From The Queen’s College to Montagu House: The History of the Thomason Tracts after the Restoration
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eBLJ_2023_article10_Stoker_D_VoR_BY.pdf
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239.73 KB
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Resource type
Journal article
Creator (person)
Stoker, David
Date published
January 29, 2024
Abstract
Although the Thomason collection is rightly regarded as one of the treasures of the British Library, its survival was by no means inevitable. This chapter revisits the convoluted history of its fortunes after Thomason ceased collecting in 1661, shedding new light upon his own hopes and expectations regarding its fate, and reconstructing various attempts to effect its sale over the next hundred years, culminating in its acquisition by Lord Bute, and its presentation to the British Museum by George III. What emerges is new evidence about how the importance of the collection was promoted and recognized, thereby making comprehensible how it remained more or less intact, and came to be perceived as something that needed to be made safe for posterity, and that would be useful to the ‘publique’.
Journal title
Electronic British Library Journal
Volume
2023
Article number
10
Publisher
British Library
Place of publication
London, UK
eISSN
1478-0259
Date accepted
March 3, 2023
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Rights statement
In Copyright
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Additional information
Author note: David Stoker is a retired academic and book historian now living in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion. He has been interested in the Thomason Tracts since discovering an early manuscript prospectus and correspondence relating to their sale in the Norfolk Record Office in the 1980s.
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