Collections

A journey "around the world mind"

"Walking around its mile on mile of corridors," wrote a smitten Sunday Telegraph journalist of the Library, "you know you are walking around the world mind".

Built up over eight centuries, the Library’s collections are stunning. From Chinese oracle bones of the 2nd millennium BC to scientific e-journals of the 3rd millennium AD, its 100 miles of shelving house over 8 million printed volumes, many millions of manuscripts, 400,000 musical items and 4,600 books printed before 1501, and provide access to thousands of electronic publications. Its special collections include:

• The papers of renowned scientific, literary and political figures such as:
  • Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin
  • Sir Robert Walpole and Stanley Baldwin
  • Siegfried Sassoon and Arthur Schnitzler

The archives of Jardine Matheson & Co, Vickers Plc and other major companies

The records of the Royal Greenwich Observatory

Naval and military papers dating back to the 16th century

• The Royal Commonwealth Society collection on the British Empire, with its vast range of books, periodicals, official publications, photographs, letters, diaries, cine film and ephemera, is an invaluable resource for researchers and a powerful evocation of a bygone age.
• The Genizah Collection of over 140,000 ancient manuscript fragments in Hebrew and Arabic. Kaleidoscopic in its variety, it ranges from eye-witness accounts of the Crusaders to details of the domestic lives of Jews, Muslims and Christians who, although separated from us by millennia, are utterly familiar in their preoccupations, their hopes and their humanity.

Important collections of rare books, such as the Montaigne Library of Gilbert de Botton, the colour-printing assembled by Norman Waddleton and the library of Sir Geoffrey Keynes.

Philanthropic support is essential for the acquisition, organisation, storage and cataloguing of new materials – in short, to ensure that the collections retain their vitality and relevance. To find out more, and to arrange a visit and a viewing, please contact us.