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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Hemlock Cup

book by Bettany Hughes

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 17, 2022
Entity authorityQ31927950 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life is a 2010 popular history book on the life of Socrates written by Bettany Hughes and published by Jonathan Cape.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Hemlock Cup” as book by Bettany Hughes. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2010—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2011-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Hemlock, book and Bettany can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as book by Bettany Hughes. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 17, 2022. The linked authority identifier is Q31927950. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Hemlock Cup”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Hemlock Cup primary sources, The Hemlock Cup archive and Hemlock research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Hemlock Cup”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Hemlock Cup” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.