‘Some Scraps of Paper’: The Autograph Manuscript of Ode to a Nightingale at the Fitzwilliam Museum

Abstract

This article traces the history of the only surviving autograph manuscript of Ode to a Nightingale, composed two hundred years ago in May 2019, and preserved since 1933 in the Fitzwilliam Museum. It tests Charles Armitage Brown’s famous eyewitness account of the moment of composition against the physical reality of the manuscript, and examines its materiality in some detail. It also traces the history of the manuscript’s fortunes through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and examines the role of collectors, curators and conservators in ensuring its survival and its continued presence in the UK.