r), but some stanzas of Decalogue poetry are in Southwell's autograph (leaves 40r, 44v-46r, 57r-58v). Southwell's signature appears at the bottom on fol 2r (after Ralegh's "The Lie"). Corrections tipped in on leaf 41. The earlier hand of John Sibthorpe, possibly the father of Henry Sibthorpe, Southwell's second husband, dated 1587 and 1588, appears on leaves 5r, 6r, 6v, 62r-66r.
Spine label: Lady Southwell's Works / 62. "The workes of the Lady Ann Sothwell: / Decemb: 2o 1626" (leaf 1r).
Poems in Folger index of first lines.
Bought by Phillipps from Thorp, 1836, no. 1032. -- Phillipps sale, London, 1908, no. 699 to Dobell.
For a fuller description and digital facsimile, see Anne Southwell, Miscellany containing poetry, prose, and notes in The Perdita Project: Early Modern Women's Manuscript Compilations.

Related manuscript at British Library MS Lansdowne 740 -- contains decalogue poetry by Southwell and is in the same hand as scribe of letter to Lady Ridgeway (V.b.198, leaf 3).

Klene, Jean. "'Monument of an Endless affection': Folger MS V.b.198 and Lady Anne Southwell." English Manuscript Studies, v. 9 (1989), p. 165-186.
Cavanaugh, Jean Carmel. "The Library of Lady Southwell and Captain Sibthorpe." Studies in Bibliography, v. 20 (1967), p. 243-254.
The Southwell-Sibthorpe Commonplace Book: Folger MS. V.b.198 / edited by Jean Klene. Tempe, Arizona: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997.
Burke, Victoria. "Women and Early Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Culture: Four Miscellanies." The Seventeenth Century, v. 12, no. 2 (Autumn 1997), p. 135-150.
"Anne Southwell's poetry." Early modern women's manuscript poetry / edited by Jill Seal Millman and Gillian Wright. Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press, 2005, p. 57-76.

Ricci, S. de. Census of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the United States and Canada, 1669.1
Phillipps, T. Phillipps manuscripts, 8581

Blog post about Folger Shakespeare Library V.b.198: "All the world and half a dozen lemons", The Collation (18 June 2019)
Digital image(s) of Folger Shakespeare Library V.b.198

Great Britain -- England.

V.b.198

cs1669