By Katie Ott
We recently received an enquiry from Haley, a student researcher at Queen’s University, Ontario. Haley had come across a 1587 edition of William Camden’s Britannia with a handwritten inscription noting that it had come from the Standfast Library. Having researched the Standfast Library, she contacted us to see if we could shed any light on the book’s history.
The Standfast Library, for the uninitiated among you, is perhaps the least well known of our special collections. This is largely because the remaining books, due to space constraints, are housed in our safe room where no-one can see them. The library began as the private collection of the Rev. William Standfast, and was compiled with the intention of creating a public library, ‘for the use of persons of a liberal education residing in the town and its immediate neighbourhood’. Bromley House acquired the library in 1818, after it was moved from the Bluecoat School. In the 1920s, money was needed to convert the two front rooms of the original ‘Bromley House’ into shops to rent – these are now occupied by Barnardo’s and MSR, on either side of our entrance. In order to raise the funds, all but 18 of the original thousand or so works in the Standfast Library were sold to the booksellers Sotheran’s Booksellers for £148 in 1926.
Thanks to Haley’s research, we can fill in a little more of this particular book’s history. Flash forward to the 1960s: the book was being sold again, at auction, in New York. The buyer purchased the volume from Swann Galleries, an auction house specialising in rare and antiquarian books. Queen’s University have now acquired the book from the buyer as part of a wider acquisition of 16th century volumes – something we’re not at all jealous of! Haley is currently compiling an online exhibition of these works, in which our lost volume will hopefully feature – we’ll keep you posted.
We think it’s wonderful that one of our lost books has made its way to another library!
Update 17/8/23: The book has now been digitised and can be viewed here.
Update 6/10/23: Fragmented Libraries – an exploration of the material culture of 16th century books – a digital exhibition is now live online and can be viewed here
