Brotherton Collection Manuscript Verse

The Brotherton Collection of 17th and 18th century English literature includes over 180 manuscripts that contain nearly 7000 poems and verses. These manuscripts were gathered together to form a discrete collection of verse.

The manuscripts range from large verse miscellanies and commonplace books through religious and political texts to individual leaves containing only a single poem. The poems range from well-known poems by canonical authors to amateur verse, and cover a huge variety of topics.

Several poems have been digitised and high-resolution images are available.

The Index

The collection can be searched through index entries. The index can be searched in a variety of ways including first line, author, title, date, and others. This is the most effective way of searching the collection

Further information

More information about the 17th and 18th century manuscript verse from within the collection is available in an Adam Matthews online publication. If you are accessing it off-campus, you will need to subscribe.