This weeks poetry news round up takes a look at two important discoveries of literary significance.
Seventh-century Poem Found in Rome Library
A 1,200-year-old lost copy of a manuscript of Caedmon’s Hymn has been found in the National Central Library of Rome by scholars from Dublin.
The poem, which is a copy of the earliest surviving poem written in the English language, was written by a cattle herder in Northumbria. It was recorded by Bede, the medieval theologian who was revered as the father of English history. The poem is just nine lines long. It is believed that this Old English version was transcribed between AD800 and AD830 for a monk in northern Italy.
The two scholars from Trinity’s school of English realised what they were looking at as soon as they saw it and couldn’t believe on checking the catalogues in the library that there was no mention of it anywhere.
This latest discovery is the third oldest surviving text of the poem. Previous copies can be found at Cambridge and St Petersburg, both have the poem written in Latin, and the Old English text has been added either at the end or in the margin.
A copy of the poem translated into Latin was included by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. However, the original Old English version was omitted. There are believed to be around 160 surviving copies of Bede’s book. The library in Rome is currently digitising its holdings which will allow access to over 40million images.
Eight Love Letters Linked to a Poet Found
A collection of eight letters written by the poet John Keats to his fiancée Fanny Brawne have been found and the discovery is being thought of as one of the most significant finds in history.
In total Keats, wrote 54 poems and around three dozen love letters to Brawne. However, a set of love letters disappeared from a private collection almost four decades ago.
The collection of love letters were originally split up and sold at auction to several buyers in 1885, with eight of them ending up bound in a book as part of the collection held by John Hay Whitney, a philanthropist and businessman. In 1989 the Whitney family realised that the book, together with two dozen other volumes, were missing from their collection.
Now, a dealer in rare books who belongs to the Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has been able to track down the lost set of Keats’ love letters and return them to the Whitney family. The letters along with a number of books, also from the Witney collection, were taken to a book shop by a man who had inherited them from his grandfather. The full collection has been estimated to be worth around £3million, with the Keats letters on their own valued at £2million.
The auction of Keats letters was the inspiration behind a sonnet by Oscar Wilde titled
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