William Hunter, Book Collector

BOOK - COLLECTOR AN EXHIBITION WILLIAM HUNTER, 1718 - 1783 BOOK COLLEarOR CATALOGUE OF AN EXHIBITION COMPILED :BY JACK :BALDWIN GLASGOW UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 14 APRIL - 30 SEPrEMBER 1983 INTRODUarION 9you say you should be glad to have every curious book on the face of the Earth9 - so wrote the novelist, Tobias Smollett, in 1763, to his friend and fellow-count~, Dr. William Hunter, anatomist and collector, and, within a few years of that letter, Physician Extraordinary 0 Queen Charlotte and Fellow of the Royal Societyo By the time Hunter died in 1783 he was well on the way to achieving his ambition: his library amounted to over 10,000 printed books and some 650 maouscriptso What is so striking about,Hunteris library is its immense variety. About one third of its contents - not unnaturally - are to do with medicine, with a good balance maintained between the great historical texts (such as editions of Hippocrates, Galen, Vesalius, Harvey) and the writings of Hunteris own contemporaries (men like Smellie, the Monros, Albinus, Haller). Anatomy and obstetrics - the two fields in which Hunter made his fame and fortune - are particularly well represented, though other specialities and interests are also evident e.g. naval medicine and the deficiency diseases. The literature generated by various 18th century medical controversies also attracted Hunter 2 s attention, as may be seen from the numerous tracts in his collection upholding or rejecting the value of inoculation against smallpox, or in the scores of pamphlets relating to the notorious case of Mary Toft of Godalming, who claimed to have given birth to litters of rabbitso The non-medical books reveal interests both wide and deep. Fine typography and the history of printing were topics which attracted most 18th-century collectorso Hunter followed the fashion of his times, acquiring 534 incunabula, a splendid collect ion by any standards. There is, alas, no 42-line Bible, but the two Fust and Schoeffer Ciceros (of 1465 and 1466) are there, followed by works representing almost all the more important presses of 15th-century Europeo Particularly outstanding are ten books printed by William Caxton at Westminst~r, and a fine group of Greek incunabula (Hunter became especially interested in the origins of printing in Greek characters and his extensive manuscript notes on the subject are preserved in the library)o Some 2,300 books from the 16th century are further evidence of Hunter9s passion for typo graphy; here he concentrated, predictably, on the Greek and Latin classical texts and on the editions of vernacular writers such as Boccaccio, Ariosto and Petrarch, which were issued by the great scholar-printers of Venice, Florence and Pariso Hunter9s interest in typography extended into the 17th and 18th centuries: it was, after all, John Baskerville whom he chose as the printer of his magnum opus The anatomy of the human gravid uterus; and Hunter's friendship with the renowned Glasgow printers, Robert and Andrew Foulis, resulted in the presence of over 100 of their editions on his shelves o Natural history - the universal British pastime by the mid 18th century - also stimulated Hunter1s collecting instincts o His iii library contair.s numerous large folios, often with hand-coloured engravings, of flowers, birds, animals, insects and shells, rang ing from Gesnervs Historia animalium to Trewvs Plantae selectae, and from Catesbyi 8 Natural history of Carolina to the ChoU de coquillages et de cru8tac~S of FoMo Regenfuss. Nor did Hunter neglect the physical sciences: the works of the great 16th and 11th-century physicists and astronomers - Copernicus, Kepler, Hooke, Newton - are all in his library. The literature of eXJ)loration and travel was another strong suit and Hunter had a particular interest in books and pamphlets on the exploration and colonization of North and South America (including a copy of a life of Christopher Columbus once owned by Sir Walter Raleigh). Accounts of contemporary explorers eogo Captain Cook s voyages to the South Seas were also avidly collected. Material on the East Indies may well reflect Hunter9 s concerns as an investor in East India Company stock; and other oriental interests are evident in over 10 Arabic, Persian and Turkish manuscripts, and in some extremely rare Chinese materials, both printed and manuscript, originally assembled by the German Sinologist, T.So Bayer. Huntervs holdings of vernacular literature are characterized by their quality rather than by their completeness: many of the great names are represented - Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Cervantes, Rabelais, Racine - often in rare and important editions, but it is clear that in this area comprehensiveness was not Hunter9 s aim. A strong section on numismatics and a good number of books on fine art were no doubt acquired in conjunction with Hunter 9 s other activities as a collector of coins, medals and paintingso The acquisition of manuscripts was a further enthusiasm and one which set Hunter apart from many of his contemporaries who tended to neglect manuscripts in favour of early printed bookso The 650 manuscripts purchased by Hunter - a third of which are medieval - give to his library a degree of uniquenesso They cover a wide range of centuries and subjects: a miscellany of medical works by Hippocrates, Galen and others, written in South France or North Italy at the end of the 8th or early 9th century; a treatise on hunting and falconry, by Guillaume Tardif, written and illuminated in France in the late 15th century; a 14th-century manuscript of Marco Polovs travels; a late 15th-century manuscript of Chaucervs Canterbury taJ.es. The post medieval manuscripts are equally varied: a description of a Mexican province at the time of Cort~s; a collection of warrants for proclamations signed by Elizabeth I; a 16th-century ma.nuaJ. of duties of members of the Grand Council of Venice; an account by William Oldys of London libraries in the 18th centuryo In common with most other 18th-century book collectors, Hunter was not much concerned with t original conditionv 0 Old bindings (and their fly leaves, so often covered with notes of early owner- iv ship) were frequently discarded and the books rebound in more or less uniform morocco, handsomely gilto But old clothes are often more reveaJ.ing than new ones and historians cannot but regret the exchange0 Yet aJ.though little can now be known about the 16th and 17th-century owners of many of Hunter9 s books, there are some notable exceptions where the provenance evidence has survived eogo Hunter9 s copy" of GoF o Bordini, De rebus praeclare gestis a Sixto V (1588), which once was owned by John Donne; or his copies of Pliny, Historia naturaJ.is (1476) and Paulus Aegineta, Pharmaca simplicia (1531), which belonged to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer; or his copies of So ~li, De infinitis iraJ.ibus inversis (1667) and J. van Heurne, De gravissimis morbis mulierum 1607, both of which were once in Robert Hooke's library. The evidence as to how Hunter built up his library is rather more plentiful - though by no means exhaustive. Some books (in the region of 150) were given to him by friends, former students and professional colleagues e.g. Dr. Samuel Johnson, Joseph Priestley, Adam Smith, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Allan Ramsay, Sir Joseph Banks, William Cullen and Richard Meado Much contemporary material (ioe. books published from around 1760 onwards) was probably purchased by Hunter on or shortly after publication; and there is evidence from subscription lists that Hunter acted as a subscriber to at least thirteen titles, including Robert Adam, Ruins of the paJ.ace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro (1764), and severaJ. Baskerville editionso The bulk of Hunter's books, however, were bought in the saJ.e room as is evident not just from the frequency with which his name appears in annotated copies of cataJ.ogues of London book auctions, but aJ.so in the correspoadence which has survived between Hunter and agents who acted for him at book saJ.es on the Continent o Between 1754 and 1783 Hunter attended over fifty London book auctions, buying heavily at the saJ.es of the libraries of Richard Mead (1754), Robert Taylor (1762), Sir Clement Cottrell Dormer (1764), John Hutton (1764), the Earl of Macclesfield (1765), Joseph Letherland (1765), John Baber (1766), Gregory Sharpe (1771), James West (1773), Anthony Askew (1775), Caesar De MissY (1776), John Ratcliffe (1776), Robert Hoblyn (1778 ), and AoB o Morin diHerouville (1780)0 On the Continent Hunter made his mark as a book collector at the sale of the library of Louis Jean Gaignat (Paris, 1769) - at which he spent aJ.most £1,000 - and, ten years later, at the sale of the library of the Dutch classicaJ. scholar, Pieter Burmann (Leyden, 1779)0 Built up in the auction room, Hunter9 s library might very well have been dismantled in it too (as indeed was the fate of so many contemporary collections) 0 It is to his great credit and to the good fortune of Glasgow that Hunter ensured the preservation of his books and manuscripts by bequeathing them to the University in which he had received his early educationo According to the terms of Hunteri s will his books and manuscripts (aJ.ong with his other collections) were to remain in London for thirty years after his death - for the use of his v nephew, Dr. Matthew Baillieo Bai lie generously relinquished his claim before the term was up, an the books and manuscripts were transfened to Glasgow in 1807. Just over 100 years later, the University published a catalogue of Bunter's manu cript collection, the work of John Young and Po . enderson Aitken: A catalogue of the manuscri ts in the libr of the Bunterian Museum in the University 0 Glasgow Gla w, Maclehose, 1908 0 This wa followed by a catalogue of Bunter's printed books prepared by Mungo Ferguson: The rinted book in the libr of the Hunterian Museum i the Universi of Glas w: a catalo G1 gow, Jac son, Wylie & Co., 1930 • Acknowl dgements Me t exhibitions rely heavily on the work of others and this one is no exceptiono To my colleagues, both past and present, Who over the years a e collected information on William Hunter's activities as a book collector, lowe a great debt; I have reason to be particular y grateful to Dr.

Load more