Libraries Proposal

 

 

Project Proposal

 

Lord Eatwell, President, Queens’ College, Cambridge

Queens’ College is an Exempt Charity HMRC Charity Number 3394

 

 

 

a)     the manuscripts, books, papers and pamphlets housed in the Old Library.

b)     the College Archive, most of which is presently deposited with the University Library.

c)      The Cohen Collection (Spanish and Latin American Literature, much of it ephemeral and rare), the Kennett Collection (on loan to the Oriental Studies Library) and the Burke Collection of British Drama books and the archives of the Norwich Playhouse Theatre which he founded and directed

d)     a number of artefacts including the original College Muniments Chest, 18^th century globes by Sennex and the Queens’ Coin Collection, presently in the Fitzwilliam Museum.

 

The aim is to produce an online catalogue of Old Library holdings.

 

This will involve the preparation of bibliographic records of international standard on all Old Library holdings by two full time, experienced rare book cataloguers. Consultations with Cambridge colleagues, where such projects are already underway, suggest that it would take two full time specialist cataloguers five years to prepare such a catalogue for the Old Library.

 

Detailed costings have been prepared with the co-operation and advice of the Fellow Librarian, the College Librarian, staff of the University Library and independent experts.

 

Based on the University scale CS5/2, including National Insurance and pension costs and inflated annually at 3% the costs are:

 

 

 

On 15^th April 1448 Queen Margaret of Anjou, the wife of Henry VI, founded the Queen’s College of St Margaret and St Bernard.

 

Subsequently, in 1475, Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of Edward IV re-founded the College as “true foundress”. It is this re-foundation which accounts for the double allegiance and the plural spelling of Queens’.

 

Work began on the historic site on the east bank of the River Cam in the heart of the City of Cambridge. In 1475, the adjacent land on the west bank of the River, known as “the island”, was purchased by the College. The whole area is now classified as a National Monument and the east and west banks are linked by the Wooden, or Mathematical Bridge, a world famous and iconic symbol of Cambridge dating from 1749.

 

The first buildings of Queens’, including the Library, formed Old Court, which is now the earliest example of vernacular building in brick in Cambridge. The Court illustrates the ideal behind a fifteenth century College comprising Library, Hall and Chapel, with accommodation for Fellows and a Master’s Lodging, and the great Gatehouse guarding the world of learning.

 

Queens’ is one of the very few colleges which had a room specifically designed to house a Library at this early date. This room has now been in continuous use as a library for 560 years.

 

The Old Library lies on an east-west axis, with one row of plain glass windows looking south onto Old Court to use the maximum available light, and the windows on the north side which originally looked onto the buildings of a Carmelite friary. The stained glass now in these latter windows was purchased from the friary at its suppression in 1537, and now represents one of the finest collections of fifteenth century English roundels extant.

 

The internal design of the Library room comprised ten two-tier reading lecterns arranged to stand out from the walls. The bookshelves now in use are made in part from these lecterns. The locations of the chain-bars and the positions of the sloping reading desks are still traceable.

 

The system of chaining books at Queens’ differed from most known examples of chained libraries in that it was designed for the reading of manuscript books laid flat on the lecterns, rather than printed books stood upright on shelves. This layout allowed room for no more than 20 volumes on each double lectern; a maximum capacity of 200 volumes. An inventory attributed to the College’s first President, Andrew Docket, indicates that the Library had reached capacity by 1472.

 

By 1538 all of these titles had disappeared and although no book from that inventory now exists at Queens’ by this time the College still possessed one of the largest contemporary collections in Cambridge.

 

Queens’ position in the world of learning was also reflected in the presence of the Humanist scholar Erasmus and his influence on Queens’ is shown in the books of his colleagues still in the collection. The earliest such acquisition is a copy of the Greek New Testament which had been the property of John Lasky, close friend of Erasmus, and is bound in a contemporary Polish binding with his initials J. L. – an extremely rare item in British libraries.

 

Further gifts followed including books from the library of Samuel Heyenes, President of the College 1529 – 1537, and the gift of Sir Thomas Smith’s Latin and Greek books in 1577. The Smith collection, originally some 90 volumes, represents the largest single collection from the library of one individual now extant from Renaissance England.

 

By the early 17^th century the Queens’ Library had grown to around 340 volumes. They were shelved on the lectern cases in a 15^th century manner – flat, crowded and chained.

 

In 1612 the lecterns were converted into bookshelves. The chains were removed from all volumes, and never again used, and the books stood upright for the first time, with the spines facing inward in a manner typical of the 17^th century.

 

Major gifts of books followed including donations from Humphrey Tyndall, President of the College 1579 – 1614, Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon and John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist in 1652. This gift included books on history, geography and travel, medicine, theology and Rabbinical writings, but especially mathematics and astronomy. By 1700 the Queens’ collection contained at least 5,000 volumes.

 

The 18^th century saw a great decline in the wealth of the College and the slow recovery of the College’s finances has proved both a bane and a great benefaction to the Library. It became the fashion in the 18^th century to rebind all books in a collection to a uniform style. Queens’ was spared this fate by poverty, and undoubtedly one of the most valuable features of the collection is the bindings many of which are contemporary, or near contemporary with the volumes they encase. These include four 12^th century bindings which retain techniques of binding structure which had been thought to exist only in 20^th century theoretical reconstructions. Other bindings of note include the work of Caxton’s binder, of Grolier and Garret Godfrey.

 

In the 18^th and early 19^th centuries the Queens’ Library received two collections primarily containing ephemeral material. The first of these was the library of David Hughes, Fellow 1727 – 1777, containing 2,000 volumes. His library was particularly rich in pamphlets and tracts and contains many items which are now extremely rare. Secondly there was the library of Isaac Milner, President of the College 1788 – 1820. Milner was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and as a leading member of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England, a friend of William Wilberforce and a key figure in the Anti-Slave Trade movement.

 

Finally in 1827 a catalogue of the Queens’ Library was published designed by Thomas Hartwell Horne, this incorporated a revolutionary approach to the classification of learning which listed all the books grouped by subject. A major pitfall of Horne’s catalogue however is that he also listed some books which it would be “desirable” for the Library to own. No full list has been compiled since and thus in 560 years of the Queens’ Library no comprehensive catalogue has ever been completed.

 

The Old Library collection is estimated to contain about 40,000 titles in 25,000 volumes and additions are now rare.