The King's Library was one of the most important collections of books and pamphlets of the Age of Enlightenment

Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...

. Assembled by George III, this scholarly library of over 65,000 volumes was subsequently given to the British nation by George IV. It was housed in a specially built gallery in the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

 from 1827 to 1997 and now forms part of the British Library

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

. The term 'King's Library' is sometimes also used to refer to the gallery in the British Museum built for the collection.

In the reign of George III

When George III became king in 1760 he did not inherit a library of any size, as George II

George II of Great Britain

George II was King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Archtreasurer and Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire from 11 June 1727 until his death.George was the last British monarch born outside Great Britain. He was born and brought up in Northern Germany...

 had given the Old Royal Library to the British Museum three years earlier. Although not an intellectual, George III had a genuine regard for learning, developed under the influence of his tutor the Earl of Bute

John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute

John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute KG, PC , styled Lord Mount Stuart before 1723, was a Scottish nobleman who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain under George III, and was arguably the last important favourite in British politics...

. On becoming king he quickly began assembling a new collection of mainly scholarly works, the project beginning in earnest in 1762-3 with the purchase of the library of Joseph Smith. Smith had been collecting in Venice for several decades, acquiring books from a range of sources in north Italy and also buying through the international book trade. The collection was notable for its 260 incunabula, including many early Venetian and north Italian volumes with fine illumination and bindings

Bookbinding

Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book from a number of folded or unfolded sheets of paper or other material. It usually involves attaching covers to the resulting text-block.-Origins of the book:...

. In total the king bought 6,000 volumes from Smith. These were not kept together in George III's library, but nevertheless can be identified by the word "Smith" marked in each volume by the king's librarian.

There do not seem to have been any further large purchases before 1766, perhaps because the library's staff were occupied with organising the books acquired from Smith. However from 1766 onwards the king began to develop the collection significantly, spending an average of perhaps £1,500 per year on books for the rest of his reign. A particularly important period was 1768-71, when Frederick Augusta Barnard

Frederick Augusta Barnard

Sir Frederick Augusta Barnard KCH was principal librarian to George III during much of the English King's reign. Barnard developed the library collection systematically, seeking guidance from noted intellectuals including writer and lexicographer Dr...

, one of the library staff, travelled extensively in Europe on the king's behalf, and made major purchases. Important acquisitions later came from the libraries of James West

James West (antiquary)

James West FRS was a British politician and antiquary, who served as President of the Royal Society between 1768 and 1772....

, Anthony Askew

Anthony Askew

Anthony Askew was an English physician and book collector.-Life and work:Askew was born in Kendal, Westmorland, the son of Dr. Adam Askew, a well-known physician of Newcastle. His early education was at Sedbergh School and The Royal Free Grammar School in Newcastle upon Tyne, where by all accounts...

, Richard Farmer

Richard Farmer

Dr Richard Farmer was a Shakespearean scholar and Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He is known for his Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare , in which he maintained that Shakespeare's knowledge of the classics was through translations, the errors of which he reproduced.-Life:He was born at...

 and Grimur Jonsson Thorkelin

Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin

Grímur Jónsson Thorkelín was an Icelandic -Danish scholar, who became the National Archivist of Denmark and Professor of Antiquities at Copenhagen University....

 as each of these came on the market. Significant donations to the library included 27 incunabula given by Jacob Bryant

Jacob Bryant

Jacob Bryant was a British scholar and mythographer, who has been described as "the outstanding figure among the mythagogues who flourished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries".-Life:...

 in 1782.The acquisition of further titles continued in the last years of the king's reign, when due to his mental illness his affairs were managed by trustees.

The Library was kept at the Queen's House, the residence later to be extended and renamed Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace, in London, is the principal residence and office of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality...

. There it occupied four specially built rooms. From at least the 1770s bookbinding was carried out on the premises, and by 1776 the bindery occupied five rooms in the basement. The Library style of binding can be described as 'fine, but not extravagant'. Richard Dalton, employed as a librarian by George III from 1755 onwards, was in charge of the collection until 1774. He was followed by Barnard, who was chief librarian until the collection's transfer to the British Museum. It seems unlikely that Dalton had any major influence over the way the collection was to develop, but that Barnard played a central role, for instance making many, or perhaps most, of the decisions about what books to buy. Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

 also advised on the Library's collection policy. The Library was open to anyone with a genuine scholarly purpose, and in George's lifetime was visited by John Adams

John Adams

John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...

 and Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley

Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...

 as well as Johnson. It is noteworthy that the king allowed scholars such as Priestley, whose political and religious opinions he disagreed with, to use the Library.

At the British Museum, 1827-1997

When George III died in 1820 it was unclear what he had intended to happen to the Library after his death, and also whether it was now the personal property of his heir, George IV, or belonged to the Crown

The Crown

The Crown is a corporation sole that in the Commonwealth realms and any provincial or state sub-divisions thereof represents the legal embodiment of governance, whether executive, legislative, or judicial...

. These issues were resolved in January 1823 when, after a period of negotiation with the government, George IV wrote to Prime Minister Lord Liverpool offering the Library to the nation. In the intervening period rumours had appeared in the British press that he was considering selling the library to the Tsar

Tsar

Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...

; it is not known if there was any truth in these. By giving away the Library, the king was able to avoid the expense of its upkeep (over £2,000 per year) at a time of financial difficulty and also facilitate the redevelopment of Buckingham Palace, a project of great importance to him. He specified that the library was to be kept together, and separate from any other collection.

Within months Parliament had agreed that the Museum was to be the collection's new home, although some newspapers and public figures still argued for the establishment of a new library to house the books in a different part of London. The Museum lacked the room to house the collection, but fortunately plans for a significant neoclassical

Neoclassical architecture

Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...

 extension of the Museum's buildings had already been drawn up by the architect Robert Smirke

Robert Smirke (architect)

Sir Robert Smirke was an English architect, one of the leaders of Greek Revival architecture his best known building in that style is the British Museum, though he also designed using other architectural styles...

. While the government had for some time resisted the Museum's requests for money for this project, the need to provide a fitting home for the library meant that it now agreed to fund the building work. Thus the arrival of the King's Library was a catalyst for the growth of the Museum into the grand building we see today. With few changes to the original plans, the east wing of Smirke's extension to the museum became the library's new home. Constructed in 1823-7 and measuring 300 feet (91 metres) in length, this gallery has been called 'one of the noblest rooms in London'..

The Library was a major addition to the Museum's book collection, adding 65,000 volumes to an existing 116,000; the Museum estimated that only 21,000 of these were duplicates. Furthermore, many of the King's Library's strengths, such as geography, theology and Spanish and Italian literature, were areas which so far had been rather poorly represented among the Museum' books. George IV retained 33 printed books from the Library for himself. These were mostly incunabula, donated by Jacob Bryant, but also included a Shakespeare First Folio

First Folio

Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....

. George IV also kept back two manuscripts: one by Samuel Johnson, containing plans for projected books, and a copy of the Vedas

Vedas

The Vedas are a large body of texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism....

 in Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

, made in Benares in 1776.

During the 1840s approximately 13% of the books consulted in the Museum were from the King's Library. This percentage declined at the Museum's book collection grew in subsequent decades, but the King's Library remained well-used. From 1857, the gallery was used to display notable volumes from the whole of the Museum's printed books collection. Towards the end of the First World War, an increased number of air raids led the Museum to move the most valuable books out of London, many going to the National Library of Wales

National Library of Wales

The National Library of Wales , Aberystwyth, is the national legal deposit library of Wales; one of the Welsh Government sponsored bodies.Welsh is its main medium of communication...

. This precaution was repeated just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. In September 1940 a bomb hit the Museum, leaving 428 volumes from the King's Library either destroyed or damaged beyond repair; fortunately the Museum had duplicate copies of 265 of these elsewhere in its collections. In addition a further 1000 volumes from the King's Library were in need of repair. The rest of the collection was moved to a safer part of the building, and finally evacuated from London to the Bodleian Library

Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library...

 in Oxford in 1943. Repair work to the gallery was finally carried out in 1950-1.

At the British Library, 1997 to present

In the 1970s preparations began for the move of the Museum's book collection to the newly established British Library. The Museum's Trustees argued that the King's Library should remain where it was, but were unsuccessful in preventing its transfer to the new institution. The collection is now housed in the King's Library Tower, a six-storey glass and bronze structure in the British Library's entrance hall; the tower was designed specially by the building's architect, Colin St John Wilson

Colin St John Wilson

Sir Colin Alexander St John Wilson, FRIBA, RA, was a British architect, lecturer and author. He spent over 30 years progressing the project to build a new British Library in London, originally planned to be built in Bloomsbury and now completed near Kings Cross.-Early and private life:Wilson was...

, and also contains the Thomas Grenville

Thomas Grenville

Thomas Grenville PC was a British politician and bibliophile.-Background and education:Grenville was the second son of Prime Minister George Grenville and Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Wyndham, 3rd Baronet...

 collection. Items from the collection remain available for reading by the public. The collection's old home at the British Museum, restored in 2000-3, is now known as the Enlightenment Gallery and houses a permanent exhibition about the Age of Enlightenment.

Scope of the Library

Historians agree that George III intended the library to be a comprehensive resource for scholars, rather than a collection of rare volumes or fine bindings. In other words, this was a working library rather than a showpiece, although it did contain some notable rarities. These include a Gutenberg Bible

Gutenberg Bible

The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed with a movable type printing press, and marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of the printed book. Widely praised for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities, the book has an iconic status...

 and many English incunabula, including a copy of Caxton's

William Caxton

William Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. As far as is known, he was the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England...

 first edition of the Canterbury Tales. The purchase of Thorkelin's library meant that there was a notable collection of over 2,000 works on Scandinavian language and literature. The collection also includes the first four Shakespeare folios.

The oldest-known catalogue of the Library was compiled in 1769. The Bibliothecae Regiae catalogus, a catalogue of works organised by author, was published in five volumes between 1820 and 1829, its compilation being overseen by Barnard. A hand-written subject catalogue also exists; work on this subject catalogue may have started in the 1790s, and it was kept updated through several subsequent decades. The Library's pamphlets were catalogued for the first time following the Library's move to the British Museum.

In 1769 the Library contained 11,200 printed titles, in 19,500 volumes. By the time it passed to the British Museum in 1827 it had grown to 65,000 printed volumes, as well as 17,500 pamphlets and 446 manuscripts; the manuscripts mainly date from the reign of George III and few are of particular note.

Analysis of the subject catalogue shows that as of 1820 44% of the titles in the Library were concerned with history, and 16% were literature of various kinds. An extensive range of subjects was represented by smaller numbers of works. Recent literature was not particularly well represented, with, for instance, no works by Jane Austen

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

being listed. It seems that library policy was only to collect novels once it was clear that the author in question had gained an enduring and positive reputation. 260 editions of the Bible were included, and works from other European countries were well-represented. For instance, 57% of the history titles had been published outside Britain. There was a good selection of library catalogues from other collections, and runs of the official publications of parliament. For an eighteenth-century library there was an unusually good selection of periodicals, although newspapers were not collected.

Further reading

• Mandelbrote, Giles and Taylor, Barry, eds. Libraries within the Library: the Origins of the British Library's Printed Collections. London: British Library, 2009. ISBN 978-0712350358.

• Barnard, Frederick Augusta. Bibliothecae regiae catalogus. London: Bulmer and Nicol, 1820-9. Catalogue of the King's Library. Copies held by various major scholarly libraries.

• Smith, Joseph. Bibliotheca Smithiana. Venice, 1755. The original catalogue of Joseph Smith's library. Copies held by many major scholarly libraries.

External links

• The Kings Library: George III Collection - British Library webpage
• British Library webpage
• British Museum webpage
• British Library Database of Bookbindings. Search for 'George III' to see bindings from the King's Library.
• The King's Library copy of the Gutenberg Bible. Select the 'paper copy' option to see images of the King's Library copy.