SOURCE: Dobell, Bertram. “The Sonnets of William Alabaster.” The Athenaeum, no. 3974 (26 December 1903): 856-58.

In the following essay, Dobell announces his recovery of Alabaster's sonnet series and discusses the nature of the works.

Considering what an amount of study and research has been devoted to the literary history of England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it might be thought that no fresh discoveries of any importance were likely to be made in so well-explored a field. Nevertheless I have been so fortunate myself in the recovery of unknown or only imperfectly known treasure-trove of those periods, that I am convinced that this is by no means the case. Much, I am sure, remains to be discovered, and only requires to be searched for with half the diligence which has been devoted to the search, in Egypt and elsewhere, for the remains of classical antiquity. Who would have imagined...