Physical description

Form:

Codex

Paper.

Three different Arms of Amsterdam watermarks. Fols.1-11 similar to Churchill 29,(1693); fols.12-71 also similar to Churchill 29; fols.72-165 similar to Churchill 39 (1703).

4o in 12s (halfsheets): i12 (i1 is the front flyleaf) ii-vii12 viii12 (viii12 + x1) ix-x12 xi8 (xi8 + x1) xii14 xiii 12 xiv10 (xiv2 + x1, xiv10 is the back flyleaf)

Each page has an approximately 35mm margin, ruled in red on the left, made before writing. The ruling does not appear to be professional, and may have been done by Cowper.

Cowper provides regular notations in the margins, including the date, later emendations, biblical references, drawings of a pointing hand, and subject headings.

Written by Cowper in an informal italic. Most of the writing is easily legible, but a bit cramped, as if Cowper is attempting to put as much as possible onto each page.

"Diary. Volume the first", the quotation from David Lloyd and a few of the marginal notes are in the shaky hand characteristic of Cowper's writing after 1705.

Contemporary brown leather on what appears to be pasteboard. Edges seem to have been gilt originally, but are now almost black. Marbled endpapers. Both covers have the same blind decorations: two lines with a pattern at the border, a decorated panel and intersections. Six spine compartments, each containing a flower in blind.

Size: 205mm x 155mm x 33mm

Paginated in Cowper's hand, upper left corner of each page.

[front pastedown, front flyleaf, 5 unpaginated pages], 2-325, [1 unpaginated page, back flyleaf, back pastedown]

There are pencil marks throughout D/EP F29, made in a later hand. The person marking the text highlights various sections with vertical lines in the margins, provides the full names of people mentioned in abbreviation, and even conveys personal opinion, adding a pencil "No wonder!" beside Cowper's observation that her chambermaid, after a series of upsets and reproofs, has run away (p.186). On the recto of the back flyleaf, the person has also added "58 years in 1702" and the following calculation of Cowper's birthdate, "born in 1644".

It is possible that the pencil marks were made by Mary Louisa Boyle, the author of Biographical Catalogue of the Portraits at Panshanger (1885). Boyle suggests a familiarity with the manuscripts by noting that Cowper "wrote a voluminous diary, still in the possession of her descendant . . . a strange mixture of pious reflections, together with anecdotes." The biographer also describes Cowper as "ill favoured and ill tempered, in constant collision with her husband, her sons, and her servants", a judgment that echoes the implied reproof of the pencil "No wonder!" (Boyle, p.398). In addition, next to a diary entry mentioning Martin Clifford is the pencil notation, "picture of him at Panshanger", which suggests someone, like Boyle, familiar with the artwork at Panshanger (p.90); however, Clifford's picture is not mentioned in the Biographical Catalogue. Available samples of Boyle's handwriting display many similarities to the hand in the diary, but the marginal notations are too sparse to allow for a thorough comparison.

The binding is very worn, with the upper cover off and the lower one loose. The paper shows typical signs of aging, but is otherwise in good condition.

Provenance

The dates within D/EP F29 suggest that Cowper wrote in it almost daily from 25 July 1700 through 31 December 1702; however, some of the marginal notes, as well as the rubric and quotation from David Lloyd seem to have been added after 1705.

Although Cowper does not specifically mention her manuscripts in her will, they appear to have been inherited, along with the majority of her belongings, by her eldest son, William, first Earl Cowper (D/EP F50, fol.6r). Her writings are now part of the Panshanger collection at the Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, and it is likely that her works were passed from generation to generation along with the rest of the Panshanger estate. The stately home of Panshanger was erected in the early nineteenth century by the fifth Earl Cowper, a direct descendant of Cowper's son. Panshanger passed to the sixth Earl, then to his son, Francis Thomas de Grey Cowper, seventh Earl Cowper. When the latter died without issue, Panshanger was inherited by his sister's daughter, Ethel Grenfell, Lady Desborough (D/ERv F150/10,11). Lady Desborough's two sons (including the poet, Julian Grenfell) were both wounded in action and died in 1915; therefore, at her death, the Panshanger estate appears to have passed to her eldest daughter, Lady Monica Salmond.

In 1953, Salmond deposited Sarah Cowper's manuscripts at what was then called the Hertfordshire Record Office, and they remained there on loan for forty years. In late 1992, however, Salmond's daughter, Lady Rosemary Ravensdale, the last of the Cowper family, died, and the Panshanger papers descended to three members of the Mosley family, who decided to sell them. The Record Office launched the Panshanger Manuscripts Appeal and by 1994 successfully raised the 577,500 UK pounds necessary to purchase the archive (Thompson, p.1).