A book of conspiracy theories about the Titanic; a manifesto for reforming society by appointing a ‘War Minstrel of Supernatural character’ to lead men into battle; a volume of erotic poetry dealing with ‘aspects of love usually passed over’. These were just some of the manuscripts turned down by the Department of Manuscripts at the British Museum Library, one of the British Library’s precursors, in the first half of the 20th century. It was not just eccentric modern material that was rejected. Medieval manor court rolls, an Elizabethan songbook, and the manuscript collection of an Italian prince were all refused, for a variety of reasons.

A rejection form for a manuscript offered to the British Museum Library in 1939 (Department of Manuscripts Correspondence, 1939:2, p. 95)

Today, the acquisition minutes, reports on manuscripts and correspondence relating to this material are held in the British Library’s departmental archives. Since October, the collection has been used in a research project looking at rejected acquisitions and offers of manuscripts to the British Museum Library between 1904 and 1954, to see what these can tell us about collecting policy in the period.

Letter from the Keeper of Manuscripts to Mrs E. E. Cope rejecting the charters and rolls she offered (Department of Manuscripts Correspondence, 1921, p. 51)

When a manuscript was offered for purchase or as a gift, the Keeper of Manuscripts would prepare a report for the Museum Trustees, describing the item and making a recommendation for acceptance or rejection, with the Trustees usually agreeing with the Keeper’s suggestion. When he suggested that a manuscript be accepted, with little reasoning or justification usually given, seemingly the item’s value or importance was thought to be self-evident; but when the Keeper recommended rejection, he offered a more detailed explanation in his report. From these rejections we can infer what priorities and principles governed the decisions of the Museum Library and what was considered worthy of entering the national collection. The project will result in an academic journal article on rejected acquisitions and collection policy at the British Museum Library in the period 1904 to 1954.

A leaflet for A. W. Sichart’s The Relativity of True Socialism, the manuscript of which he offered to the British Museum Library (Department of Manuscripts Correspondence, 1939:2, p. 27)

The ‘War Minstrel’ manifesto was The Relativity of True Socialism, a booklet proposing several societal reforms and written by A. W. Sichart, AKA Inigo Amana, who lived in Tokai, South Africa, and was known locally as the Tokai Hermit. Sichart offered the manuscript to the British Museum Library in May 1939. He was turned down, with the Keeper of Manuscripts writing back that their policy was to reject ‘unpublished work by living authors unless it is of an antiquarian character or has some other special claim to preservation in the National Collection’. But the Tokai Hermit did eventually get his writings into the Museum Library collections in the shape of his 1938 pamphlet Light: The mystery and mechanism of the human mind and moral heart with their inter-relation to the soul (8412.bb.17.).

Photograph of A. W. Sichart (The Announcer, 10 July 2024)

Another common reason for rejection was when manuscripts were thought to be too specialist or local in interest, in which case the Keeper of Manuscripts would usually recommend a more suitable repository. In 1925, a set of early modern manor court rolls for Barton Manor in Lancashire was instead forwarded  to the University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library. Particularly in the 1930s and in the years immediately after the First and Second World Wars, many acquisitions were turned down at least in part because of the department’s exhausted funds. The Deputy Keeper wrote that a 15th-century English translation of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy, offered in 1946, would have been acceptable as a gift, but he could not justify paying for it, especially as the collections already included four manuscript copies of the text and this particular manuscript was missing its prologue and early lines.

These few examples already demonstrate the breadth of factors influencing manuscript acquisitions by the British Museum Library in this period and there is much more still to be uncovered in the departmental archives. As the research project progresses, future blogposts will highlight new discoveries and stories.

This research has been made possible by an award of the British Library’s Coleridge Fellowship.

 

Rory MacLellan

Follow us @BLMedieval