Partner Project

Full Title: The Digitisation of Samuel Pepys’s ‘Calligraphical’ Fragments

Partner Institutions: The Pepys Library, Magdalene College Cambridge, UK

Financed By: Cambridge Digital Humanities and Magdalene College, Cambridge

Project Leader: Dr M.E.J. Hughes

Project Manager: Catherine Sutherland

Project Staff Member: Isobel Renn

Digitisation Team: Digital Content Unit, Cambridge University Library

The Pepys Library holds a number of manuscript and printed book fragments which were deliberately collected and arranged by Samuel Pepys into his ‘Calligraphicall Collection’ albums.  The albums were compiled by Pepys in 1700 with added commentary by his associate Humfrey Wanley, a paleographer and librarian.  The appearance of the album is much like a scrapbook, and the fragments are arranged in a chronological order to demonstrate the development of handwriting – a shared interest of Pepys and Wanley’s.

This considered arrangement of fragments into an album by Pepys, with the assistance of Wanley, offers a new scholarly perspective in the study of ‘fragmentology’, where so often examples of fragments appear as the result of recycling manuscripts for use in bookbinding.  The aim of this project is to increase awareness of this important collection of material for further academic study, while also offering those with a general interest in the Pepys Library the opportunity to view this collection online for the first time.

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