“A bright Coelestiall Mind”: A New Set of Writings by Lady Dorothy Browne (1621–1685)

Cambridge University Library MS Add. 8460 is a notebook that belonged to Elizabeth Lyttelton, the daughter of Norwich physician and author Sir Thomas Browne. This article shows for the first time that the manuscript also contains seventy pages of sermon notes and religious meditations written by Thomas Browne's wife, Dorothy. Until now, Dorothy Browne's known writings amounted only to short notes at the ends of her husband's letters. An analysis of these newly discovered writings reveals much about their author's intellectual and spiritual habits. Datable to the late 1650s, MS Add. 8460 illuminates an obscure period in the Browne family's history.