St John's College W.3 (part) (James 575)

Samuel Butler, ‘The Holy Land’. English, 1800


Samuel Butler, Fellow of St John's, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry (1774-1839): ‘The Holy Land’, a poem written for the Cambridge University Seatonian Prize competition of 1800 but submitted too late for consideration. Butler writes on the cover that ‘for this reason it is not published, lest it should seem as an appeal from the judgment of the university to the tribunal of the public’. Francis Wrangham was awarded the Seatonian Prize for his poem on this set theme.

Manuscript extra information

240x195mm. 21pp. Purchased from the dealer Bernard Halliday, Leicester, in June 1925. In one of two accompanying letters to the Librarian of St John’s, Halliday notes that he ‘puchased this, together with some other MSS relating to the diocese of Lichfield, at a sale’.


Autograph MS. A clean copy signed and endorsed on the cover. On the back cover, in another hand: ‘Dr Butlers Poem for the Seatonian Prize’. Stitched booklet with paper covers.