Lives of the Founders of the British Museum
With Notices of its Chief Augmentors and Other Benefactors, 1570–1870

This is the first in a two-volume work about the founders of the British Museum.

Edward Edwards (Author)

9781108014953, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 June 2010

436 pages, 1 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2.5 cm, 0.55 kg

This two-volume work covers the period 1570–1870, and is one of several written on book collections by Edward Edwards (1812–1886), whose three-volume Memoirs of Libraries is also reissued in this series. Volume 1 considers the gatherers of the 'foundation collections' of the British Museum. Among them were Henry, Prince of Wales, the son of James I, Sir Robert Cotton (1571–1631), and Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), whose bequest of his collections to George II led directly to the foundation of the Museum by Act of Parliament in 1753. The administrators and early donors to the Museum - archaeologists, travellers and dilettanti such as Sir William Hamilton and the earl of Elgin - are also discussed.

Book I. Early Collectors - The Gatherers of the Foundation Collections: 1. Introduction
2. The founder of the Cottonian Library
3. The chief collector and the augmentors of the old Royal and Public Library at St. James
4. The collector of the Arundelian Mss.
5. The collector of the Harleian Mss.
6. The founders of the Sloane Museum
Book II. The Organizers, and Early Augmentors: 1. Introductory
2. A group of classical archaeologists and explorers.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1]