Publisher's Synopsis
Founded in 1982 as the result of an anonymous donation, the Panizzi lectures celebrate the achievements of Sir Anthony Panizzi (1797-1879), the notable librarian of Victorian Britain and effective creator of the British Museum Library at Bloomsbury. Each series of lectures is concerned with bibliography in its widest sense, drawing at least part of its material from the British Library's collections.;The dissolution of the monasteries and other religious houses by the English kings Henry VIII and Edward VI, in and after 1536, resulted in the dispersal of libraries of books, manuscripts and other written records which had been accumulated over centuries. In the aftermath of the destruction, a number of collectors sought to salvage what they could and, inspired by their example, Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631) formed the richest library then in private hands in England.;In this illustrated study of Cotton's manuscript collection, Collin Tite assesses the contribution which Cotton and his successors made to it as librarians and offers a reconstruction of the arrangement of the manuscripts in Cotton House, Westminster, under the famous system of press marks named after early Roman emperors. The volume concludes with an analysis of Cotton as a collector.
