Forthcoming in the autumn issue of The Book Collector, vol. 75 (3) a follow-up piece to ‘« The smartest bookseller in London’ Leon Kashnor and the Museum Book Store‘,  on ‘The Sale of the Stowe papers to the Huntington Library (1925)’.

The extensive collections of archives, acquired by Henry E. Huntington before his death in 1927, make the Huntington Library ‘one of the most significant repositories in the world for British history’.[1]  They include the Battle Abbey papers, the Ellesmere and Hastings collections, and the Stowe papers. The latter comprise more than four-fifths of the British archive holdings there, ‘a great mass of muniments and personal papers of the families of Temple, Grenville and Brydges’, the ‘largest by far of any [collection] in the Library’, their number estimated at around 350,000 pieces in 1982.[2]

This paper uncovers some of the entangled proceedings which led to the transfer of this significant cache from the ducal seat in Buckinghamshire, England to the philanthropic institution in San Marino, California. It explores the acquisition of this archive from the sellers – the impoverished descendants of the ducal family who, not for the first time, had been forced to dispose of property – to the buyer – Henry E. Huntington, at the height of his reputation as a collector. It shows how lesser-known antiquarian dealers helped shape the acquisitions made by the millionaire and throws light on the process of discovery, acquisition by dealers, cataloguing, negotiation and dispatch of large holdings, one hundred years ago.

[1] https://www.huntington.org/british-history .

[2] George Sherburn, ‘Huntington Library Collections’, The Huntington Library Bulletin, May, no. 1 (1931), p. 93; Henry E. Huntington Library, Guide to British Historical Manuscripts in the Huntington Library (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1982) p. 145; Huntington Library, Report on the Finding Aid for the Stowe Papers. Manuscripts of the Related Grenville, Temple, Brydges, Nugent and O’Conor Families (n. d.).