Library Furniture

     If someone read this blog they would probably say that I focus too much on libraries, so I will shift the focus for a bit to the subject of furniture for libraries. If you are in the market for some, shop at Kennedy Galleries in Toronto where you will find such items as an Althorp Butterfly Accent Table, an Althorp Original Wingback Chair and an Althorp Spencer House Chair. “Althorp” is the name of the home of the Spencer family and within it you will find a “storied library.” Charles, 9th Earl Spencer was in that colonial city during the past summer to promote the furniture made by Theodore Alexander and which is of the type found in the library at Althorp.
     You would probably be much more interested in this, even if you are an American republican, if I mentioned at this point that the Earl is the younger brother of Diana, Princess of Wales. She surely romped through at least some of the 90 rooms where it was said that “a shetland pony might be conveniently kept to carry the more delicate visitor from one extremity to the other.”
     That such a patrician should be reduced to a pitchman should not bother you too much since the Earl visited Toronto from Windsor Castle en route to one of his homes in Los Angeles. The Spencer family circumstances must be somewhat straitened, however, since the estate can be visited by the likes of you and rented for the wedding of your daughter.
     The estate is truly splendid and I encourage you to have a look at ALTHORP which occupies over 500 acres in Northamptonshire. As for the “storied library”, it has been reduced in size and the remaining “10,000 books include the remnants of the private library amassed by the Second Earl, which at one time was the finest private library in the world. Comprising 43,000 early printed books, including 58 Caxtons, it was sold complete in 1892, and now comprises the backbone of the John Rylands Library, Manchester University.”

Sources:
   For an article about the Earl’s visit and the Kennedy Galleries see: “A Storied Library,” Kristina Ljubanovic, The Globe and Mail, June 30, 2018.
   Additional information about the library is found on the Althorp web site. You will note that  Althorp hosts both a Literary Festival and a Food & Drink Festival and daily tickets to enter the estate and grounds can be purchased during the summer.
   Information about the John Rylands Library is found at the University of Manchester Library.
For specific information about the books from Althorp see; the Spencer Collection.

Post Script:
     Now, back to the subject of libraries. Lord Spencer had to sell much of the material in the library back in 1892 and it was purchased by Enriqueta Rylands who was the wife of the wealthy Manchester merchant, John who died in 1888. She paid over £200,000  and contributed additional money for a library and then later bequeathed over 200,000 additional pounds for the purchase of more books. That the Althorp Library was more-or-less kept intact was a good thing.

   Once again, I will offer premium material by letting you know that the story does not end well. The John Rylands Library was absorbed into the University of Manchester Library in the early 1970s. Unfortunately, University Libraries, like Dukes, can become poor and during a period of austerity the University of Manchester decided to offer for sale some of the ‘duplicates’ that were now found in the amalgamated collections. A bitter controversy ensued, for,  “As a writer in the Times Literary Supplement(TLS) subsequently observed, ‘The very notion of duplicate books is one which meets with hollow laughter from scholars, bibliographers and collectors. No two copies of early printed books are ever exactly alike: they vary in small but significant ways.’ There was also the additional matter of breaking faith with the benefactors.
   The University pocketed £1,620,000, but not everyone was happy. A “mock-Victorian penny-dreadful’ was circulated which called the sale,  ‘A Cruel and Inhuman Murder Committed upon the Body of the University of Manchester’.
   University libraries in Ontario are now experiencing hard times and looking for ways to save money and gain space for the ‘student experience’. In doing so, books are being disposed of and many are being sent to a centralized storage facility in Downsview. I am sure due diligence is done and that the books are not generally unique ones published before 1500. Still one hopes something is not lost.
[Some might assume here that, in attempting to make  a point I might have exaggerated the ‘Manchester event’. You can decide for yourself by looking at Chapter 11, “Research and Rationalisation,” in A History of the University of Manchester, by Brian Pullan and Michele Abendstern, pp. 239-268. The quotations immediately above are from this source.]