Manuscript copy of The World's a bubble [manuscript], ca. 1620s or 1630s.
Items
Details
Title
Manuscript copy of The World's a bubble [manuscript], ca. 1620s or 1630s.
Description
1 item
Note
This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.
Folger-specific note
Curatorial file available.
Place of creation/publication
Great Britain -- England
Item Details
Call number
V.b.394
Folger-specific note
Sotheby's catalog description: Bacon, Sir Francis. Manuscript copy of his poem commencing "the world's a bubble". Divided into four eight-line stanzas and subscribed "Made by Sir Francis Bacon Kt baron Verulam Viscount St Albans & Late Lord Chancelor of England," together with other poems including a fragment from Plutarch's Moralia translated by Philemon Holland, in a single italic hand, apparently that of one Thomas Everard, with the name "Sarah Amler" also written on a top left corner, altogether two pages on a single folio leaf (340 x 225 mm) removed from a volume, c.1620s or 1630s; significant fraying at edges with slight loss of text, staining. Red morocco-backed folder. Sotheby's literature note: CELM BaF 49.5 Sotheby's catalog note: "...Who then to fraile mortality shall trust / but lymmes the water or but writes in dust..." Bacon's bleak poetic dismissal of the world was enormously popular in the first half of the seventeenth century and survives in more than 50 manuscript copies. Sotheby's provenance note: Sotheby's, 21 July 1992, lot 9. acquisition [by Pirie]: Purchased at the foregoing sale through Bernard Quaritch. Acquired at the Robert S. Pirie sale, Sotheby's, New York, 2-4 December 2015, lot 55.
Folger accession
269379