We are pleased to announce that Jeffrey P. Beck, author of Writing the Flesh: The Herbert Family Dialogue (Duquesne, 1998) and Director of the School of Humanities at Penn State Harrisburg, has discovered a previously unknown letter of George Herbert. Written early in Herbert’s tenure as Public Orator of Cambridge University, to James Tabor, University Registrary, on 24 April 1620, the letter was discovered and identified in records of the University’s Vice Chancellor’s Court. Dr. Beck was assisted in this discovery by Keeper of the Archives Jacqueline Cox, who had recently indexed those records. A photograph of the letter is available in Dr. Beck’s recent Modern Philology article which can be found at the following link: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/712404
In addition, Jacqueline Cox recently posted a blog reflecting both on this newly-discovered letter and on the 400th anniversary of Herbert’s election as Orator at https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=20632.
The George Herbert Society also is pleased to announce that, during our upcoming Cambridge conference on 23-26 June 2022, the Cambridge University Archives, in cooperation with University Special Collections and Exhibitions, will mount a display of this newly-discovered letter and other related Herbert materials. More news to follow!
