This article takes as its starting point Savidis’ description of certain manuscripts of published and unpublished poems written by Cavafy between 1885 and 1904, manuscripts which evidently once formed a unity. Examples of manuscripts containing two or more poems are considered, in order to show how a chronological sequence of poems on unnumbered pages was reorganized by Cavafy, with the addition of page numbers, to form a thematic sequence. (This is compared to Cavafy’s later practice of progressively transferring poems from chronological to thematic collections.) A third stage is noted involving the dispersal and partial destruction of the manuscripts.