John Dernelly: Haberdasher and Poet

Taylor profiles haberdasher poet John Dernelly, highlighting an autographed poem which can be found in Bodleian Library, Eng. Poet. C. 3. This guard book is a small miscellany bound in 1895 as part of a collection of "paleographic specimens'. Unfortunately, the origin of the leaves within this guard book has not been documented. Consequently, the nature of the preservation of the poem by Dernelly makes finding the document which originally held the poem improbable. The original codex in which the poem was composed was likely parchment, as a small note, written on the verso of the same leaf of the poem in a similar script to the poem, reveals that 'this book is all parchment'.