
Luke Batterham
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Sold for £1,375 inc. premium
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MASSEY'S 'LIBER MEMORIALIS': for a notice of the Quaker schoolmaster, historian of penmanship and translator William Massey, see the ODNB. The first section of the present volume supplies a good deal of biographical information that has hitherto been not known, such as the correct date of his birth, his place of birth, the fact of his marriage, the fact that he had a son and the fact that that son died. As befits the author of The Origin and Progress of Letters (1763) – to which Ambrose Heal stated that 'we owe a great deal of our knowledge of the English writing masters' – this volume is written throughout in a meticulous and most attractive hand. Other manuscripts by Massey are at the Bodleian Library and Yale University. It is being sold on behalf of Oxfam, with a note on it prepared by Bernard Nurse, former Librarian of the Society of Antiquaries.