Philobiblon

I was slogging away on a planned submission to an academic journal tonight, my first – deadline yesterday – when just a minute ago I popped on to its website and discovered submissions have been extended to November 20!!!! A slight feeling of anger, then relief that I will actually have time to read it properly. I have to ask any academic readers, is this standard? Do deadlines always get extended?

Anyway, while distracting myself this afternoon I started work on my personal, fully owned Georgian manuscript; I hope to post at least a partial transcript, probably with lots of question marks, in a day or so. The description as purchased is here, although I don’t think it was quite right.

The date is actually “the second year of the Reign of our Sovereigne Lord George the Second by Holy Grace of God of Greate Britain and France and ???? Defender of His Faithe or Anno Domini One thousand seven hundred and twenty nine”, not 1722.

The term “indenture ” made me think of an apprenticeship, which was probably my error: it is certainly a legal document concerning “by estimation eight acres” of “pasture land” and its “premises” – whether to lease or buy I haven’t quite worked out: while it is in English there are I suspect a few Latin legal words. The sum involved is “Eighty three pounds, three shillings of faithfull(?) money of great Britain” which is being paid by Amariah Impson (or Empson) to Elizabeth Heales, spinster. (At least I think that is her name; I might have to get some expert advice on this, or buy a book recently recommended on the Shakespeare listserv – Letitia Yeandle (Folger) and Jean Preston (Princeton) — English Handwriting 1400-1650:
An Introductory Manual, to be found at www.pegpress.org.)

I don’t usually have the patience to persevere with this sort of thing, but now I’ve promised I’ll have to – you might describe it as personal blackmail.