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Collections Overviews - Area Studies

Anglophone Commonwealth:
Great Britain/Ireland

Scope

This overview covers materials published in and relating to Great Britain and Ireland. With the exceptions of clinical medicine and technical agriculture, all fields of study are collected by the Library for these Commonwealth countries. Historically, the Library has placed strong emphasis on collecting English language materials and has numerous exchange agreements and good approval plan dealers for each of these countries. A detailed statement for each country follows with a summary statement on Anglophone/Commonwealth literature.

The Library of Congress has very strong holdings of British and Irish materials. The attention given to collecting in this area has been such that the editor of the 1984 Scholars' Guide to Washington, D.C., for Northwest European Studies wrote that the Library's "second richest geographic strength is the vast collection of materials published in or pertaining to the British Isles (after the U.S.).

Size

It is impossible to determine an overall count for the British and Irish collections. The DA class (British history) exceeds 51,000 titles. Another informal approach is to look at the holdings cited under the heading "Great Britain" in the computerized catalog there are roughly 160,000 titles. Scotland and Wales, in both files, show about 15,000 titles while Ireland and Northern Ireland combined total about 16,000.

General Research Strengths

Works treating the British Isles are found throughout the Library. The Library has a large collection of secondary materials in a variety of formats as well as numerous special collections. The Library's microform collections are a rich source of information. British and Irish Biographies, 1840-1940, for example, has biographical entries for more than 180,000 persons. A priceless collection of illuminated manuscripts can be found in Major Treasures in the Bodleian Library. Proceedings of the Irish parliament are contained in Printed Records of the Parliament of Ireland, 1613-1800. The Josephine Butler Letter Collection is only one of the many excellent collections featuring the concerns of British women.

The Library's Foreign Copying Program (to copy collections relating to America) is another source of major British microform collections. Records from the British Library, the Public Record Office, the Colonial Office, Lambeth Palace, and Windsor Castle have been added to the collections of the Manuscript Division, Collections of parish registers, family histories, record society publications, and county histories are extensive, offering detailed information about the evolution of British society.

Additional specialized collections of scholarly interest include the Joseph Meredith Toner Collection, the John Boyd Thacher Collection, and the John Davis Batchelder Collection. These collections chiefly represent Americana, but also yield useful source material for the study of Britain and Ireland. The Toner Collection is a storehouse of American medical history, but included in it are long runs of British journals. An autographic collection of British royal documents can be found in the Thacher Collection. Spanning the years between the reigns of Henry V and Edward VII, the 97 manuscripts, 2 broadsides, and the 132 prints, photographs, and drawings provide a wealth of primary material. The Batchelder Collection contains a group of British cartoons directed against Abraham Lincoln. Shakespeare's first folio edition (1623), and the quarto edition of Romeo and Juliet (1599) are in that collection.

Areas of Distinction

One of the largest American collections of British political prints is the Prints and Photographs Division's British Cartoon Collection. Once part of the collection at Windsor Castle, the Library purchased this significant group of prints in 1921. The 10,000 original cartoons celebrate, for the most part, British political life, society, manners, and the theater. The cartoons of such famous caricaturists as Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray, George Cruikshank, and Henry Bunbury are included here.

The Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection holds exceptional treasures from the British Isles including the assemblage of books, plates, proofs, and engravings relating to the works of William Blake and a number of books printed by William Caxton, editor, translator, and first English printer. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division has Jacobus de Cessolis' The Play of Chess (1478), the 1485 edition of the Golden Legende, the Ryal Book (1486), and the second edition of the Myrroure of the Blessed Lyf of Jhesu Christ (1490). In addition, the Rosenwald Collection contains the Kelmscott Press books representing the revival of the art of fine printing in Britain with vellum and paper examples. There are also three Christopher Saxton atlases in the Rosenwald Collection. Saxton, an Elizabeth draftsman, undertook, at Elizabeth's command, to survey and draw maps of all the counties of England and Wales. His atlas was the first collection of English and Welsh survey maps.

British legal materials are abundant at the Library such that only a few British libraries equal or surpass the holdings at LC in quality or number. In addition to the codes, official gazettes, court reports, and other publications, there are at least five special collections which will interest researchers: The William Blackstone Collection, the English Yearbook Collection, the British Appeal Papers, the English and American Trials Collection, and the Wakefield Collection. These collections solidly supported by all the other legal publications make for a well-rounded law collection.

There is a rich collection of maps. The Richard Howe Collection contains maps showing the coastline of North and South America. The William Faden Collection has maps showing the campaigns of Sir William Howe and British generals Charles Cornwallis, Edward Braddock, John Burgoyne, and Henry Clinton. The Manuscript Division has a number of collections treating Great Britain. The Sir Thomas Phillipps Collection covers Britain's administration of the American colonies. The George Chalmers Collection consists of his notes, copies of official documents, and original records of this Scottish-born colonial administrator. The two in tandem provide a fine overview of Britain's relationship with the colonies. The papers of Whitelaw Reid and Robert Worth Bingham, ambassadors to Britain from 1905 to 1912 and 1933 to 1937 respectively, offer the diplomatic view of America's relationship with Britain.

The collections in the American Folklife Center, the James Madison Carpenter Collection, the Percy Grainger Collection, and the Burt Feintuch Northumberland Collection, feature the folk culture of the British Isles. The Carpenter collection includes folk plays, sea chanties, ballads, children's singing games, riddles, nursery rhymes, ritual dances, and carols. The Grainger Collection features field recordings of English folk songs made in Gloucestershire and Lincolnshire from 1906 to 1909. The Feintuch Collection captures, in forty hours of recordings, the history of English regional music from Northhumberland.

Weaknesses/Exclusions

Because many British titles are also published or distributed in the U.S. and thus acquired by copyright and/or CIP, special steps are required to avoid duplication. Publications of small presses outside the major publishing centers are not as well represented in the collection. The recent appointment of a Welsh-language recommending officer has helped remedy this.

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