Book Collecting in Ireland and Britain, 1650–1850 ed. by Elizabethanne Boran (review)

This varied collection of essays originated under the auspices of Dr Edward Worth’s library, established after 1733 and still housed in a Dublin hospital. Given the volume’s origin, it tilts towards Irish collectors, but encompasses Scotland, England, and the Netherlands as well. Some essayists analyse surviving if seldom complete collections. Thus, the editor discusses Worth’s own library; Barbara McCormack, what remains from the Ossory diocesan library formerly at Kilkenny; and Marie Boran, the accumulations of a Galway antiquary, James Hardiman. More contributors have to content themselves with contemporary listings of now vanished libraries, such as those of two seventeenth-century Irish families (the Sextons and Southwells), considered by Marc Caball, of three subscription libraries in Leeds treated by Rebecca Bowd, for the mass gathered by George III’s son, the duke of Sussex, and for several Scottish libraries. Listings vary in completeness and bibliographical precision. Other investigators, such as Bernadette Cunningham, face the challenge of tracing volumes which have been scattered—in her case those owned by Gaelic literati in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—and mostly traceable now to institutional holdings. In classifying the books by subject, patterns found elsewhere are repeated: theology and classical Greek and Latin texts predominate, leavened with sizeable holdings in history, law, travel, and medicine.

A few chapters move beyond the sorting of the collections into categories by subject to taxing questions of when and where the books and manuscripts were acquired. Here, the editor in particular is helped by the survival among Worth’s treasures of a series of booksellers’ and auctioneers’ catalogues. The international reach of a determined and wealthy collector is abundantly revealed. In forming libraries, motives varied—from the rigidly utilitarian (to assist in education and preparation for a profession or vocation) to serendipity. Unexpected events—notably warfare, financial embarrassments, and deaths—brought desirable items onto the market. Gifts too deposited new arrivals on shelves. Also at work was a growing feeling that those aspiring to politeness and gentility needed to own, and even to be familiar with, print. Sheer curiosity among owners is not to be discounted. Dr Worth is shown to have been anxious to continue and extend his knowledge, notably of Newtonian science. Others sought no more than diversion. Yet, little that is ephemeral, frivolous, or blatantly topical is recorded. William Poole authoritatively explores collections in Oxford colleges, both as recorded in benefactors’ registers and in the surviving gifts, which sometimes included other aids to learning such as maps, globes, medals, coins, and pictures. Books became popular presents; forming and donating a library conferred prestige; collections were frequently accumulated over several generations. Strictly bibliographical enthusiasms developed only slowly. Certain prizes, like incunabula, the productions of renowned presses such as Elzevier or Aldus Manutius, sumptuous bindings and vellum, bewitched a few. Before the nineteenth century, cultivated connoisseurs such as Lord Charlemont, competing against David Garrick for rare editions of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays and poetry, remained unusual, although Worth falls into this category.

In some cases, it is possible to link the collections with wider developments. The duke of Sussex (examined by Gabriel Moshenska) may have been idiosyncratic in his fascination with comparative religion and freemasonry, but is hardly unique. Some of the holdings of the Leeds subscription libraries assisted readers engaged in the textile trades by familiarizing them with innovations in dyeing and machinery. In Scotland, as both Karen Baston and Mark Purcell show, lawyers were conspicuous in forming libraries, which had a strong but far from exclusive orientation toward their professional activities. Especially impressive is Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen’s exploration of the Fagel library, assembled in the Netherlands but migrating to Dublin in 1802. (It is also the subject of a recent collection of essays, Frozen in...