Famous Archives

I have to say, this one has stumped me a bit. But it's Day 7 and I'm going to have to come up with something, so maybe I'll talk a little bit about some of the donors of collections that have come to the library, because some of them are pretty well-known.

Richard, Viscount Fitzwilliam

Obviously there was the original donor: Richard, VII Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion, whose donation set up the museum in the first place, but I'm fairly sure the reference library has nothing of his in its collection. The "library" that was received in his bequest is kept in the Department of Manuscripts and Printed Books, and includes the famed Fitzwilliam Virginal book.

Work by Degas

One that seems to have been incredibly generous was the classicist A.S.F. Gow, who spent much of his life at Trinity College, and served on the museum board. When he died, he left the museum his collection of works by Degas, which is reasonably well-known. However, he also left hundreds - perhaps thousands? (I don't know, I've never counted) of books - his Loeb Classical Library collection, his texts on the Italian Renaissance, I think we even received his complete Dictionary of National Biography (vastly superceded nowadays, but a really useful resource at the time)!

Godfrey Gompertz

It seems a trend for collectors to not only donate their art objects but also their enormous libraries of books on their favourite subjects. One, Godfrey Gompertz donated one of the finest collections of Choson and Koryo ceramics outside Korea, in the spirit of improving Western understanding about this remote country. But also we have his many books on "Corea", as it was referred to in the 1930s! Another ceramics collector more recently, John Shakeshaft, has considerably added to our Applied Arts material with 26 boxes of books and hundreds of pottery items, particularly studio pottery.

Sir Sydney Cockerell

There are a few directors of the museum who perhaps deserve a special shout out: Sir Sydney Cockerell is one, who had a bit of a reputation for cajoling people to gift their artworks to the museum in their wills. We have a couple of his books which were actually gifts to him from Queen Mary of Teck (the irony, of course, being that Mary was herself quite acquisitive!). Louis Clarke was another whose name crops up in reference library books time and again, but unsurprisingly I think we've had gifts from most of the directors through the years.

Winifred Lamb

Finally, just because this is a rather male list, a few of the women who have also contributed through the years: A woman called Helen Forester (who I know nothing else about!) had a keen interest in art history, and her books can be found in the reference library and in the Hamilton Kerr Institute library. Winifred Lamb, a former Keeper of Antiquities, left many books to the collection, complete with annotations about our own collections of antiquities. Stella Panayotova, Keeper of Manuscripts and Printed Books until very recently, has donated a huge number of books on manuscripts and incunabula, while Julia Poole, a former Keeper of Applied Arts, frequently gives the library her personal copies of books on maiolica. Without these contributions, the holdings of the reference library wouldn't be nearly as rich and wonderful!