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 The British Library: History of the library and its collections
 BritLib3: Catalogues, Publications

The British Library

2. OUTLINE OF THE COLLECTIONS

Chronological outline and analysis by language

2.1 The British Library is currently estimated to hold over 12,000,000 printed monographs and serial volumes, with comparably huge numbers of other kinds of material (newspapers, manuscripts, maps, music, patents, and so on). Figures of this magnitude are daunting and of doubtful usefulness, composed as they are from statistics compiled for various purposes and by various methods over a number of years and relating to a mixture of volumes, works, parts, and so on.

2.2 Estimating total numbers of German books within such a universe is extremely difficult, because these books are not placed together on the shelves, but interfiled with literature from other sources. It can only be done from catalogue entries, but, though there are special catalogues for the earlier centuries of German printing, there are as yet none of the 18th and 19th centuries, and all German authors in the General catalogue are interfiled alphabetically with all other authors.

2.3 There are over 3,600 editions of the 15th century printed in Germany (the number of copies, here and elsewhere, is higher), a figure derived from the British Library's union catalogue of the world's holdings of 15th-century books, the Incunabula short title catalogue (ISTC); this represents some 43 per cent of so far recorded editions from German presses of the period, though the proportion will decline somewhat as expected further German incunables join the

file.

2.4 There are some 20,000 editions of the 16th century, an estimate based on the Short-title catalogue of books printed in the German-speaking countries and German books printed in other countries from 1455 to 1600 now in the British Museum (London 1962) and its Supplement (London 1990). This is thought to represent some 10 per cent of surviving editions of the 16th century, and comprises 40 per cent in German, 55 per cent in Latin, and 5 per cent in other languages, of which the most numerous is Greek.

2.5 Of the 17th century there are over 26,200 editions, recorded in the Catalogue of books printed in the German-speaking countries and of German books printed in other countries from 1601 to 1700 now in the British Library (London 1994). This too is believed to represent some 10 per cent of surviving editions of the period, and comprises approximately one-third in German and two-thirds in Latin, with negligible numbers in other languages. A catalogue of German books from 1701 to 1750 is in preparation, currently estimated at between 25,000 and 30,000 editions.

2.6 The number of editions rises exponentially over the remaining 150 years to 1900 (and beyond), particularly since large-scale purchasing of current material began in the 1840s. An informed guess suggests there may be some 80,000 editions of the 18th century and 150,000 of the 19th, and until there are reliable estimates of total surviving editions of these periods, it is usually assumed that here too the British Library's holdings amount to about 10 per cent.

2.7 Overall, the holdings of German books to 1900 would thus approach 280,000; including the 20th century, they would substantially exceed 500,000 editions. Estimating by volumes is not possible, because of the difficulties caused by tract volumes and multi-volume sets. Despite the undoubted strength and richness of the German collections, the 10 per cent suggested as the proportion of surviving German editions represented in London (from the 16th century onwards) means that gaps in terms of important and interesting works will remain to be filled for the foreseeable future.

2.8 German books in Latin outnumber those in the vernacular from the earlier centuries of printing, the German language attaining primacy only in the course of the 18th century. The library also has strong holdings of books printed in Low German from all periods, of Yiddish, and of editions in other ancient and modern languages printed in the German-speaking countries, particularly Ancient Greek, Hebrew and Romansch. 2.7

2.9 English books, from Britain, America and elsewhere (2.32 million catalogue entries as long ago as 1966), naturally far outnumber the holdings from foreign-language-speaking countries. But amongst the latter, there is no doubt that German books play a leading role. Books in the German language were estimated in 1966 to represent some 12.5 per cent of General catalogue tries. The same survey suggested a rough equivalence overall between numbers of works in the German and French languages, by far the two most substantial foreign holdings in the library. However, the published special catalogues for the earlier periods, which yield the most accurate available figures including the Latin and other non-vernacular output, suggest greater numbers of German than of French books. In comparison with the figures given above, there are nearly 1,200 French books of the 15th century (approximately 28 per cent of surviving editions from French presses of the period), some 13,000 of the 16th century and 21,500 of the 17th. No doubt the large collections of French Revolutionary tracts, and of other French literature of the 18th and 19th centuries, help to raise the overall total of French books to something like that of the German.

2.10 The 1966 survey suggested that books in Italian overall reached only just over a quarter of the total in German, and in fact rather less than the joint total for books in Spanish and Portuguese. However, there are more books of the 15th century, nearly 4,500, printed in Italy than from any other language area, a figure reflecting Italy's position as most numerous producer of incunable editions. Of later periods, the published special catalogues suggest the British Library has some 18,500 Italian editions of the 16th century and 13,000 of the 17th.

2.11 Of European Spanish books there are some 200 15th-century editions, somewhat less than 3,000 of the 16th (to which less than 100 Spanish-American editions may be added); there are 14 Portuguese editions of the 15th century and under 300 of the 16th century; of Spanish and Portuguese editions of the 17th century, jointly but excluding non-vernacular works from Latin America, there are some 7,000 editions; and some 6,000 editions of Spanish books of the 18th century (excluding Latin America).

2.12 From the Low Countries there are under 700 editions of the 15th century, over 4,500 of the 16th century, and over 3,700 of the years from 1601 to 1621. In the special catalogue of Hungarian books to 1850 there are over 4,000 entries, several of which represent collections of ephemera, for instance various groups of publishers' prospectuses and the like; under 10 per cent of the tries represent material in German or partly so, but the largest numbers of these date from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, periods not yet covered by special catalogues of German books. These comparative figures for foreign holdings from outside the German-speaking areas are derived from published special catalogues, and there is a continuing programme for the compiling of further catalogues which will permit the proportions to emerge more clearly, particularly for the later centuries of publishing. Meanwhile it is estimated that there are between 10,000 and 15,000 Scandinavian editions from the beginnings of printing to 1800. There are thought to be between 2,000 and 3,000 Czech books for the same period, and under 700 in the Russian language (including Church Slavonic); the numbers of books in languages other than Russian printed in Russia in the early period (including German) have not yet been estimated, though representation is believed to be excellent. Of Polish books, there are thought to be well over 1,000 editions from the earliest to the year 1700. In view of the representative nature of the British Library's holdings from all countries, the preponderance of German amongst the foreign holdings of the early period is not surprising, given the large geographical extent of the decentralised German-speaking territories at the time and the proliferation of printers and publishers in the numerous states of which they were composed, as well as the spur to publishing given by competing confessions.

Subject outline

2.13 The arrangement of books in the British Library's closed stacks is a complex mixture of subjects, periods, genres, collections, and sizes. Only certain kinds of searches can be assisted by pressmarking patterns, and searches by Western languages and countries of origin are, in general, not amongst them.

2.14 The original arrangement of books in Montagu House in the 18th century was in very broad classes, with 176 subdivisions, most of which have been dissolved in later arrangements. The re-pressmarking following the incorporation of the King's Library was finished in 1838 for what sometimes became known as ``the old library' (pressmarks 1-304 for the King's Library, 305-1213 for the rest), and consisted mainly of broad subject classes in several parallel sequences and sub-sequences necessitated by the presence of both reading rooms and closed stacks, ground floors and galleries, interrupted for collections like those of Cracherode and Banks. Some new pressmark ranges for both current and antiquarian books were then added (shelfmarks 1214-1467), plus a new series for large books (1700-1899). Thomas Watts instituted a new classification after 1850, called the ``elastic system', also based on broad subject categories somewhat influenced by Brunet (shelfmarks 3000-12991), with special areas for serials (PP) and the publications of learned institutions and societies (Ac); only a small proportion of the latter category is divided by country rather than subject. Later still separate notations were introduced for official publications and newspapers, while music and maps have their own pressmarking structures. In the early 20th century a few new unclassified categories were introduced, but the overall system remained in force until 1964, when a much simplified system was introduced for accessions, taking account of intensity of use and the need to outhouse substantial parts of the collection. There are cases where individual books or ranges of books from the pre-1985 holdings have been moved and re-pressmarked, usually for security or ergonomic reasons, but the vast majority of originally British Museum books have retained their shelfmarks within the British Library.

2.15 There is a shelf-list of the British Museum holdings on cards, the so-called ``fourth copies' (when three copies of the General catalogue were maintained, one for the public and two for staff use, in the form of guardbooks with entries pasted in to their alphabetical place, a fourth set of slips was mounted on cards and filed in shelfmark order), but this is unavailable at the time of writing. It would be possible, if extremely difficult, to reconstruct the shelf-list from the automated catalogue, but this lacks certain information only present on the cards and the manuscript ``titles (or ``title-slips) from which the catalogue tries were originally printed (also unavailable at present), for example information about means of acquisition and changes of shelfmark, and authority statements.

2.16 The classes and sub-classes of the pressmarking system were mostly applied without regard to the language or country of printing and publishing of the books, or of their date, so that works heterogeneous in these respects stand side by side. These classes have not been applied to most of the incunables, which are shelved in Proctor order (with prefixes IA, IB and IC indicating format), to the collections of Cracherode (657-688), Banks (431-462, 953-990), George III (1-304), and Grenville (G), or to those rare books kept in locked cases (C). Some items in tract volumes cover subjects other than the classes in which they are placed, and many of the larger guard-book volumes used for single-sheet and ephemeral material are heterogeneous in content.

2.17 It may be helpful, nevertheless, to list the shelfmarks of the few sub-classes restricted to German subjects, together with a few more specific examples, remembering, for the above reasons, that the works included are seldom only of German origin, and that further material will always be found elsewhere: German incunables (IA/IB/IC): Xylographica 1-38; German presses 53-3286; Swiss 37002-38320; Austro-Hungarian 51123-51880. German history & politics 168-170, 590-91, 1054, 1193-94, 1439, 8072-74, 9325-40; Prussian 8074, 9384-86; Other German states 9335-66; Thirty Years' War broadsides 1750.b.29; 1848: Berlin 1851.c.4-7; Franco-German War of 1870/71 9078, Cup.648.b.2; From 1870 9365-86; 19th-century European history in German 9079; Swiss 9304-05; Austro-Hungarian 1314-15, 1438, 9314-15; 1848: Vienna 1899.m.18-19.

Law 709, 1378, 5505-11, PP.1385-1405; Prussian 5655; Other German states 5604-06; German Empire of 1871 5656; Austro-Hungarian 5549-51; Ecclesiastical law 5725. Official publications S.505-549, S.F.1-355, S.F.1454-1572; Holstein S.B.350-70; Schleswig-Holstein S.B.371-400; Silesia S.73-74; Alsace-Lorraine

S.E.501-50; Saarland S.E.551-70; Austria S.1-90, S.559-60; Switzerland S.590-91, S.P.1-286; Liechtenstein S.P.501-30. Theology PP.86-103; Bibles 3035; Reformers 3905-06; Religious controversy 3907-14; Church history 4661; Religious biography 4885-88; Swiss theology PP.103-04; De imitatione Christi in German IX.Ger.; Jesuit books from the collection of M. Grolig 4789.a-f. Topography & travels 1048-49, 1428, 10215-62; Austria 10201, 10205-10; Switzerland 10195-96. - Philosophy 8357-63. - Education 8356; Schools 8385-88; Publications of academies Ac.633-920; Publications of Swiss academies Ac.603-30. - Medical dissertations 1179-85, 7306, 7383-86. - Philology 12962-63; Grammars 628. - Archaeology 7706-08. - Military science 8831, ML, PP.4021-24; Austria PP.4018-21. Biography 10703-08. - Letters 10920-21. - Literature (serials) PP.4748. - Poetry 1064, 1462-63, 11501 (includes dialects), 11511-22. - Prose fiction 12547-54. - Drama 11745-48; Drama (not only German) with MS. notes by Tieck C.182.a.1-b.1. - Collected works 1334-38, 12249-53. - Illustrated broad- sides 1750.b.29, 1750.c.1, 1870.d.1, 1853.e.5,

Crach.1.Tab.4.c.1 & 2, Cup.651.e, Tab.597.d.2 & 3.

German titlepages and other fragments: Bagford collection Harl.5914, 5920, 5926, 5933, 5939, 5944, 5962, 5964, 5966, 5968, 5969, 5975, 5989, 5992, 5994; Ames collection 463.h.7-9. - Tauchnitz British Authors 12267.a-s, Tauch. - Works in Romansch 885. - Hebrew works on Nazi Germany 01922.b-bb. - Works in Yiddish 17100-20.

2.18 It must be re-emphasised that books in German, books printed in the German-speaking countries in other languages, and books on German subjects including the above occur in large numbers in hundreds of the more general classes not listed above.

2.19 The British Museum's most active period of acquisitions, during the fifty years from about 1840 to 1890, gave German books a firm place in its developing role as a national and universal reference library, building on the strengths of the major collections of which it was largely constituted before that time, and expanding into most of the areas hitherto less well covered. The more modern period has continued collecting current primary and secondary research material (including the latest) on the widest scale compatible with sometimes variable resources, as well as filling gaps in the older collections whenever possible. The German collections are therefore strong in all subjects, and supported by the equally important collections of primary and secondary material from other countries. For the reasons given above, it is generally not possible to quantify in detail any foreign component of the collections.

2.20 A sample survey of the General catalogue in 1965/66 produced overall percentage figures for the broad subject composition of the holdings to that date. It may be that books of German origin share these proportions, but the assumption has not been tested, and would doubtless need considerable modification in specific cases, particularly in view of the numerical weight of British copyright books and the wider range of coverage they represent. The main subjects reached the following percentages: literature 20.25 per cent, theology 14.5 per cent, history, politics and topography 12.75 per cent, science and medicine 11.5 per cent, social science, including philosophy, law and economics 11 per cent, biography 6.5 per cent, arts and skills 5.75 per cent, philology 2.5 per cent, bibliography 2.25 per cent.

Main characteristics of the German collections

by subject

2.21 All important works of reference at the serious scholarly level, including encyclopaedias, have been considered essential (though not necessarily in all editions), as are the publications of institutions and societies of learning, from the earliest periods to the present. Primary literature from the older collections is supported by all the latest research literature.

2.22 Bibliography. General and special bibliographies in all subjects have been collected comprehensively, both currently and from all earlier periods, as have national bibliographies of newly published material and retrospective bibliographies of earlier periods. Published catalogues of libraries and private collections are also very fully represented, as well as early book-sale catalogues. Auction catalogues from the 18th century onwards tend to be restricted to those of the property of notable collectors or of institutions, and trade catalogues of the modern period are not usually kept (as, by contrast, those of the leading auction houses of the United Kingdom are). Works on the history of the book in the German-speaking countries (printing, publishing, bookbinding, paper and watermarks) are held comprehensively, to support research based on the library's primary collections; there are, however, few German type-specimens. Library history is extremely well represented.

2.23 History. World history, ancient and modern, is comprehensively covered at research level, with early, modern, and critical editions of texts both major and minor by authors from antiquity onwards, and including chronicle literature from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern period. German authors and German editions play an important role from all periods of book-production, though modern works aimed at a popular audience are in general not held. Within this wide coverage, works on British and Irish history have always been especially collected, but there are great strengths in the holdings on the German-speaking countries, from monographic literature to ephemera and serials on both national and local subjects, as well as works on German colonial terprises and missions, biographical works and institutional histories. The library's historic link with the British Museum has also ensured wide coverage of antiquarian subjects such as archaeology, numismatics and epigraphy, of Europe and beyond. German genealogy is stronger in royal and aristocratic families than in humbler family history. There are excellent holdings of military and naval history, including army lists and early works on drill and swordsmanship, and on military engineering, fortification, and uniforms. Social history is also well covered, particularly from the 19th century onwards, supported by excellent holdings of the principal official publications. The ephemeral literature of political theory and controversy from the 19th century onwards is rather patchily represented.

2.24 Travel, topography and anthropology. Here the holdings are very full, with outstandingly fine collections of early voyages (Hulsius, De Bry) and topographies (Merian and others). The strengths of the major collections which came to the Museum in its first century of existence were filled out in the 19th century, and expanded into more modern periods under pressure of the need to support the work of the Museum's other Departments in world antiquities and ethnography. The works of German explorers and scientific expeditions take their place amongst those of the rest of the world, and descriptive works on the topography of the German-speaking countries themselves are well represented, all supported by the extensive map collections. German customs, costume and folk-lore, well represented from the early periods onwards, are part of extensive world collections. There are good holdings on the history of transport, less good on posts.

2.25 Theology. Again, coverage is very extensive indeed, with notable holdings of editions of the Bible in all languages, liturgies and hymnbooks, the Church Fathers and later theologians, including works of mysticism and moral theology, and much controversial literature. The holdings of German editions of the Bible and of liturgies are strongest from the first two hundred years of printing, thereafter somewhat patchy. The literature of the Reformation was very intensively collected in the mid-19th century, and the holdings of its proponents and opponents, and of various sects and religious dissidents, in original editions are among the most important in the world, with a high proportion of rare and unique editions. Later periods are also well covered, though apart from the special collection of editions of the Imitatio Christi and the numerous editions of a few authors such as Drexelius, the holdings of Catholic devotional works from Germany are less well represented than Protestant ones, as probably also are sermons. 19th-century theologians were extensively collected when their works were new. There are also good holdings of unorthodox sects, of missions, of Hebrew religion and other non-Christian faiths, as well as of subjects such as Rosicrucianism (especially its beginnings in the 17th century) and Freemasonry.

2.26 Science, technology, and medicine. These subjects, in editions from all sources including Germany, were among the particular strengths of several of the collections which came into the library from the beginning (Sloane) through von Moll and Banks to the Patent Office Library. Current German literature in these areas was extensively acquired during the mid-19th century, and gaps from earlier periods were assiduously filled. There are notable holdings of botany and zoology (including works on local and regional flora and fauna, and on horticulture and botanical gardens), chemistry and physics (both pure and applied), geology and mineralogy, mathematics, astronomy, medicine and pharmacy, from all periods to the end of the 19th century, and also of pseudo-sciences such as alchemy (especially from the late 16th and early 17th centuries) and astrology, as well as occult sciences and magic. There are good holdings of agriculture, including subjects such as forestry and bee-keeping, and of industries based on natural products, such as paper-making. Medicine in all its aspects is an especial strength, with anatomy and physiology, medical practice and surgery, epidemiology (many works on plague), and subjects of concern at particular stages of medical development such as inoculation and the prevention of live burial. Works on German spas and watering-places are also well represented, from the 16th century onwards. There are strong holdings of military science and engineering, and of surveying.

2.27 Philosophy, law, and economics. Ancient philosophy is strongly represented from the earliest period of printing onwards, and the successful drive in the 19th century to expand the holdings of modern philosophers means that original and critical editions of the important German philosophers are present in large numbers. Legal theorists are also well represented, as are constitutional texts and collections of laws, both national and local, as well as international and ecclesiastical law. But patchy holdings in other sectors (individual statutes, accounts of trials, controversy, and so on), and the losses in legal literature suffered through bombing, make the legal holdings less than first-class overall, despite remarkable strengths in major areas. Economic theory is well represented, supported by official publications of statistics.

2.28 Arts and skills. Although these areas also suffered through bombing, there are particular strengths in music, fine art and architecture, and the decorative arts, and in catalogues of art and antiquities. Holdings of other subjects such as cookery, games and pastimes are very patchy.

2.29 Philology. The holdings of world linguistics are very fine, with notable collections of dictionaries and grammars, including early vocabularies and phrase-books. German lexicography and philology are well represented, as are early manuals of composition and writing-books. Important early reading-books are also held, but were not much collected from later periods.

2.30 Literature. The collections of German belles-lettres are quite outstanding. All the major writers are present in original and critical editions, some (such as Goethe) being remarkably fully represented, with many rare first editions. The library's particular strength lies in the fact that this level of literature is supported by unusually numerous holdings of lower-level works in all genres and from all periods, many of great rarity. Market songs, from the 16th to the 18th centuries, are especially well represented, as is popular fiction including Volksbücher. There are also excellent holdings of literary history and biography, and of criticism, including early review journals. Children's literature is represented in early editions and works of important authors, including English authors in translation, but more modern children's literature is not generally collected.

2.31 Erotica. Though books considered obscene were kept in ``the Private Case' (shelfmark P.C.) and not entered in the General catalogue from about the 1840s, all were so entered retrospectively from 1964, in response to public pressure. The German component was very small by comparison with the English and French, and comprised less than one hundred items in total, including scientific works, more being from after than before 1900. Other German erotica, works considered obscene more recently, and works of sexology, are kept at other shelfmarks and not distinguished by language or country of origin.

Other genres besides monographs

2.32 Periodicals. Apart from the major scholarly journals, from the Acta eruditorum onwards, the library holds serial publications of institutions of learning and societies at both national and local level. Historical serials range from the Mercurius Gallobelgicus (1594-1632) and the Diarium Europaeum (1659-1681) onwards, though holdings of the 17th-century Messrelationen are patchy. The proliferating number of serials on all subjects from the 18th century onwards is well represented, covering all aspects of the humanities, science and technology, and social science, and including review journals, though the holdings of Moralische Wochenschriften from the early 18th century are less than complete, and those of Taschenkalender from the late 18th century are weak. The period best represented is undoubtedly from the 1830s to the First World War, though several of the more popular weeklies from the later century have suffered severely from paper deterioration.

2.33 Newspapers. Though the library has a fine and large collection of newsbooks (Einzelzeitungen) from the early period, of periodical newspapers from the 17th and 18th centuries it has little beyond isolated issues. The 19th and 20th centuries are better represented, with over 1,160 titles from Germany, 185 from Austria, and 36 in German from Switzerland, though of the majority of these only a few isolated issues are held. In general, subscriptions were placed for only small numbers of major titles; the library currently subscribes to fifteen German newspapers, of which two each are from Austria and Switzerland. Most of the newspapers from the 19th century onwards have been microfilmed for conservation reasons and are accessible only in that form.

2.34 Official publications. Here the collections are very fine and extensive, again particularly from the 19th century onwards. Full coverage of legislation and the proceedings of legislative bodies, official gazettes (Amtsblätter), the publications of major ministries, and statistical publications, was attempted at state (Land/Canton) and national level. From earlier periods there are good holdings of codes and collections of laws, and patchy ones of proclamations and the like, although extensive collections of the latter from Basel, Bern and Strasbourg should be mentioned.

2.35 Illustrated books and fine printing. The library is exceptionally rich in illustrated books, from the woodcut and engraved illustrations of the early period, many magnificently coloured, and including special genres such as emblem books, to the lithographic and photographic techniques of the 19th and 20th centuries. Fine printing, especially on vellum, is also well represented, as are the leading private presses of the modern period.

2.36 Translations, and books in English. English translations of German texts published in Britain are comprehensively collected as part of the National Printed Archive; and books in English printed in the German-speaking countries in the early period are well represented. German translations from other languages are selectively acquired, but mainly from the earlier centuries of printing, and depending on the importance of the texts in question and their cultural influence. Translations of English authors are particularly favoured from the earlier periods, but the great expansion in commercial translation during the 19th century has led to concentration on major authors (Shakespeare, Dickens, and so on) from the more modern period.

2.37 Directories. There are a few town directories of the 19th century (Altona, Augsburg, Berlin, Dresden, Essen, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Munich, Vienna), as well as national directories, mostly of trade and industry, for Germany (and German colonies), Austria, and Switzerland, and clerical directories for Germany (Catholic and Protestant) and Switzerland, but the German holdings of this material are in general not remarkable.

2.38 Ephemera. Here the library has particular strengths in several areas, starting with the indulgences and the like of the 15th century. Illustrated broadsides, from that period onwards, are very well represented: there are historical, political, satirical, religious and other sheets of all periods, including many relating to comets and other natural marvels; also calendars, including Rats- and Stifts-Kalender; and New Year sheets, especially from Nuremberg. However, there are no Thesenblätter or Gesellenbriefe. From the 19th century there are particular collections of ephemera from Berlin and Vienna in 1848, and from the Franco-German War of 1870/71. Playing-cards are not collected, as these have always been the province of the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum.

2.39 Occasional publications. There are extensive holdings of occasional verse, in Latin, German and other languages (epithalamia, funeral elegies, congratulatory and commemorative poems), and excellent holdings of the usually more elaborate, often illustrated, publications recording court and civic occasions of all kinds.

2.40 Sale catalogues. There is a notable collection of early German book-sale catalogues, including copies of the first two surviving auction catalogues (of the stock of Gottfried Müller, 1659 and 1661). Sale catalogues of important individual and institutional collections from later periods are also well represented, but commercial catalogues of mixed antiquarian books from the 19th and 20th centuries are as a rule not preserved. Holdings of the Messkataloge are patchy before the 18th century, but thereafter there is an excellent series of Leipzig catalogues.

2.41 Facsimiles and microform editions. These have been extensively collected in cases where the originals are not already present in the library, as have facsimiles of manuscripts. Many war-destroyed items have been replaced in microform.

2.42 Music. Secondary literature on music is mostly held in the general library, but musical scores are kept in the Music Library. The collections of German printed music, in both contemporary and modern editions, are outstandingly fine. There are between 3,500 and 4,000 items published in Germany before 1800, and equally impressive holdings of later periods. Much German music came by copyright deposit in the second half of the 19th century, including important first editions of such composers as Wagner and Brahms, even until shortly after the Berne Convention of 1886 altered the regulations. Domestic music of earlier periods and salon music of the 19th century are both represented, though modern German popular music is not collected.

2.43 Maps. Printed German maps and atlases are well represented from all periods, starting with maps in 15th-century books, Erhard Etzlaub's Das ist der Rom Weg (Nuremberg 1500?), and a German impression of the engraved Eichstätt map (not before 1514) from the collection of Willibald Pirckheimer. There are also extensive collections of town views and panoramas, both separate and in collections such as the Braun/Hoghenberg Civitates orbis terrarum, of which several editions are held. The Map Library holds the sheet maps, atlases, and most views, but the secondary literature of geography and topography, and travel literature, is mainly held in the general library, which also has good collections of guides such as those published by Baedeker.

2.44 Patents. The comprehensive collection of German patents begins in 1877, of Swiss patents in 1888, and of Austrian in 1899.

2.45 Decorated paper. The Olga Hirsch Paper Collection includes numerous examples of decorated and printed papers produced in Germany, mainly from the 18th century onwards.

2.46 Postage stamps. The substantial holdings of stamps from all over the world include those of the German-speaking countries, supported by excellent holdings of philatelic literature and catalogues, from Germany and elsewhere.

2.47 There are two large categories of uncatalogued German publications, post-1750 academic dissertations and 19th-century Schulprogramme, though some of both are to be found in the General catalogue, dispersed by subject in shelving: dissertations to 1750 are all included in the special catalogues of early books, and have particular strengths in medicine, theology, history, law and philology. The uncatalogued remainder is outhoused.

2.48 Of the dissertations, the years covered are as follows, without indication of the size and strength of individual holdings, or of the faculties represented: Altdorf 1751-1790; Basel 1839-1952; Berlin 1820-1913; Bern 1863-1895; Bonn 1825-1912; Braunsberg 1843-1887; Breslau 1821-1939; Celle 1845-1895; Dorpat 1829-1924; Duisburg 1789; Erfurt 1751-1892; Erlangen 1874-1895; Frankfurt/O. 1805-1894; Freiburg 1877-1949; Giessen 1751-1913; Göttingen 1751-1947; Greifswald 1751-1908; Halle 1751-1941; Hamburg 1901-1934; Heidelberg 1806-1938; Helmstedt 1751-1804; Jena 1751-1895; Kiel 1767-1886; Königsberg 1751-1907; Leipzig 1751-1913; Marburg 1751-1904; Munich 1830-1912; Münster 1854-1913; Rostock 1751-1895; Tübingen 1751-1913; Vienna 1775-1815, 1891-1899; Wittenberg 1751-1812; Würzburg 1804-1895; Zabern 1879-1885; Zeitz 1833-1895; Zürich 1875-1924.

2.49 The Schulprogramme, from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and other German-speaking areas of Europe, are mainly of the 19th century and come from over 600 different places, with nearly thirty schools in Berlin alone. Again the holdings are patchy. Inclusion of both these categories in a German union database would be a welcome solution to a cataloguing problem.

2.50 Provenance. Because of the way the early German collections were built up, from the mid-18th century onwards and with substantial accessions from the book-trade, with the exception of some parts of the Foundation Collections and of the libraries of Banks and George III provenances are rarely British. The British Library has no provenance index, with the exception of a manuscript one on slips for the 15th-century books. Nor is there a comprehensive list of bindings, though important and interesting bindings are acquired as such, and parts of the collection and individual volumes have been described in numerous specialist publications and catalogues. Many German bindings can, however, be traced through internal files and indexes held by the officer(s) with special responsibility for historical bindings. Bookplates (ex-libris) were the province of the British Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings, and there is no collection in the British Library, nor any index to those occurring in its books.

2.51 Stamping. British Museum (and later, British Library) stamps of ownership have been added to virtually all items in the collections. Their different designs and colours can give information about methods and periods of acquisition, though before 1837 this is often unclear. From 1837 to 1849, dates and running numbers written in the books refer to entries in the accessions Register. Thereafter, stamped purchase dates (in red) refer to dated invoices, and agents' names can usually be added for individual books from information given in manuscript on the relevant title-slip. Dates of donation (in yellow or green) refer to the Register of Donations.

Special collections

Incunables

2.52 The library holds 3,653 incunables and incunable fragments printed in the German-speaking territories: 3,105 are in Latin, 546 wholly or partly in German (of which 46 in Low German), one each in Dutch and Italian. Several editions are unrecorded elsewhere. There are around 30 blockbooks and blockbook fragments, including several Ars moriendi editions and Bibliae pauperum. There are about 650 incunable editions printed in Cologne, over 500 in Strasbourg, over 400 in Augsburg, and over 300 each in Nuremberg and Basel; then follow Leipzig, Speyer, Mainz and Ulm with over 100 each. 74 editions are printed on vellum, including one of the two copies of the Gutenberg Bible (Mainz 1455?). The 32 Latin Psalters include vellum copies of those of 1457 and 1459 (Fust and Schöffer, Mainz). There are ten Bibles in German (starting with that of Johann Mentelin, Strasbourg 1466?) and six Psalters, and in Low German three Bibles and one Psalter.

2.53 Most genres of German 15th-century book-production are well represented. There are numerous liturgical works (not destroyed by bombing, as were many later liturgies), sermons, religious handbooks and compendia, editions of Roman law and canon law, Papal decretals, constitutions, and large numbers of separate bulls and indulgences (including two of 1455). There are many editions of works of the Church Fathers, led by St. Thomas Aquinas and pseudo-St. Thomas (66 editions) and St. Augustine (65), works of Classical authors in Latin, including editiones principes, many texts popular in the 15th century which scarcely appear from later German presses (for example, 66 editions of works by Gerson), and works of contemporary authors such as Sebastian Brant and Jacob Wimpheling. There are numerous calendars and calendar-fragments, including 34 anonymous products; amongst those by named authors are ten by Johann Müller (Regiomontanus), including blockbook editions. There are 17 editions of De imitatione Christi and six editions of the Malleus maleficarum, and the Columbus letter in Latin (Basel 1493?) and German (Strasbourg 1497).

The Library of Sir Hans Sloane

2.54 Sloane was an Irish Protestant, born in 1660, who studied medicine, anatomy, chemistry, pharmacy, and botany, in London and in France, and collected books and plants from an early date. He practised as a physician, accompanying the Duke of Albemarle to Jamaica in 1687, where he stayed 15 months collecting plants and other specimens. On his return, he published his catalogue of Jamaican plants in 1695, the year of his marriage to the widow of an English physician and property-owner in Jamaica, and of his appointment as First Secretary of the Royal Society. He remained in this post until 1713, maintaining lively contact then and subsequently with a multitude of scholars at home and abroad, including Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and with travellers to those countries. He was a Court Physician from 1712 and was created Baronet in 1716. In 1727 he became President of the Royal Society in succession to Sir Isaac Newton (to 1743). He wrote little on medicine, but published his account of the natural history of Jamaica in 1707-1725. He was member of a number of foreign academies, including the Prussian Academy of Sciences from its foundation year 1712, and in 1752, shortly before his death, of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences. He spoke fluent French, and seems to have been able to read (as well of course as Latin) at least some German, Dutch and Italian. Amongst staff employed by him were the Swiss student Johann Caspar Scheuchzer, as librarian and amanuensis from 1725 until 1729, and another Swiss, Johann Ammann, as curator of his natural history collections from 1730 until 1733. After Scheuchzer's death, Sloane did not appoint another librarian, but had some assistance from two Royal Society colleagues, of whom Cromwell Mortimer is said to have been responsible for his books in German. Towards the end of his life he knew several German members of the Moravian Church in London, including Count Zinzendorf, well enough to have them act as trustees of the will he drew up in 1749.

2.55 He was a voracious collector of books, but it was his other collections, of natural history specimens, especially botany, and miscellaneous antiquities, which usually attracted attention in early descriptions; even in modern times his holdings of books have been very little studied. In 1702 he was bequeathed the collections of ``natural and artificial curiosities' of William Courten (1642-1702), then valued at the high sum of £ 50,000; these included coins and medals and other antiquities, and botany. Books no doubt also passed to Sloane from Courten, but these await identification, as the books mentioned in the latter's surviving manuscript records are rarely specified, and were mostly acquired by him before his stay of fourteen years on the Continent from 1670 to 1684. Amongst the other collections of German interest Sloane acquired were the botanical specimens of Jakob Breyne of Danzig (1637-1697) and the collections and manuscripts of Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716), so important for the history of Japan.

2.56 When he moved his collections from Bloomsbury to Chelsea in 1742, his library was said to have contained 42,000 books. At his death, his books and manuscripts, including prints and drawings, were estimated at 50,000; of this figure, probably some 45,000 were printed books. His other collections then numbered some 80,000 items plus his herbarium. Curiously enough, it is his books and his herbarium which survived best after becoming part of the British Museum, though neither collection has remained there: the herbarium is now in the Natural History Museum and most of the books are in the British Library. The bulk of the remaining specimens cannot now be identified in the Museum's various Departments, because these (like the books) were mixed with objects from other sources, while many specimens were sold as duplicates, or decayed and were disposed of. His volumes of prints were redistributed by schools when the Museum's print collection was so reorganised in 1808-1810, and many were sold as duplicates. He had a major collection of drawings by Dürer, now in the Museum, but the manuscript of Dürer's Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion went to the Department of Manuscripts and remains in the British Library. Sloane corresponded with Maria Sibylla Merian and before 1710 acquired her drawings of plants and insects made in Surinam in 1699-1701, also now in the Museum.

2.57 Difficult as they may be to use, Sloane's own catalogues of his library, of which there are three, indisputably reveal the fundamental importance of his printed books to nearly all areas of strength in the British Library's early collections to 1750, including those of German books. The earliest, a single small manuscript volume (MS. Sloane 3995), apparently records purchases over the three-year period to 1687, with prices paid, amounting to some 2,700 books and manuscripts. Medicine, especially in Latin, predominates, including volumes of dissertations, but other subjects are represented, from natural history, botany, chemistry, pharmacy, travels and topography (notably of Jamaica), to theology, philology, and (a constant feature of his collecting) book-sale catalogues and other catalogues of books. There are many fewer current than antiquarian purchases (of the 16th and 17th centuries, with comparatively few incunables), though he was clearly also buying very recent Latin books published in Germany. After Latin and English, the principal foreign languages are French, Italian and Spanish, with little in the German language. The first book in German he bought seems to have been Johann Tacke's Eucrene theosophica (Darmstadt 1672), although his indiscriminate use of the description ``in Dutch' for this and for books really in Dutch in his first catalogue suggests that at this early stage his knowledge of the German language was minimal.

2.58 The importance Sloane accorded to medical works in Latin throughout his career is shown by his maintenance for most of the remainder of his life of a separate catalogue for this remarkably extensive area of his collection, amounting possibly to one-third of the whole. He used for the purpose an interleaved copy of G. A. Mercklin's Lindenius renovatus (Nuremberg 1686, shelfmark 878.n.8), which is an expanded edition of J. A. van der Linden's bibliography of books on medicine. He noted on the printed leaves his own acquisitions of most of the works and editions listed there, and added post-1686 and other accessions on the additional leaves in manuscript. The collection includes many volumes of medical dissertations from German and other universities. In 1729 Sauveur Morand described Sloane's library as the most complete in Europe for books on medicine. His collection of medical books in Latin up to about 1750 can be called comprehensive, and is joined by equally extensive holdings of vernacular medical texts, including German, which are recorded amongst books on every other subject in all languages in his main library catalogue.

2.59 This main catalogue, in eight substantial folio volumes (MS. Sloane 3972C), was begun in about 1693. It mostly excludes the medical works in Latin catalogued as just described, but covered vernacular medicine and everything else, including manuscripts and prints and, confusingly, some lists of desiderata, e.g. of early Latin-American books. After listing the existing holdings, it went on to become a virtual accessions register, whose chronological progress (apart from some inserted leaves) can be followed by matching entries for dated issues of long-running serials, like the Acta eruditorum, the Journal des sçavans, and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, with the latest-dated surrounding monographs: thus vol. three runs to 1703/04, vol. 4 to 1710, vol. 5 to 1722, vol. 6 to 1726, vol. 7 (begun on 18 October 1726) to 1731, and vol. 8 (begun on 1 August 1731) to about 1750, with very few works of later date as Sloane's collecting came to an end; in fact, in the last decade of his life he bought mostly current literature, and less foreign books than before.

2.60 He otherwise always bought far more antiquarian than current books, but was nevertheless clearly buying large numbers of new and recent books from Germany in both German and Latin and on most subjects. Where and how he bought them is not yet known, though Margaret Nickson (see below 5.2) thinks most of his books will have been purchased in London. Most of his not complete, but impressive, holdings of Frankfurt and Leipzig Book Fair catalogues, from the 16th century onwards, were bought second-hand, but there are sporadic exceptions, for instance in 1699 (in vol. 1 of his catalogue) and again in 1718 and the early 1720s, and these no doubt aided his book-selection. His library included at least 700 sale catalogues, as well as many printed and manuscript catalogues of other libraries. Amongst these are numerous German book-sale catalogues, particularly of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, especially, it seems, from Hamburg. Whether this represents a bias of the contemporary London book-trade with Germany or a more direct involvement on Sloane's part (presumably via agents) remains to be investigated. In any case, the liveliness of his current purchasing from Germany suggests basic strengths in the British Library's collections of the late 17th century and the first half of the 18th which should be confirmed when the catalogue of German books 1701-1750, now being compiled, joins the published catalogue of 17th-century German books.

2.61 Apart from medicine (with its various branches such as surgery and obstetrics and preoccupations of the time such as plague) whose primacy in Sloane's library has been stated above, all other subjects have a notable representation in his German holdings, in both German and Latin, and of all periods up to 1750. He bought substantial scholarly monographs and fine illustrated books as well as pamphlets, academic dissertations and ephemera. Science and natural history loom large: he had numbers of early German botanical and zoological works, many illustrated; many chemical works (for instance, a particularly rich collection of works by Johann Rudolf Glauber) and books on pharmacy, including materia medica and recipes; his German alchemical collections are especially noteworthy, and there are many editions of Paracelsus in both German and Latin; and his astronomical books include many great rarities, from Peter Apian's Astronomicum Caesareum (Ingolstadt 1540) to works of Kepler. But he collected books in the humanities just as avidly. His holdings of German theology were mostly in Latin and not especially numerous, though they included incunables, and were seemingly not biased in favour of any one confession; he had, for instance, printed letters from Jesuit missions as well as several works of Jacob Gretser. He had much unorthodox and mystical religion too, including many works of Jacob Boehme. Nor did he confine himself to Christianity: his possession of the Hamburg Kuran of 1694 (now known to be its second appearance in print in Arabic) indicates the breadth of his interests.

2.62 He bought much philosophy, antiquarian as well as recent (e.g. works of Christian Wolff), ethics and logic; mathematics (including the 1666 Leipzig dissertation De arte combinatoria of the youthful Leibnitz), cryptography, economics (including recent works by Paul Marperger), education (Comenius and others), and agriculture. His law books included Friedrich Spee's second anonymous Cautio criminalis (``Frankfurt' 1632: the author's name has been added subsequently to the catalogue entry) as well as legal dissertations of 1711/12 from Giessen, bought new. His books on history range from Hartmann Schedel's Liber chronicarum (Nuremberg 1493) to many small pamphlets in German, including a collection relating to Oliver Cromwell. He collected also local history, militaria, topography and travels (he had Bernhard von Breydenbach's 1486 and 1488 Mainz Peregrinatio, a set of the De Brys' Latin America 1590-1634, volumes of Matthaeus Merian's Topographiae and of works by J. W. von Valvasor), atlases, biography and genealogy.

2.63 His substantial holdings on antiquities, numismatics and inscriptions no doubt helped to document the objects in these areas of his collections, but were not limited in any way in their range. He collected widely in the field of linguistics, including Hebrew and other Oriental languages, many important works being published in the German-speaking countries; there are, for example, several early works on the Polish language, D. G. Morhof's Unterricht von der teutschen Sprache und Poesie (1682), and many multilingual dictionaries. He had much classical literature printed in the German-speaking countries, for instance Plautus and Terence in 16th-century Basel editions.

2.64 He tended to buy German authors of belles-lettres in Latin rather than German, though there are exceptions (Moscherosch, Rist, Zesen, Birken, Bohse, Brockes, and others in German). More interesting are the works printed in English in Germany: he had G. R. Weckherlin's excessively rare Triumphal shews (Stuttgart 1616; acquired in about 1728) and William Carr's Coffo phillo (Regensburg 1672). Since he bought many locally-printed curious books, he also had some of the Latin works of Quirinus Kuhlmann printed in London which are so rare in German collections. ``The Fruitfull Company in Rhimes' (Frankfurt 1646) is more recognisable as Ludwig von Anhalt-Köthen's book of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, and was clearly bought for its gravings by Merian, which are given a print accession-number. Sloane no doubt bought books on art and architecture, costume, and emblems, for related reasons; he had several books illustrated by Jost Amman and Tobias Stimmer, as well as the major publications of the Sandrarts. Other subjects well represented in his library are demonology and witchcraft, occult sciences, the Rosicrucians (many pamphlets, including the Fama Fraternitatis, Frankfurt 1617), folklore, and cookery.

2.65 Sloane was certainly interested in early printing, and bought numbers of incunables, but he seems not to have done this systematically. His 16th-century books, when compared with what the British Library now holds of the period, were not rich in theological literature in German, including the Lutheran and other tracts of the Reformation which are now an area of particular strength, mostly to be acquired through the antiquarian trade in the mid-19th century. The same can be said of historical tracts in German of the 16th and 17th centuries, and certainly of belles-lettres in German of all periods to 1750, and of German Bibles. But the range and depth of his German holdings, of scholarly and more ephemeral literature, and including quantities of academic publications, undoubtedly laid the firmest of foundations for the outstanding German collections subsequently developed so successfully by the British Museum and the British Library.

2.66 Most of his books came to the British Museum, but large numbers of those in his first catalogue did not. He also gave over 1400 books to the Bodleian Library in Oxford between 1700 and 1738. The British Museum's interfiling of printed books from all sources during its early period, as well as its several sales of duplicates, often make the identification of Sloane copies in the British Library very difficult; it is hazardous to attempt this from catalogue entries alone.

The Old Royal Library

2.67 Professor Birrell's work will make it much clearer which monarch owned which books, and meanwhile the following outline of the German holdings must be considered merely provisional.

2.68 There is little of German interest before Henry VIII (reigned 1509-1547), who was a reader and annotator of his books as well as an author; as a collector, his acquisition of books printed on vellum (mainly French, from the Paris press of Antoine Vérard) began what became a lasting preoccupation of the Trustees of the British Museum, who during its whole lifetime assembled a fine collection of such books and always insisted on having vellum books specially reported to them. Henry possessed two of the Old Royal Library's handful of books in the German language (a calendar printed by M. Hüpfuff in Strasbourg, 1515, and an unidentified Strasbourg edition of J. Bämler's Rome chronicle).

2.69 Henry's crucial interest in the Reformation is reflected in his library, amongst the most remarkable items being some Protestant tracts in French printed in Strasbourg in 1527 by Johann Prüss the Younger. His ``German' books were otherwise almost entirely in Latin. T. A. Birrell has recently drawn attention to Henry's reading of his copy of Augustinus Triumphus, Summa de summa potestate ecclesiastica (Cologne 1475), which so influenced his view of himself as vicar of Christ, and to the importance for his views on justification by faith of the Catholic theologian Johann Gropper, whose Enchiridion is included in the 1537 publication of the Cologne Synod's Canones, which he possessed. He also had the Wittenberg 1531 Confessio Augustana, but only a handful of editions of works by Luther, of which the Old Royal Library had less than a dozen. He had two works of Heinrich Bullinger printed in Zürich, as well as nine works of Melanchthon out of the Old Royal Library's total of 21 (not all printed in Germany), and some 20 early German editions of Erasmus, an author very well represented in the Old Royal Library. Of two volumes which came from his suppression of the monasteries, one consists of incunable tracts printed in Cologne. He also fulfilled his modern popular type-casting in possessing Vincent Opsopoeus, De arte bibendi (Nuremberg 1536). He had the 1543 folio edition of Froschauer's Latin Bible, while Edward VI (1547-1553) added the 1544 octavo edition from the same press. Apart from a few educational works, Edward otherwise had practically nothing printed in Germany. There seems no truth in a claim made by John Strype (in his Memorials of Thomas Cranmer, 1694) that Martin Bucer's library was bought for Edward VI.

2.70 The books of Queen Mary (1553-1558) consisted largely of (Catholic) devotional works, and she had little from Germany apart from Petrus de Soto's Assertio Catholicae fidei and Thomas More's Utopia, both Cologne 1555. Elizabeth I (1558-1603) may have had some Mercator maps published in Duisburg, two more Zürich editions of Heinrich Bullinger, Johann Wier's De lamiis and De praestigiis daemonum, Basel 1582 and 1583 respectively, and the 1532 Basel New Testament of Erasmus. Her leisure reading included much in Italian, and a copy of Hieronymus Megiser's Dictionarium quatuor linguarum, Germanicae, Latinae, Illuricae & Italicae (Graz 1592) may have been hers, though clearly not for the German; she also had a copy of Jodocus Willich, Ars magirica, hoc est coquinaria (Zürich 1563).

2.71 James I (1603-1625) wrote several books, and collected literature by his critics, as well as current history, theology, and books on subjects of personal interest, much of it contemporary and much from Germany. Thus he had nine works by Martinus Becanus published in Mainz 1610-1618, twenty works of Jacob Gretser published in Ingolstadt 1600-1617, and several of Robert Bellarmin and Caspar Schoppe, as well as a splendidly-bound copy of the Jesuit Adam Contzen's Politicorum libri decem (Mainz 1621). He had numbers of works, including ephemeral pamphlets, on the Palatinate and the Bohemian affair which began the Thirty Years' War, reflecting both his political interest and his personal involvement through his daughter Princess Elizabeth, the ``Winter Queen'. In 1614 James bought part of the library of Isaac Casaubon, rich in continental scholarship and controversy, and similar in its preoccupations to James's own. Amongst ``German' imprints Casaubon had, for example, five early editions of works by Sebastian Münster, six Cologne editions of works by Dionysius de Leuwis, and Galileo's Sidereus nuncius (Frankfurt 1610). James's more miscellaneous books from Germany included the Braun/Hoghenberg Civitates orbis terrarum and a polyglot edition of the emblems of Georgette de Montenay (Frankfurt 1619). James also had one book in the German language, the Altenburg 1610 edition of Georg Tectander's Iter Persicum, which, it has been suggested, may have been bought in error because its title is in Latin.

2.72 Of particular note are the many books with Hanau imprints from the early years of the 17th century, suggesting something of a special relationship which has yet to be investigated. The King's Printers (John and Bonham Norton and John Bill) seem to have acquired books for James from the continent, Bill in particular being a regular visitor to the Frankfurt Book Fair from about 1605 until the early 1620s. The Antonius press in Calvinist Hanau (Wilhelm Antonius and his successors, active 1593-1625), as Max Spirgatis first pointed out, functioned on a few occasions as agent at Frankfurt for English publications; it also had a high proportion of works by English authors in its own publishing programme: Josef Benzing recorded sixty from 1594 to 1614, mainly in Latin but with a few in German, by William Perkins and other authors either English or living in England. Could King James's holdings of Hanau books indicate patronage rather than merely a commercial relationship with his London agents?

2.73 The library being built up meanwhile by and for James's ill-fated son Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, reinforces the view that this young man's intellectual promise and careful education might have led to extraordinary achievements, had he not died in 1612. In 1609 the library of John Lord Lumley (1534-1609), was bequeathed to Prince Henry, including as it did the c. 500 books formerly belonging to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), which had been confiscated by the Crown and passed to Lumley's father-in-law the Earl of Arundel, who passed them on to Lumley together with his own collection of c. 400 more. Lumley expanded the collection, which had reached about 2,000 vols on his death, and consisted of books on theology, history, liberal arts (including poetry and books on poetry), philosophy, astronomy, law, music, medicine and geography. A catalogue of 1609 survives in Trinity College Cambridge, from which some 1350 books are now identifiable in the British Library, together with about 150 in other institutions. The books were overwhelmingly in Latin, with under 7 per cent in English and less in other modern languages (principally French and Italian). There was but one wholly in German, Sebastian Franck's Chronica (Strasbourg 1531), described in the 1609 catalogue as ``in high Dutche' and a formerly Cranmer book. Lumley also had Sebald Beham's Bible woodcuts in the Frankfurt 1537 edition, with captions in Latin and German. His Latin books from Germany included incunables, Johann Stoeffler's Calendarium (Oppenheim 1518), several volumes of Dionysius de Leuwis printed in Cologne 1532-40, several Erasmus editions, the Zürich Latin Kuran of 1550, Thomas More's Lucubrationes (Basel 1563), and Jacob Sprenger and Henricus Institoris, Malleus maleficarum (Frankfurt 1580).

2.74 The Lumley Library was a fine acquisition for Prince Henry, whose books overall have been described by Professor Birrell as ``an admirable mixture of the humanistic and the scientific'. They included continental works both old and new on a whole range of subjects (military science can be added to the list of Lumley subjects above), as well as schoolbooks, and highly important works such as Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (both Nuremberg 1543 and Basel 1566). Professor Birrell sees the influence of German Protestant court culture on Henry in his possession of works by Heinrich Rantzau, and of Franciscus Modius, Pandectae triumphales (Frankfurt 1586).

2.75 Some books in the Old Royal Library bear tooled leather bindings for Prince Henry, as later for Charles I (1625-1649) and Charles II (1660-1685), which when genuine are obvious guides to provenance, though Charles II's habit of rebinding books acquired by his predecessors as if they were his is a trap for the unwary. Many English royal bindings are now kept together in Cases 73-83.

2.76 Charles I's books were not sold off like his pictures during the Commonwealth, and though numbers of books from the Old Royal Library were stolen during that period, many of Charles's survive, but there is not much of German origin worthy of special note. However, he did have a copy of one of the most influential books by a British scientist ever to be published abroad, William Harvey's De motu cordis et sanguinis (Frankfurt 1628). (The manuscript of Harvey's 1616 lectures announcing his discovery of the circulation of the blood is, incidentally, among Sloane's highly important medical manuscripts.) Charles I possessed a copy of the 1627 Cologne edition of the Index librorum prohibitorum, and, apparently, a 1622 Frankfurt Book Fair catalogue. There were other issues of the Fair-catalogues in the Old Royal Library, which, if they survived, might help to determine how some continental books were acquired, but the catalogue records are usually unspecific, and two which are partially identified (from 1592 and 1616) are not now in the British Library.

2.77 Charles II did not, it seems, acquire continental literature of his own time, though he may have bought antiquarian books: he seems to have had, for instance, a copy of D. Jocquet's French Triomphes for Frederick Elector Palatine and Princess Elizabeth (Heidelberg 1613, wanting the plates) which is not recorded as having belonged to James I, Elizabeth's father. Charles II's biggest acquisition was the working library (some 1,400 items, of which c. 1,300 survive in the British Library) of the somewhat obscure gentleman-scholar John Morris (c. 1580-1658). Morris's interests were mainly in the humanities (genealogy, heraldry, topography, travel, history, religion, plus botany), and his books, including belles-lettres, were mainly of Italian, French and Spanish origin. His two books in German, possibly bought as linguistic curiosities, were Thomas Murner's Schelmenzunft (Strasbourg 1616), and the unique copy of the second edition (as we now know) of Hermann Bote's anonymous Eulenspiegel, Strasbourg 1515; he also had the German-Latin dictionary of Josue Mahler (Zürich 1561), perhaps to help him read them.

The Cracherode Collection

2.78 The Cracherode Bequest dates from 1799. The collector seems to have almost completely avoided the German language, as nearly all his German books are in Latin. They are not particularly numerous, amounting probably to less than 300 in all, but they include many important products of German presses, notably Classical editiones principes of the 15th and 16th centuries. His dozen or so German incunables include the Mainz Catholicon of recently disputed date, and vellum copies of Fust and Schöffer's Mainz Vulgate of 1462 and of the Ulm Ptolemy of 1482. He had maybe sixty German editions of the 16th century, less than half that number of the 17th, but three times that number from the 18th, comprising largely scholarly editions of classical texts. He had works by J. J. Winckelmann published in French and Italian in France and Italy respectively, as well as the French translation of his major work (Histoire de l'art de l'antiquitâéé¬Å¡), printed in Leipzig 1781. The Basel 1744 edition of Matthaeus Merian's La danse des morts, with text in French and German, is a rare and possibly unique example of the German language amongst his books. The Cracherode books are placed at shelfmarks 657-688, with further items in Cases 17-24.

The von Moll Collection

2.79 Karl Marie Ehrenbert, Baron von Moll (1760-1838), was first a civil servant in Salzburg, from 1791 responsible for mining and the mint, then from 1805 in Munich, where he became a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. His devotion to natural history, technology and agriculture went some way to determining the nature of his huge private library, but he was also said to have bought heavily from the libraries of dissolved German monasteries, as well as the large medical library of Philipp Fischer (1744-1800). He had sold rare books from his collection to the Munich Court Library in 1808. After the sale of some 20,000 books to the British Museum in 1815, in the years before his death he was to sell some 50,000 vols to the University of Moscow. He also donated numerous books to Munich, and to the universities of Würzburg and Erlangen. There was an auction in 1841 of some parts of his collection, but the rest of his library stayed in family hands until, with subsequent accessions, it was auctioned in Munich in 1989.

2.80 A slip printed in English in London in late 1814 by Keating, Brown & Keating of 38 Duke-Street numbered the collections, ``to be parted with in one lot for the sum of three thousand guineas at Munick, at about 20,000 printed books ``in all languages including ``many large series of works with illuminated plates', 7-8,000 mineralogical specimens, and a hortus siccus of 7-8,000 plants. The books were said to include 1,000 theological works, 3,000 in jurisprudence and politics, 3,000 in medicine, 4,000 in natural history, 4,000 in history, 1,000 in geography and travels, 1,000 in classics, vocabularies and philology, 1,000 in chemistry, pharmacy, mathematics and physics, and 1,000 in arts and sciences. The Museum, clearly interested, enlisted the help of Count Jennison, Secretary to the London Legation from the Court of Bavaria, and in February 1815 sent Henry Baber and Charles König to Munich to inspect respectively the printed books and natural history specimens on offer; in Munich they were assisted by G. H. Rose, the British Minister there.

2.81 Moll's books had been stored in the suppressed monastery of Fürstenfeld, and Baber found the Baron prepared to let him make his own selection of books from what he described as ``an excellent collection of literature in general, but moreover particularly rich in works (many of which are unknown in England) in ...botany, mineralogy, entomology, anatomy, medicine, midwifery, transactions of scientific institutions, literary history, voyages & travels, dictionaries of language & science'. By May the selection was made, of between 19,000 and 20,000 books in almost all European languages, adding to the subjects already listed ``theology, civil history, geography, jurisprudence & belles lettres', and including a collection of more than 2,000 works published before 1526. Baber obtained the Trustees' permission to spend more than the 3,000 guineas named in the original advertisement, because the new selection was so much more valuable: he had argued that this acquisition would make the Museum library better in the field of natural history than any other library in England. Payment was made in June, and by May 1817 an assistant named A. Schlichtegroll was able to report that he had already catalogued two-thirds of the books.

2.82 The von Moll books were, like most other early accessions, dispersed amongst the Museum's other holdings, so that identification is now extremely difficult, as the books bear no marks of von Moll's ownership. There are three manuscript catalogues in the British Library (Add.39294-6, wrongly catalogued in-house as ``after 1822') whose status is not easy to determine. The first, a subject catalogue in which about 2,600 mostly medical works (including obstetrics, embryology, anatomy, physiology, surgery, pharmacy, and veterinary science), of the 16th to the early 19th centuries, are very well described, seems to contain no work with publication date later than 1815. Most works in it are now in the British Library, but not all, so it is not unequivocally a catalogue either of part of the books originally offered in 1814 or of those selected by Baber.

2.83 The second catalogue is entitled ``Sammlung von vierhundert ein und neunzig Convoluten ungebundener Dissertationen über alle Fächer der Medicin nach den Materien geordnet'. Though the catalogue lists merely the subject of each Convolut and the number of items in it, and the surname of the praeses but no places or dates, it is clear that all these dissertations came to the Museum and are now to be found, still in their original subject groups, at shelfmarks T.506-651. They comprise more than 5,000 items, the majority from German universities (though there are some from the Netherlands and Scandinavia), and are mainly of the 17th and 18th centuries, with very few from the 16th. Unlike the more substantial works in the remainder of the von Moll collection, these dissertations were not subject to dispersal in the Museum's subsequent sales of duplicates, so that numbers of them do in fact duplicate other copies held.

2.84 The third von Moll catalogue (an author catalogue) seems more likely to have been drawn up before Baber made his selection, since it seems to contain no work with publication date later than 1813, and more works not now in the British Library than the first catalogue; yet even counting volumes rather than works (and there are many multi-volume sets like the Beiträge zur Kenntnis des Innern von England, 16 vols, Leipzig 1791; Neuere Geschichte der europäischen Missions-Anstalten, 41 vols, Hamburg 1770-1798; Allgemeines Journal der Chemie, 60 vols, Leipzig 1798-1803; Krünitz's Oeconomische Encyklopädie, 78 vols, Brünn 1787-1804; Hamburger Magazin, 27 vols, Hamburg 1747), it contains only just over half the 16,000 non-medical works promised in the original printed announcement of the sale, leaving its precise status as much in doubt as the first catalogue: neither has an explanatory title. The third covers all subjects and languages, and dates mainly from the 18th century, though there are numbers of 17th-century, fewer 16th-century, and even fewer 15th-century, books.

2.85 These are not a bibliophile's books, but those of an intelligent collector of books of high intrinsic interest. It is noticeable, however, that the largest number were printed in Germany in the German language. The importance to the Museum of those selected, therefore, was not least that they continued into the early 19th century the date-range of Sloane's books (including the medical works from the first and second von Moll catalogues), and, equally importantly, that they considerably expanded the Museum's

 holdings of the books in German which were generally less
well represented in the Foundation Collections.

The Library of Sir Joseph Banks

2.86 An inventory of Banks's library drawn up in 1820-23 and used for checking when the books came to the Museum lists some 7,900 titles in 10,000 vols, plus about 6,000 pamphlets. It also lists 234 scientific and literary periodicals of the period 1665 to 1820 in ten languages, the largest number (69) being published in Germany, ahead even of Britain (46) and France (40). The main subjects represented in the library are botany (over 2,700 works), zoology (over 1,900), travel and topography (over 1,300), geology (over 1,300), medicine, pharmacy, and related subjects (over 1,000), agriculture (over 900), natural history in general (over 700), with smaller numbers for other subjects; there are German works by great and lesser authorities in all categories, with a notable number of systematic works and of books famous for their illustrations.

2.87 There are German books from all periods up to 1820 in both Latin and German, particularly from the 17th century onwards, and most of all from Banks's own lifetime. As well as antiquarian books, he clearly bought important current literature, and the inventory includes Leipzig Book Fair catalogues from 1797 to 1820. For instance, two invoices of 1802 and 1805 amongst the voluminous Banks papers in the Sutro Library in San Francisco show Banks buying current German books and serials (including Fair catalogues) from the bookseller Carl Ernst Bohn of Hamburg. His incunables, like all his books, were chosen for their matter, and the survivals of ancient and medieval science interested him far less than the developments of the modern age. He had rather few 15th-century books, therefore, including from Germany Konrad von Megenberg's Das puoch der natur (Augsburg 1475) and a Nuremberg 1492 edition of De proprietatibus rerum by Bartholomaeus Anglicus. His 16th-century German books do include various editions of Pliny and Aristotle, but also Aldrovandi and Gesner, as well as works by many contemporary scientists, especially botanists, Hieronymus Braunschweig's Das neuwe Distilier buoch (Strasbourg 1531), Hernan Cortés's De insulis nuper inventis (Cologne 1532) and Jost Amman's Thierbuch (Frankfurt 1592).

2.88 From the later centuries to 1820, Banks's German books grow ever more numerous in the categories already mentioned, and including horticulture and forestry, ornithology, entomology, conchology, palaeontology, and mineralogy. German works on discovery and navigation naturally fall behind those of maritime nations, but there are excellent representations in all other categories. There are many catalogues of personal and institutional collections of natural history and other materials, catalogues of botanical gardens, local flora (of which large numbers were published in the 18th century), special and general bibliographies (such as Panzer's Annales typographici and Haller's bibliography of Swiss history), and specialist scientific dictionaries. Banks also had German-English dictionaries and Adelung's Wörterbuch (Leipzig 1774-1786), as well as many works of reference such as Jöcher/Adelung and Meusel. His huge pamphlet collection includes very many German items, of which large numbers are university theses. His journals include not only the publications of the leading German academies and institutions, starting with the Acta eruditorum in 1682 and covering the major serials from Berlin and Göttingen, but also those from places such as Danzig, Mainz, Mannheim, Munich, Prague, Regensburg, Tübingen, and Zürich, as well as many short-lived titles of considerable interest.

2.89 Banks's books, still largely in their original subject groupings, are placed at 431-462, 953-965, and 977-990, with the pamphlets in tract volumes at B.1-B.746. It is sad to report that the sole surviving German book thought to have accompanied Banks on his voyage in The Endeavour with Captain Cook in 1768-71, the magnificently illustrated Phytanthosoa iconographia of J. W. Weinmann (4 vols, Regensburg 1737-45) was recently robbed of most of its plates by a book-thief, who similarly vandalised the copy in the King's Library. When the Museum's natural history collections were removed to South Kensington in 1880 to form the British Museum (Natural History), Banks's printed books remained at Bloomsbury. It has only recently become known, however, that some of the printed illustrated broadsides from his collection are now to be found with his manuscripts at the Natural History Museum.

The King's Library

2.90 George III's first major acquisition was in January 1763, shortly after he bought the Thomason Tracts for the Museum, when he bought for himself for £10,000 a collection of books formed by Joseph Smith (1674?-1770), formerly British Consul in Venice, which was especially rich in Italian books, including belles-lettres (Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, and many others), and incunables, particularly editions of the classics. Smith's books were the foundation of the Royal collection, rather as Sloane's were of the British Museum's, if their Italian bias did need to be balanced out by later accessions. The marked copy of the printed catalogue by Joannes Baptista Paschalius (Bibliotheca Smithiana, Venice 1755) which constituted the legal basis of the sale to the King is held by the British Library (823.h.26). George was later to buy from Smith paintings, including superb Canalettos, and coins and other antiquities. Together with his wife, he also collected music, most notably manuscripts of Handel, but the Royal Music Library (mainly, but not exclusively, manuscript), with its later additions, was not to be presented to the British Museum until 1957, by Queen Elizabeth II. But George did not buy many books before 1766.

2.91 There is a famous letter dated 28 May 1768 of Samuel Johnson, whose advice on collecting George had sought, counselling him to buy abroad, with Germany named as particular source for books on feudal law. In general, Johnson recommended purchase of works in ``the most curious edition (``commonly the first), ``the most splendid, and ``the most useful (``among the last', i.e. modern critical editions), with special attention to ``the old printers' and to illustrated books. The resulting library's excellence is due in large part to George's outstanding Principal Librarian from 1774, Sir Frederick Augusta Barnard (1742-1830). Barnard had acted first as agent, and between 1768 and 1771 travelled widely on the continent (including visits to Vienna, Berlin, Dresden and Strasbourg) buying books from an allowance of £2,000 a year, many from dispersed Jesuit libraries, applying the principles enunciated by Johnson. Detailed accessions records of the library do not survive, but George bought extensively at London sales as well as abroad. His intention was not to collect rarities (though in fact he had many such), but to create a working scholarly library of huge extent, maintained from his own funds and accessible to public use: in this he was certainly extremely successful. His purchases of mainstream scholarly literature included both monographs and the transactions of many learned societies and institutions at home and abroad, as well as a number of other journals.

2.92 A catalogue of the library by Barnard was published in the years 1820-1829, copies of which were not for sale, but were presented to a number of great libraries (including, for instance, the Ducal Library at Goethe's Weimar); a separate catalogue of the geographical collection was published in 1829. The high quality of the cataloguing of both parts of the collection may well have exerted more of an influence on later British Museum cataloguing practice for both printed books and maps than has hitherto been acknowledged. The printed books are still kept together at shelfmarks 1-304, with the exception of some especially valuable books which were extracted and placed in Cases 1-16. The terms of the gift precluded the disposal of any of George III's books by the Museum as duplicates, although perhaps a third did duplicate editions already in the library. In September 1940, some 428 vols were destroyed or irreparably damaged by bombing, so several could immediately be replaced from elsewhere in the collections.

2.93 There are important German publications in all categories of the King's Library, but there is what might seem a surprising dearth of belles-lettres, devotional books and other leisure reading in German. The fact is that George and his family, including his Queen, had private libraries for domestic use at Windsor and elsewhere quite apart from the grand collection which came to the Museum, and in which leisure reading was catered for. A manuscript catalogue, now at Windsor, of a smallish library George kept at Cumberland Lodge (in Windsor Great Park), representing holdings there from 1780 to 1812, reveals next to nothing in German, apart from a prayer-book of 1757 printed in London, one book on Frederick the Great, and the Annalen der braunschweig-lüneburgischen Churlande (18 vols, Hanover 1787 ff.), as well as two German dictionaries: this library was incorporated about 1835 in the present Royal Library at Windsor.

2.94 But Queen Charlotte's private library was quite a different matter. This was dispersed in a sale at Christie's in June 1819, as the library of ``an illustrious personage, lately deceased' (there are copies of the catalogue both in the King's Library itself, 123.f.16, and at Windsor annotated with purchasers' names and prices), and proves to have contained, as well as large numbers of books in English and French, much of great interest in German: there are over 320 German novels (mainly of the late 18th and early 19th centuries), some 60 editions of German poetry, including Haller, Klopstock, Schiller, and Voss, over 20 editions of German dramas, books in German on education, arts and sciences, linguistics (including dictionaries and Gottsched's Critische Dichtkunst), philosophy (including Herder's Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität and Terpsichore), some 60 editions of German sermons, 110 works of history, some 50 biographies, 45 accounts of travel, and some 120 miscellaneous collected editions of writers such as Goethe, Lessing, Lichtenberg, Schiller, and Wieland. When one recalls that all George's children were taught German, perhaps the most interesting section of Queen Charlotte's German books is seen to consist of children's literature, including for instance 24 vols of Der Kinderfreund (Leipzig 1777-1782). It must be a matter of regret that so discerning a collection was allowed to be sold off: the British Museum seems not to have bid for any of these highly interesting German books.

2.95 Much earlier, Charlotte had even employed as reader Andrew Planta, who had been a Swiss pastor before joining the British Museum staff in 1758 (first in the Natural History Department, then in the Department of Printed Books from 1765 until his death in 1773), and who was also minister in the Reformed German Church in London. (It is worth remarking that from its earliest years the British Museum had made a point of employing excellent linguists, many of foreign origin: Dr Matthew Maty, Principal Librarian 1772-1776 was born in Utrecht; Joseph Planta, son of Andrew, was Principal Librarian 1799-1827. In 1807 the Museum Trustees decided formally always to take account of required linguistic skills when appointing staff. The Museum's greatest librarian was to be Italian.)

2.96 The various royal domestic collections, then, did not come to the Museum with the King's Library. Thirty select volumes from the main collection were also retained by George IV and are now at Windsor; they include Charles II's copy of the Shakespeare second folio of 1632, and from Germany the Mainz Psalter of 1457 on vellum, which George III had purchased from the University of Göttingen for four hundred guineas, as well as a vellum copy of the Summa of Thomas Aquinas (Mainz 1471), the Harleian copy, partly on vellum, of the Decretals of Gregory IX (Mainz 1473), and the Historia tripartita (Augsburg 1472). Of all but the last of these incunables, the Museum subsequently acquired other copies on vellum. The King's splendid collection of nautical charts went first to the Admiralty, but in 1844 most joined the remainder of the King's Library at the Museum.

2.97 The relative importance accorded to modern foreign languages in building up George's magnificent scholarly library is indicated in the structure of several headings in its catalogue (such as Dictionaries, Drama, Epistolae, Poetae), which follow the sequence: ancient languages first, then English, then Romance languages - Italian, Spanish (together with only a little Portuguese), French, then German, Slavonic, and Oriental languages. This is obviously a reflection more of contemporary British perceptions of scholarly use than of George's own linguistic competence. The fact that Italian precedes the more widely understood French is probably due to the weight of the Consul Smith constituent; occasionally, German texts are represented only in French translation. There are nevertheless very substantial holdings of books from the German-speaking countries in both German and Latin. The 18th and early 19th centuries predominate, and suggest that current literature was being acquired quite extensively, though there are important examples of the earlier centuries of German printing, particularly of incunables.

2.98 The latter include a Gutenberg Bible (Mainz 1455?) and Catholicon (Mainz 1460), a vellum copy of Fust and Schöffer's Mainz Bible of 1462 and their Latin Psalter of 1459, eleven other Latin editions of the Bible and three in German, twelve editions of St. Augustine, nine of Thomas Aquinas, eight of Jean Gerson, and some rare incunables in German: Hans Folz's Poetische Historie (Nuremberg 1479) and two books from the Printer of the Prognostication (Mainz 1480?). The over 200 incunables George acquired from Consul Smith are overwhelmingly from Italian, especially Venetian, presses, and there are only five, all in Latin, from German presses, four from Mainz and one from Augsburg.

2.99 Apart from George's incunables and some famous books from later periods, such as Dürer's Great Passion and Life of Mary (both Nuremberg 1511), Melchior Pfintzing's Teuerdank (Nuremberg 1517), two editions, one finely coloured, of Basilius Besler's Hortus Eystettensis (1613), some volumes of the De Bry voyages and the Zeiller/Merian Topographiae, several works of Joachim von Sandrart, C. J. Trew's Hortus nitidissimus (Nuremberg 1768-1786), or Alois Senefelder's Vollständiges Lehrbuch der Steindruckerei (Munich 1818), the library is composed of books intended primarily for use, and is far from being a bibliophile's collection.

2.100 Its scholarly nature is underlined by a hitherto unremarked close connection with the University of Göttingen. It is noticeable that monographs by professors at that institution, as well as other books with Göttingen imprints, are particularly well represented, even occasionally in areas otherwise neglected, such as medicine, or homiletics. The University, founded by George II and inaugurated in 1737, soon played a leading role in continental scholarship; George III as Elector had a continuing interest in its progress, sending four sons there as part of their education. The Hanoverian Legation in London is known to have been instrumental in supplying English books to the University Library, but it is not yet known whether some formal arrangement existed for the supply of Göttingen books (there is no evidence in the State Archive in Hanover for a general legal deposit at this date) in the opposite direction for the Royal Library, whether professors (several of whom taught the young Princes) and other Germans with Court connections, including personal acquaintances like Lichtenberg, routinely presented their books to their Monarch in London, or whether George's Librarian merely had instructions to collect current scholarly literature from Hanover and its University. Certainly the latter's early period, before George III began collecting, is quite well covered also, as it is definitely not in the Old Royal Library from George II's time.

2.101 While standard Göttingen dissertations do not feature in George III's library, from 1785 to 1802 he regularly received copies of the Prize Dissertations from Göttingen which he instituted and funded, even setting the topic for the theology prize in 1786 himself. He also regularly presented copies of these Prize Dissertations to Richard Hurd, Bishop of Worcester (1720-1808), from 1776 tutor to two of the Princes, who from 1781 was a member of the Royal Society of Göttingen, and whose library is still at Hartlebury Castle in Worcestershire: on its foundation in 1782, George had presented Hurd with a collection of books including much recently-published theology and philosophy from Germany. These books are editions and works of which a majority is not present in George's own library, and show the active role he took in book collecting, even if here in a sacrifice in the interests of his children's education.

2.102 Apart from the dearth of dissertations, there is virtually no popular or occasional literature, or ephemera, and few sermons; and medicine is poorly represented on the whole, as is mathematics. Otherwise most subjects are well stocked with works from the German-speaking countries. Theology is patchy, however, with numbers of incunables and several later Bible editions (for example, the Hamburg 1596 polyglot, seven editions in Hebrew, one in Syriac and three in Greek, of the 16th century two in Latin and four in German, of which two in Low German, and two in Romansch; of the 17th century one in Latin and four in German; of the 18th ten in German), but with nothing remarkable in the way of New Testament editions after the earliest Erasmus (Basel 1516), and little sign of systematic collecting in the broader field of theology. There are seven German hymnbooks, four of the 17th century and three of the 18th, and a German prayerbook for the Lutheran chapel at court, printed in London in 1757. Luther and Melanchthon are represented only by collected editions (Wittenberg 1552-1562 and 1562 respectively), and there is nothing unorthodox (Jacob Boehme, for instance).

2.103 The subjects well represented with substantial monographs in both German and Latin include history, with particular strength in 18th-century constitutional history, and German local and dynastic history and genealogy. There are fine sets of major serial works such as the Theatrum Europaeum (Frankfurt 1644-1738), Diarium Europaeum (Frankfurt 1659-1681), M. C. Lundorp's Acta publica (Frankfurt 1668-1721), C. L. Leucht's Europäische Staats-Cantzley (1697-1780), and the Teutsche Kriegs-Kanzley von 1757 bis 1763. Constitutional law is well covered, as are antiquities (12 editions of works by Winckelmann) and numismatics, natural history, topography, science and technology, astronomy (with several works of Tycho Brahe and J. Hevelius), botany and gardening, philosophy (31 editions of works by Christian Wolff, two early works of Herder) and linguistics (including oriental, particularly Hebrew). Many books in appropriate categories are finely illustrated. Classical authors (poets, dramatists, historians and philosophers) are present in many editiones principes from Germany, as well as in critical editions, many of the 18th century, following Samuel Johnson's precept. George also collected the serial and other publications of most academies and learned societies of the German-speaking countries.

2.104 German belles-lettres, as has been noted, were present in the guise of leisure reading in Queen Charlotte's private library, while in the King's Library they appear much less frequently, though they are equally almost all by authors of his own time. The over 20 editions of works by Wieland are exceptional, and reflect a current mode; otherwise authors such as Opitz, Gellert, Salomon Gessner, and Goethe appear mainly in collected editions. George also had a collected Herder, which for some reason did not come to the Museum, as well as isolated editions of works by Bürger, Canitz, Gleim, Hagedorn, Haller, Ramler, Schiller, and others. While he cannot be considered a collector in this area, his library did hold a few notable literary monuments: part one of Sibylle Schwarz's Deutsche poetische Gedichte (Danzig 1650), Bodmer's edition of Chriemhilden Rache und die Klage (Zürich 1757), the Bodmer's and Breitinger's edition of the Sammlung von Minnesingern (Zürich 1758-1759), Lieder der Deutschen mit Melodien (edited by Ramler, Berlin 1767-1768), and Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Arnim and Brentano, Heidelberg 1806-1808).

2.105 George's German periodicals included the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek (1766-1806), Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste (1765-1806), and at least one of German interest published elsewhere: Bibliothèque germanique (Amsterdam 1720-1760). He had several dictionaries, and works of reference such as the cyclopedia of Ersch and Gruber. He also had works on the history of printing, bibliographies, and printed catalogues of institutional libraries in Altenburg, Augsburg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Gotha, Heilbronn, Leipzig, Munich, Nuremberg, Quedlinburg, Regensburg, Vienna, Wismar, and Bern. His large collection of catalogues of private libraries and sale catalogues includes over 50 from Germany, mainly of the 18th century, where perhaps may be found the sources for some of his books.

The Kuppitsch Collection

2.106 Perhaps most of the over 5,000 items selected from the sale catalogue of the library of Matthäus Kuppitsch (see above 1.63) were German belles-lettres, but there were also nearly 300 editions of Luther and many of his contemporaries. Amongst other authors well represented were Sebastian Brant, Hans Sachs (no less than 90 editions), Johann Fischart, plus masses of high- and low-level literature from the 15th century onwards. One of the great glories of the collection was the large number of extremely rare popular song-texts, printed for distribution by hawkers and at fairs (called ``cantiques et chansons' in the catalogue), of which Kuppitsch had made a speciality in his collecting, and which the Museum bought almost without exception. Amongst the substantial quantities of other popular literature selected by Panizzi were three Volksbücher editions which Asher persuaded him to relinquish because they were wanted by the King of Prussia, who, like the 250 other would-be purchasers, had stood little chance against London. The Keeper of Manuscripts also selected 35 of the 50 MSS from the Kuppitsch Collection which Asher offered him, and paid £118 for some highly interesting items, including a Nuremberg Schönbartbuch and some fine autograph albums.

The Grenville Library

2.107 The foreign component of the library of Thomas Grenville (see above 1.66) is rightly held to be strongest from the Romance countries and in their languages, but there is an important German presence, although the German language as such was clearly not one of his collecting priorities. Thus his outstandingly rich collection of early printing naturally includes amongst its 700 incunables very many important editions from Germany, and amongst his 11 German incunables on vellum are a Gutenberg Bible (Mainz 1455) and Fust and Schöffer's Psalter (Mainz 1457; the edition of which George III's copy had been kept at Windsor by George IV). Grenville's early editions of the classics also include many from Germany (Aesop, Euripides, Homer, Horace, Sophocles, Virgil). His spectacular collection of early travels and voyages includes the Levinus Hulsius and De Bry series in German and Latin, with several volumes in unique or extremely rare editions and states. Asher was an expert on their complicated bibliography, and had sought out and sold several of the rarest volumes to both Grenville and the Museum: the conjunction of the two collections offers the student unexampled completeness. Other German works on discoveries include the Strasbourg 1497 edition of the Columbus letter, three incunable editions in German of the legend of St. Brandan, Marco Polo in German (Nuremberg 1477), and rare works on America and the West Indies.

2.108 Other notable German books include a beautiful vellum Theuerdank (Nuremberg 1517; a variant so far not noted in VD16), Thomas Murner's Schelmenzunft (Frankfurt 1512) and Narrenbeschwörung (Strasbourg 1518), two rare tracts on the Armada in German (1588), a fine copy with coloured plates of Tobias Hübner's Beschreibung der Reiß (Heidelberg 1613; this probably belonged to someone close to the events described, perhaps Royalty), the Hortus Palatinus of Salomon de Caus (Frankfurt 1620), and, a gift from Panizzi, Sigmund von Birken's Kurtze Beschreibung des schwedischen Friedensmahls (Nuremberg 1649, on vellum), as well as atlases of Silesia (Nuremberg 1750) and the Grisons (Vienna 1799). German belles-lettres are rare, but we might note the Augsburg 1474 Melusina and Jörg Wickram's Ritter Galmy (Strasbourg 1539). The latter might seem to fall outside Grenville's usual interests, but was apparently bought because its (fictional) setting is Scotland; this was one of only two items in German Grenville succeeded in buying from the Kuppitsch Collection via Asher, though he tried for several more, the other being Feyerabend's Reyßbuch des heyligen Lands (Frankfurt 1584), of which the Museum already possessed a copy. (His marked copy of the Kuppitsch catalogue is at G.449.)

2.109 Foreign theology was not a main preoccupation of Grenville's, and of Luther, for instance, he had little beyond four German editions of the Latin pamphlet against Henry VIII and the Deudsche Messe (Nuremberg 1526). But he had incunable editions of the Bible in Latin and one in German (Strasbourg 1470?), the New Testament of Erasmus in Greek and Latin (Basel 1516 and 1519), as well as the Halle edition of 1710 in Greek and Modern Greek, and a Basel edition of 1560 in Romansch, plus the Confession of the Swiss Reformed Church (Zürich, editions of 1566 and 1568). He also had 31 leaves of the William Tyndale New Testament (Cologne 1525) and the Miles Coverdale Bible in English (both Marburg? 1535 and Zürich/London 1550).

The Tieck Collection

2.110 It is not easy to determine exactly what the Museum purchased from the library of Ludwig Tieck (see above 1.69). A marked copy of the sale catalogue survives (011900.ee.29), in which 1547 of the 7931 lots are marked, but some marked items were not acquired, and vice versa. It does seem clear, however, that many of the Spanish dramatic rarities purchased by the King of Prussia for temporary return to Tieck had in fact first been to London for inspection and had been rejected as duplicates, the Museum's Spanish collections being in general already very rich (notably from the 1846 sale of books belonging to W. B. Chorley, more of whose Spanish plays were to be presented to the Museum in 1867). Nevertheless, the Museum bought large numbers of Spanish works from the Tieck collection, some to make good existing imperfect sets (such as the Chorley Spanish dramas placed at 11725.b-d), as well as works in English, French, German, and Portuguese. Perhaps the most interesting items were the many containing manuscript notes by Tieck, such as the Basel 1799-1802 edition of Shakespeare in English (22 volumes; C.134.dd.1), as well as editions of his own works, of which the copiously amended first edition of Die verkehrte Welt (in pt 2, 1799, of A. F. Bernhardi's Bambocciaden, Berlin 1797-1800) and possibly others await editorial attention.

2.111 Some, but by no means all, of the books with Tieck's manuscript notes, are placed at C.182.a-b, but the majority of his books are not placed together; his copy of Martin Opitz's Teutsche Poemata (Breslau 1629), for instance, is placed amongst miscellaneous German poetry. The Museum acquired everything it wanted from the Tieck sale, for a total of £643, with the exception of a mid-16th-century Antwerp Cancionero, which turned out to have been abstracted from the library at Wolfenbüttel before it was acquired by Tieck, and had to be returned.

The Maltzahn Collection

2.112 The 16th-century works acquired from the library of Baron Wendelin von Maltzahn (see above 1.88) included poetry by big names such as Murner, Brant, Hutten, Sachs, Wickram, Fischart, Ringwaldt and Rollenhagen, as well as much by minor and anonymous authors; didactic and rhetorical prose, Teufelsliteratur, works of Luther and other Reformers, dramas, Neue Zeitungen and Volksbücher, as well as the religious and secular songs already mentioned. From the 17th century came more of the same, with a growing proportion of prose fiction; the poetry included, apart from the numerous market songs and the wonderful Dach group mentioned above (1.93), works of Opitz, Sudermann, Fleming, Rist, Spee, Logau, and Rachel, and the volume containing Matthäus Apelles von Loewenstern's Früelings-Mayen and other works (Breslau 1644) which attracted the longest description in the Maltzahn catalogue. The 18th-century works included much by authors of the Sturm und Drang and Classical periods, but also from the much less well-known first half of the century. It is worth recording that a handful of the late 16th- and early 17th-century broadsides from the Maltzahn Collection were acquired by the Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings, and are thus, like other German broadsides acquired by that Department from Cohn, not now in the British Library.

David Paisey

The St. George's Church Collection

2.113 St. George's Lutheran Church in Little Alie Street, now closed and in the hands of the Historic Chapels Trust, was one of the oldest German parish churches in London, having been founded in Goodman's Fields in 1762. Parish life flourished during the 18th and 19th centuries in this area of the city, where traditionally many German immigrants settled. Infant, primary, and secondary schools were founded, and a parish library was maintained in a room above the vestry.

2.114 The collection purchased by the British Library in 1997 comprises approximately 600 surviving items, the core and foundation of which consists of the private library of the church's first pastor, Gustav Anton Wachsel, appointed in 1763. School-books and donations from members of the parish were added over the years. With the exception of a few 17th-century items and approximately 100 books from the early 20th century, the majority of the collection dates from the 18th and 19th centuries.

2.115 The history of the collection seems to have been a fascinating one: many of the items reveal an interesting provenance. Typically, the volumes bear the St. George's Library bookplate with an allocated number, or the ink stamp of ``St. George's School'. Some, though, bear a different number on the spine, possibly relating to a different library. One of the most interesting items in terms of provenance is a copy of Gottfried Keller's Die Leute von Seldwyla (Braunschweig 1856) which has the printed label of an unidentified book club or small reading-society on its front board, listing the names of its members, all of whom were men.

2.116 Much of the collection, not surprisingly, consists of theology and pietistic Erbauungsliteratur in the German language. A fair number of established German authors are represented, as well as classics of English literature in translation, travel literature, schoolbooks, and books for young adults. Siegmund Wolfius's Christianismus salviani illustratus (Hamburg and Ratzeburg 1678) was not hitherto present in the British Library. Of the 18th-century holdings, German books from London presses are particularly notable. Some, indeed, had been so far unrecorded; for example, pastor Wachsel's Entwürfe seiner Vormittags-Predigten, printed by Carl Heydinger (London 1766), and a collection of sermons by F. M. Ziegenhagen, printed by Haberkorn and Gussen at the first regular German press in London (1750).

2.117 Another valuable group of additions to the British Library's collections is a number of books published by the Francke'sche Stiftungen in Halle, including August Hermann Francke's Schriftenmässige Betrachtung von Gnade und Wahrheit (Halle: in Verlegung des Waysenhauses, 1729). From the early 19th century comes a fine example of travel literature for young adults in Joachim Heinrich Campe's Neue Sammlung merkwürdiger Reisebeschreibungen für die Jugend (Braunschweig 1802-1804). In fact, less than 30 per cent of the titles acquired were already held in the British Library, and a few of the St. George's items replace British Museum copies destroyed in the Second World War; for example J. J. Spalding et al., Neue Festpredigten (Halle: in der Verlegung des Waisenhauses, 1792) and Bernhard Scholz's Musikalisches und Persönliches (Berlin and Stuttgart 1899).

2.118 A separate pressmark has been allocated to the St. George's Collection to keep it together, and its books can be located in the British Library's catalogues by means of a provenance note.

Dorothea Miehe


Quelle: Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände in Deutschland. Digitalisiert von Günter Kükenshöner.
Hrsg. von Bernhard Fabian. Hildesheim: Olms Neue Medien 2003.