Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- [1764x1798] / (Creation)
Level of description
File
Extent and medium
450 pp. Bound in calf, with gilt and blind tooling, and gilt lettering and edges.
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Archival history
The inside, upper cover bears a small label inscribed 'Downing Library'.
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
A folio volume lettered on the spine 'Pennant's Tour on the Continent . . . 1764', and containing an account of a tour in France, Savoy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and the Netherlands, undertaken by Thomas Pennant, February - August 1765, followed by a table of the 'Itinerary' and an index. The title-page is inscribed 'Tour on the Continent by Thomas Pennant, Esqr.', and, like the spine, bears the date 1764, although the actual tour was undertaken in 1765. An engraved portrait (inlaid) of Thomas Pennant (published post 1793) serves as frontispiece. The volume, as in the case of the preceding and following manuscripts, NLW MSS 12706E and 12708E, may have been transcribed by Thomas Pennant's secretary - copyist, Thomas Jones. Subsequent to its acquisition by the National Library of Wales in 1938, the text of the present work was edited and published, with an introduction and foot-notes, as vol. 132 of the publications of the Ray Society [G[avin] R[ylands] de Beer (ed.): Tour on the Continent 1765, by Thomas Pennant, Esqr. (London, 1948)]. In his introduction the editor states, 'It is clear that the body of the text rests on daily notes made by Pennant during the actual course of his tour', and adds that 'Pennant went over his text afterwards, for many of the elaborations of his narrative refer to books published, or events which occurred, subsequently to 1765'. References, such as those to Voltaire in 1768 (p. 184), to the reported discontinuance of the custom of producing the album or visitors' book at the Carthusian monastery of La Grande Chartreuse 'a few years after the time I was there' (p. 127), and to 'the late subversion of all things, wrong as well as right, in the Kingdom of France', and its effects on the monastery of La Grande Chartreuse (pp. 128- 9), are obviously later insertions. So, too, would appear to be the references to works by M. Bourrit (pp. 175, 178) [probably Marc Théodore Bourrit: A Relation of a Journey to the Glaciers in the Dutchy of Savoy. Translated from the French by Charles and Frederick Davy (Norwich, 1775)], and by the Reverend Mr. Coxe (p. 193) [William Coxe, author of Sketches of the Natural, Civil, and Political State of Swisserland (London, 1779), and Travels in Switzerland (London, 1789)].
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Conditions governing reproduction
Language of material
Script of material
Language and script notes
English.
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Finding aids
The description is also available in the Handlist of Manuscripts in the National Library of Wales, Volume IV (Aberystwyth, 1971).
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Related units of description
Notes area
Note
Title based on contents.
Note
Formerly known as Pennant[-Feilding] 2.
Note
Preferred citation: NLW MS 12707E.
Alternative identifier(s)
Virtua system control number
Access points
Place access points
Name access points
- La Grande Chartreuse (Monastery) (Subject)
- Pennant, Thomas, 1726-1798 -- Portraits (Subject)
- Voltaire, 1694-1778 (Subject)
- Bourrit, Marc-Théodore, 1739-1819 (Subject)
- Coxe, William, 1747-1828 (Subject)
- Jones, Thomas, secretary to Thomas Pennant (Subject)