Thursday, September 14, 2006
Question from John - Information on Baoardo (source of description of Jane Grey)
I've tried every source I know of without success, so I am desperately tossing this out to the general public. On the subject of Lady Jane Grey: there is an oft-cited eye-witness physical description of her credited to a "Baoardo." He is variously described as a Genoan, a Florentine, a merchant, an ambassador, and a resident of London. JA Froude cited him as the author of a work published in Venice in 1558 and supposedly still in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The librarians there have never heard of Baoardo or his book. Richard Davey states Baoardo wrote letters home to Genoa which are now deposited in a Genovese archive. I have searched every catalogue for every archive in Genoa without seeing Baoardo's name mentioned. I have searched the British Library, every major UK university online catalogue, World Cat, OCLC, Early English Books Online, and many others. None of these revealed any author named Baoardo or any work by him. Do any of the visitors to this site, by some remote chance, know where I can locate solid and reliable information on this elusive sixteenth-century Italian? Thank you!
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2 comments:
There seems to be a refernce to him via Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Baoardo&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Search
If you're affiliated with a library that has QuestionPoint (virtual reference supported by OCLC), you might submit the question there. It will be refered to an appropriate library in the network
My thanks to Anonymous. The Google reference cited Agnes Strickland and JA Froude, neither of whom identify Baoardo in detail. However, I finally got a response through a similar query posted on the H-Albion listserve. Baoardo is a misnomer. The man's name was actually Giovanni Raviglio Rosso. So I have my answer.
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