the library catalogues of sir hans sloane: their authors

1 eBLJ 2011, Article 16

The Library Catalogues of Sir HansSloane: Their Authors, Organization,and FunctionsAmy Blakeway

Sir Hans Sloane achieved many accolades in his own lifetime, including the influential andcovetable positions of Royal Physician and President of the Royal Society. Sloane’s rise fromhumble physician to pillar of eighteenth-century society is epitomized in the glamorouslocations in Kensington and Chelsea which to this day bear his name, and those of hisdescendants. To people who have never heard of Sloane, the epithet ‘…of Sloane Square’immediately places him in the highest rank of social and historical importance. Despitesignificant achievements during his lifetime, perhaps Sloane’s greatest legacy wasposthumous: namely, as the man who accumulated the massive collections which formed thebasis of the British Museum and, indirectly, of its children the Natural History Museumand the British Library. In spite of the importance of Sloane’s collections, including hisbooks, as recently as 1988 Margaret Nickson observed that bibliographers had hitherto‘been very little concerned with the history of this remarkable collection’.1 Fortunately, thiscan no longer said to be the case. Collections of essays such as those edited by ArthurMacGregor in 1994 and by Giles Mandelbrote and Barry Taylor in 2009 have emphasizedthe scale of Sloane’s collections and their importance both in his lifetime and after hisdeath;2 such studies have also explored aspects of their organization and rationale. TheSloane Printed Books Project, led by Alison Walker, has made substantial progress inidentifying Sloane’s extant library holdings. At the time of writing, c. 26,500 books are listedon a fully searchable online database: their number is growing daily.3

Despite this progress, much still remains to be learned about Sloane and his collections;this paper presents an update on work in progress on the subject. The information nowstored on the Sloane Printed Books Project database enables us to build on Nickson’sresearch on Sloane’s catalogues to provide a more detailed picture of the development of hislibrary, its catalogue, and thus the broader pattern of his acquisitions of books. As Nicksonobserved, Sloane employed a number of amanuenses to maintain an accurate catalogue of hisever-growing collection. At a basic level, their duties comprised recording bibliographicaldetails, yet it is apparent that their role could also extend to substantial autonomous controlover reorganizing or rearranging the library. Taking a chronological approach to Sloane’scatalogues enables us to explore the developments to the catalogue made by each of his mainlibrary employees. Before examining the catalogue’s development, however, it is importantto consider existing literature on Sloane’s library holdings.

I would like to thank Alison Walker, John Goldfinch, Michael Hunter and Giles Mandelbrote for their commentson this paper in draft form.1 Margaret Nickson, ‘Hans Sloane, Book Collector and Cataloguer, 1628-1698’, British Library Journal, xiv

(1988), pp. 52-89. 2 Arthur MacGregor (ed.), Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, Scientist, Antiquary (London, 1994); Giles Mandelbrote

and Barry Taylor (eds.), Libraries Within the Library (London, 2009).3 http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/sloane/ [accessed 29 December 2010].

The Library Catalogues of Sir Hans Sloane: Their Authors, Organisation, and Functions


To date, Nickson’s work remains the cornerstone of our understanding of Sloane’s librarycatalogue. Her clarification of the relationship between the three main extant catalogues ofSloane’s book collection is particularly pertinent to this research; although ‘the relationshipsbetween these catalogues are complex’, they can be characterized at a basic level as follows.4Sloane MS. 3972C is the main catalogue of Sloane’s library, comprising eight volumes.Originally, this dealt with the vast majority of his holdings bound in book format, includingbooks of dried plants (the ‘horti sicci’), engravings, heavily illustrated volumes, manuscripts,vernacular printed books ranging from the grandest folio to the cheapest broadside ballad,and all Latin books discussing non-medical topics. This catalogue can be searched byreference to Sloane MS. 3972D, an index by author-surname or, in the case of anonymousworks, title or significant words from the title. Following Sloane’s death, in 1758 theTrustees of the newly founded British Museum determined to remove leaves which mainlycontained entries of manuscript works and rebind these in a separate volume. Wheremanuscripts were entered on pages with mostly printed material, these entries were copiedinto the new volume and deleted from the old catalogue. The volume of manuscript materialso formed now survives as Sloane MS. 3972 B. At present, therefore, index entries in SloaneMS. 3972D could relate to folios bound in either Sloane MS. 3972B or Sloane MS. 3972C.

Whilst Sloane MS. 3972C describes the vast majority of Sloane’s book holdings, there isone crucial area of his collection which it does not include. Sloane’s medical works in Latinwere catalogued separately from the remainder of his printed books, and in a quite differentmanner. Medical bibliography was an expanding genre in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies, and Sloane owned several examples of such works.5 The most up-to-date andcomplete work had been published in 1686, when G. A. Mercklin produced an edited,expanded, and revised version of Johannes Antonides van der Linden’s medicalbibliography, known as Lindenius Renovatus. Van der Linden’s work had originally beenpublished in 1637; Sloane did not own the first edition, but he did own Mercklin’s 1686revision and an unrevised 1651 reprint of the original edition, both of which he annotated.6Sloane’s copy of the Mercklin version in particular is very heavily marked. Theseannotations will be discussed in more detail below, but for the moment it should be notedthat they include identification numbers, demonstrating that Sloane used this printed workas the basis for a catalogue of his own medical holdings. These identification numbers arehighly distinctive, taking the form of a letter (lower or upper case) and a number, and theyare usually described as ‘Sloane numbers’. To facilitate this use of Lindenius Renovatus as acatalogue, Sloane arranged for his copy to be interleaved so that Latin medical textspublished subsequent to 1686, or which Mercklin had omitted, could be added at theappropriate place in the volume.

Whilst the exact date at which Sloane began to use his copy of Lindenius Renovatus in thismanner is unclear, it is evident that he acquired the volume on his return from Jamaica in1689.7 Prior to this purchase, in February 1684/5, Sloane had commenced a book list, in

4 For a more detailed discussion of the following, see Nickson, ‘Hans Sloane’, pp. 52-8.5 John Symons, ‘Medical Bibliographies and Bibliographers’, in Alain Besson (ed.), Thornton’s Medical Books,

Libraries and Collectors: A Study of Bibliography and the Book Trade in Relation to the Medical Sciences(Aldershot, 1990), pp. 239-66; Estelle Brodman, The Development of Medical Bibliography (Baltimore, 1954).

6 London, British Library [BL], 878.n.8 and BL 550.a.35 respectively. Two further British Library copies ofLindenius, the 1637 edition (554.e.3) and the 1662 edition (271.i.32) bear no marks of Sloane’s ownership.

7 M. A. E. Nickson, ‘Books and Manuscripts’ in Arthur MacGregor (ed.), Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, Scientist,Antiquary (London, 1994), pp. 263-277, at p. 264.



which he recorded the amount he had paid for each volume.8At this early stage, Sloane hadnot yet instituted the practice of numbering his books. However, he did record acquisitiondate and price on volumes in code, a practice which was apparently intended as a reminderof an item’s cost should he ever have needed to sell it.9 Nickson suggested that Sloanecommenced the catalogue of his non-medical collection, then numbering some 3,000 books,in 1693: this dating will be refined in this paper. By the time he began this catalogue Sloanehad begun to inscribe his books with his distinctive ‘Sloane numbers’, initially employingeach letter of the alphabet once, with capitals A, B and C used for folios, and lower-case d-o for smaller books, a scheme quickly expanded to include capital P for folios, and lower-caseq-y for smaller works.10

Whilst Nickson focused upon Sloane’s cataloguing, Giles Mandelbrote, by contrast,turned his attention to Sloane’s acquisition patterns, with particular reference to thepurchases made at the sale of Robert Hooke’s library in 1703.11 Drawing upon JeremiahFinch’s work of the 1940s, Mandelbrote noted that the variety of marks made on Sloane’sextant auction catalogues reveals a process behind a decision to purchase which comprisedmore than one stage: an initial set of marks highlighting items of interest was then refinedto exclude works already present in the library, presumably a process undertaken withreference to Sloane’s catalogues.12 By examination of the annotations which accompaniedthese marks, such as ‘you have it’, Mandelbrote concluded that in the examples he observedit was Sloane who made the provisional selection, and library assistants who undertook thechecking to refine the lists. In other instances, however, this process could have differed.Acquisition dates for items known to have been purchased at a particular sale are clear, yetan approximate acquisition date for other items can be deduced by reference toMandelbrote’s identification of the plausible start and end date for each volume of Sloane’slibrary catalogue.13 The dates he proposes are largely supported by the research outlined inthis paper.

To date, therefore, the broad dating of Sloane’s catalogues; the meaning of his purchasecodes; his acquisitions at certain sales; and the relationships between his early book list, twomain catalogues, Lindenius Renovatus and Sloane MS. 3972C, and the list of his manuscriptsin Sloane MS. 3972B (as derived from the original contents of Sloane MS. 3972C) havebeen elucidated.

By contrast, this paper provides a primarily chronological account of Sloane’s bookcatalogue, expanding upon established research and highlighting new avenues forexploration. To achieve this, we shall consider the catalogue as a series of different sectionsundertaken by several authors. The men whom Sloane employed to help develop his libraryare often described as ‘amanuenses’, a term which is accurate in so far as it draws attentionto Sloane’s continued supervision of his collections. Nevertheless, several of Sloane’semployees were scholars of note in their own right and exercised their own judgement anddiscretion in the day-to-day management of Sloane’s collections. Whilst any attemptedperiodization of the catalogue and the library’s development is, to a certain extent, arbitrary,this focus on the librarians involved has the merit of foregrounding two hitherto neglectedaspects of Sloane’s collecting and cataloguing. First, this approach demonstrates theinfluence of a variety of individuals involved in the monumental undertaking of managing

8 ‘A Catalogue of my Books’, Feb. 1685, BL, Sloane MS. 3995.9 Margaret Nickson, ‘Sloane’s Codes: The Solution to a Mystery’, Factotum, vii (1979), pp. 13-18. 10 Nickson, ‘Hans Sloane’, pp. 62-3.11 Giles Mandlebrote, ‘Sloane’s Purchases at the Sale of Robert Hooke’s Library’, in Giles Mandelbrote and

Barry Taylor (eds.), Libraries within the Library (London, 2009), pp. 98-145.12 Jeremiah S. Finch, ‘Sir Hans Sloane’s Printed Books’, The Library, 4th ser., xxii (1941-42), pp. 67-72;

Mandelbrote, pp. 101-5.13 Mandelbrote, p. 109.



Sloane’s vast book holdings. Secondly, it reveals the impact of events in Sloane’s personaland professional life on his collecting and cataloguing practices. Sloane’s library can only beunderstood in the broader context of his life and times. Exploring Sloane’s cataloguesthrough such a historical approach provides new explanations for important, yet hithertoneglected, facets of the library’s development.

Before the catalogue: the 1685 list – 1693

The list of Sloane’s books and their prices which he began in 1685 (now Sloane MS. 3995)was finished in 1687, when Sloane left for Jamaica in the service of the Duke of Albemarle.At this stage, Sloane had evidently not assigned Sloane numbers to his books since none arerecorded in this list. This is confirmed by two medical bibliographies which he ownedduring this period: the 1651 edition of Lindenius, and a bibliography compiled by thebookseller and bibliographer Cornelius à Beughem, published in 1681.14 It is probable thatBeughem conceived his work as an update to van der Linden, to be used in conjunction withthe then most recent edition of 1651. The title page states that the bibliography listed workspublished from 1651 onwards, including medical works in both Latin and vernacularlanguages. Although Beughem did not mention Lindenius by name in either his dedicationof the work to Elector Frederick or his note to the reader, it is highly plausible that non-duplication of materials in van der Linden dictated this choice of date. Neither Sloane’searly edition of Lindenius, nor his copy of Beughem, has hitherto been considered asevidence of his early cataloguing or library practices, yet both of these works bear markswhich are comparable to those made in Sloane’s Lindenius Renovatus. In contrast to LindeniusRenovatus and Sloane MS. 3792C, however, neither contains Sloane’s numbers.

The meaning of the marks in these two volumes, and their relationship to those inLindenius Renovatus, is unclear. Some items were marked with symbols including horizontallines, on occasion crossed by one or two vertical lines or, more rarely, a circle. Severalpossibilities regarding the meanings of these marks have been examined and rejected,including the possibility that they referred to the books’ subject matter. For instance, worksmarked by a horizontal line crossed by two vertical lines in Beughem’s bibliography includeGerard Boate’s Histoire Naturelle d’Irelande (Paris, 1666) and Jean Fernel’s Ouvres en Medicin(3 vols, Paris, 1655).15 Nor do the marks relate to categorization based on language or someaspect of publication details. It also appears unlikely that such marks relate directly toaccession. For instance, Jean Jacob Wecker’s Secrets et Merveilles de Nature (Paris, 1666) andJean Varande’s Traite de la Maladie des Femmes (Rouen, 1651) are both marked with thehorizontal and two vertical lines: Sloane owned the former, but the latter does not have anindex entry in Sloane MS. 3972D, where, had Sloane acquired it, it would have beenindexed as a vernacular work entered in Sloane 3972C.16 Furthermore, although similarmarks were made in Lindenius Renovatus, it appears that either the meaning of the marks orthe categorization system to which they appertained had changed: frequently the mark inBeughem or the earlier Lindenius (see above) does not correlate to that in LindeniusRenovatus.17 It is possible that such marks indicate desiderata, or a qualitative assessment ofa work, but it appears unlikely that firm evidence will be forthcoming to support eitherpossibility.

14 Joannes Antonides van der Linden, A. vander L. de scriptis medicis libri duo, quibus præmittitur ... manuductioad medicinam (Amsterdam, 1651), BL, 550.a.35; Cornelius à Beughem Bibliographia Medicina et Physicanovissima (Amsterdam, 1681), BL, 618.a.2.

15 Beughem, Bibliographia Medicina et Physica, pp. 314-19.16 Ibid., pp. 327-8. 17 See, for example the entry for Paulus Ammanus, Character Plantarum Naturalis (Leipzig, 1660); Beughem,

Bibliographia Medicina et Physica, p. 4; Lindenius Renovatus, BL, 551.a.61, p. 866.



Nickson plausibly suggested that Sloane purchased Lindenius Renovatus following hisreturn from Jamaica, although precisely when is uncertain.18 He almost certainly owned itby 1693, in which year he left the service of the now widowed Duchess of Albemarle, withwhom he had initially remained following his return from Jamaica; in 1693 he departed herservice to set up a medical practice in Bloomsbury.19

Phase 1: Sloane: 1693 - 169820

As indicated above, Nickson argued that Sloane started his book catalogue in 1693. Thisresearch refines this date, suggesting that Sloane’s catalogue was commenced in late 1692.Nickson’s suggestion of 1693 was based on her examination of the alchemical date-codesassigned to manuscript items catalogued in the first 218 pages of Sloane MS. 3972C volumeI, and her attempt to identify the point at which their purchase codes started to run in aconsecutive sequence. This, she conjectured, would indicate that retrospective cataloguingwas complete and new acquisitions were being entered as they were purchased. Nickson’sfocus on Sloane’s manuscripts was determined by the fact that these items had maintainedtheir identity as a discrete collection to a greater degree than Sloane’s printed books, andwere therefore easier to examine as a body. Her examination of the manuscripts cataloguedin volume I of Sloane MS. 3972C, ff. 86-113, revealed that this constituted a near completelist of Sloane’s manuscripts purchased prior to 1694. Nickson also observed that the printeditems assigned to classmarks a, b, z, and D, which appeared for the first time from f. 71onwards and were ‘arranged in a regular numerical order unlike the scattered entries onearlier pages’, were acquired in 1693.21 She therefore drew the conclusion that, since itemsfirst appeared to be catalogued in consecutive date order from 1693 onwards, the cataloguemust have been begun in this year.

The Sloane Printed Books database, however, has made it possible to carry out a similarexamination of Sloane’s printed books to that which Nickson undertook on his manuscripts,since details of these can now be analysed and compared with far greater ease and rapidity.The revision of Nickson’s dating results from searching on the Sloane database for bookswhich were catalogued in the first 218 pages of the catalogue, or which were catalogued inLindenius but were part of the sequence of Sloane numbers visible in the same section ofSloane MS. 3972C as was examined by Nickson for evidence of purchase codes which revealtheir date of acquisition. It therefore constitutes a refinement of Nickson’s method by usinga greater quantity of data, which reveals that amongst the printed books, consistent orderingin chronological order of acquisition began in 1692.22

Nevertheless, Nickson was right in suggesting that 1693 was also a significant year forSloane, since, as we have seen, this was the year in which he moved out of the Duchess ofAlbemarle’s house and set up in his own premises. An enigmatic sheet amongst Sloane’spapers raises the possibility that this move entailed substantial rearrangement of his books.Elaborately written in a formal hand, which is clearly not Sloane’s, with certain wordspicked out in Gothic script and rubricated, the paper reads:

18 Nickson, ‘Books and Manuscripts’, p. 264.19 Arthur MacGregor, ‘Sloane, Sir Hans, baronet (1660–1753)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

[ODNB], Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25730, accessed 24 Nov2010].

20 Sloane entries relating to the first stage of this catalogue can be found in: Sloane MS. 3972C, i, ff. 1-202,rectos only and Sloane MS. 3972C, ii, ff. 1-28, rectos only.

21 Nickson, ‘Hans Sloane’, p. 62. 22 Sloane MS. 3972C, i, ff. 43-45, 47, 50-54.



23 ‘A Table shewing the Place of each Book…’, Sloane MS. 4019, f. 178. 24 Sloane MS. 3972C, i, ff. 3, 7, 13, 42, 44, 48.

A Table shewing the Place of each Book in my Library wherein to be Noted, that theBooks whose Numbers are accompanied with a Letter of the Alphabet and anotherNumber (and which amount to 678) are Books added, since the last Adjustmentthereof. 1693.23

There is no explicit connection between Sloane’s books and this title page, now separatedfrom the table which it accompanied; however, it is highly probable that it was connected toSloane’s library. First, the date of 1693, when we know Sloane moved house and thereforemust have reshelved his books in a new location, is strongly suggestive. Secondly, theformula of ‘a Letter of the Alphabet and another number’ added to new purchases, is anaccurate description of Sloane numbers such as, for instance, ‘a 1’ or ‘R 200’. Thirdly, thepresence of ‘another number’ could well refer to Sloane’s earlier system of date and pricecoding.

If this sheet does relate to a lost document which served as a finding aid for Sloane’slibrary, then it implies that the first books to be given ‘proper’ Sloane classmarks were neweracquisitions; that older acquisitions were provided with numbers at a later point; and that‘adjustment’ of Sloane’s books was a relatively frequent occurrence. This information issupported by an examination of the allocation of Sloane numbers. Of the seventeen booksassigned Sloane numbers beginning with ‘A’ which also bear purchase codes, a majority ofsix were purchased in 1692, implying that the classmark was begun in that year. By contrast,of thirty-seven books bearing Sloane codes ‘B’ and an extant purchase code, those withnumbers below 74 were bought during the 1680s, whereas those with higher numbers werelargely purchased in 1693. This indicates that Sloane initially used ‘B’ as a mark for hisexisting library, and that at some point in 1693 he had ceased to assign this mark to olderitems in his library and, rather, had begun to use it for new works. The majority of itemsassigned a code ‘C’ were purchased during the 1680s, indicating that initially this letter wasassigned to previous purchases. Amongst the lower-case letters, a, b and z were started in1693; by contrast, approximately the first thirty items assigned ‘y’ appear to have been 1692purchases, implying that ‘y’ was first used for new purchases made that year, alongsideupper-case A. Other lower-case letters, such as d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, q, r s, t, u and xwere initially used to number existing material and eventually assigned to new purchases.

It thus appears that Sloane first assigned numbers at the very beginning and end of thealphabet exclusively to new purchases, and that subsequently he made the decision to extendthe system of a letter and number code to the rest of his collection, employing the middle ofthe alphabet for this purpose. This raises questions regarding the relationship between thenumbering of Sloane’s books and the beginning of his catalogue. If the catalogue had beencommenced at the same time as Sloane’s books were given their numbers, and retained itsoriginal order, it would open with the first books assigned Sloane numbers A, a, b and y usedfor the new purchases made c. 1692-3, of which there were 678 by 1693. However, the firstforty-three folios are filled with items assigned letters d-x, interspersed with a small numberof scattered As.24 At first, items appear to have been catalogued in small groups of volumesassigned the same letter, but these volumes do not appear in alphabetical order of Sloanenumber. Since the foliation in the top right of each page does not appear to have beenundertaken at the same time as the catalogue entries were made, this raises the possibilitythat the opening folios of the catalogue are no longer in their original order. The foliation isby Sloane, and from around folio 43 items appear in acquisition order. It is therefore evidentthat the pages have been in this order from the early 1690s onwards. Examination of thecontents of each folio shows, however, that an alternative ordering of the sheets couldproduce an alphabetical series of Sloane numbers. This is outlined in Table A.



Table A: Original Foliation of Sloane MS. 3972C volume I

Modern foliation Items Catalogued

7 d 23-43e 5A 66-68

9 d 49-67e 12-68

8 e 70-73f 2-51

33 f 52-101g 5- g 24

32 g 25- g 97

31 g 98-g 120h 8-h 78

30 h 79-h 146i 4

47 i 7-i 101k 8-k 39

48 y 30-42C 30A95-A99

49 k 46-k 49

35 k 59-k 107l 3-l 56

34 l 57-l 132m 7-m 15

37 m 17- m 56

36 m 57- m 93

39 m 94- m 126

38 m 130- m 149

46 m 150- m 175n 5-n 49

41 n 57- n 167

40 n 168o4- o 56

11 o 63-o 66P 15-P 84q 2-q 8

10 q 10-q 334 q 34-q 555 q 36-q 45e 13



Many of the sheets in this table appear in pairs within which the order has been reversed:for instance, 29 precedes 28, and 8 precedes 7. Two folios, 48 and 49, are the product of alarger single sheet folded in half and remain joined together. Although the majority of thesefolios are single sheets, the reversed pairs, and the remaining joined sheet, within anotherwise unordered section may indicate a several-stage process which originated withlarge single sheets folded in half. Potentially, when they were being arranged for the currentbinding, the two halves of each folded sheet remained joined together, but the folded sheetswere reordered. Prior to foliation, the front and back of many of these sheets were reversed:

Modern foliation Items Catalogued

16 q 45-q 83

17 q 102-q 116r 4-r 53

21 r 58-r 84

20 r 88-r 158

19 r 118-r 135

15 r 140-3

14 r 147-r 150

22 r 165-r 174

23 s 5-s 66

25 s 67-s 123

24 s 124t 3-t 72

27 t 90-t 134u 3-u 94

26 u 97-u 121x 1-x 33

29 x 34-x 81

28 x 83-x 84o 67-o 122A 4P 96-P 99f 110-f 132

12 d 132x 89-x 127

3 x 129-x 133o 140-168A 63d 143-5x 136

2 x 137-x 142P 1-P 2B 3C 15-C 129



this could have been achieved either by refolding the sheet along the same crease line but inthe opposite direction, or by cutting the sheets in half. This reorganization could have beenthe product of either accident or design. It appears likely that Sloane himself undertook thisreordering, although why he did so remains a matter for speculation. It is possible that inplacing the earlier purchases with mid-alphabet codes before later purchases coded ‘a’ or ‘b’Sloane sought to reflect the arrangement of items in order of acquisition which prevailedthroughout the remainder of the catalogue. This rearrangement may have taken place whenSloane recatalogued his manuscripts in 1693, as discussed by Nickson. Table B outlines thedates of acquisition of items catalogued by Sloane; the use of purchase codes almostexclusively amongst this group enables far greater precision than is possible for laterpurchases which were very rarely coded in this manner.

25 For details of the manuscripts catalogued on these pages see: Nickson, ‘Hans Sloane’, pp. 64-84. 26 There is some conflicting evidence regarding this section, which is best illustrated by the entry for Antoine

Mejnot’s Opuscules posthumes (Amsterdam, 1697), which bears a purchase code for the previous year, 1696. Itis possible that this confusion may have arisen if Sloane considered the year to start on the feast of theAnnunciation, 25 March, but was cataloguing works whose publication date had been determined by the yearcommencing 1 January. His 1684 book list bears the date ‘1684/5’, which implies Sloane had begun the listbetween January and March 1685 but that in some circumstances he continued to consider the change of yearto occur on 25 March. Sloane 3972C, I, f. 192r; Antoine Mejnot, Opuscules posthumes, ... contenant des discours& des lettres sur divers sujets, tant de physique & de médecine que de religion (Amsterdam, 1697), BL, 775.g.1;‘A Catalogue of my Books’, Feb. 1685, Sloane MS. 3995, f. 1r.

Table B: Acquisition dates of items catalogued by Sloane

Modern foliation Acquisition dates of items Sloane numbers employed

ff. 2-42 1680s-1691 A, B, C, P; d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, q, r, s, t, u, x

ff. 43-45, f. 48 1692. Folios 43-9 are the A; g, i, k, l, q, t, x, ychangeover point between cataloguing existing items and new purchases and contain a mix of items

ff. 46-7, 49 1680s-1691. Folios 43-9 i, k, m, nare the changeover point between cataloguing existing items and new purchases and contain a mix of items

ff. 50-54 1692 A

ff. 55-80 1693 A, B,; a (from f. 72), e, f, q, y, z

ff. 81-87 1694 B, D, ; b, k, z

ff. 88-115 1680s-1693 Manuscripts25

ff. 116-129 1695 D; c, f,

ff. 130-191 1696 a, c, d, g, m, p

ff. 192-206 169726 D, a, d, e, f, s, g, p



Although this overall pattern is strong, items occasionally appear in the catalogue oramongst sequences of Sloane numbers which bear a purchase code that does not conform tothe overall pattern. In particular, a number of items bearing post-1692 purchase codes werecatalogued in the first fifty folios; their presence requires interrogation. For instance, itemsapparently catalogued in the first fifty folios but purchased in 1695 include Thomas Tryon’sNew Art of Brewing (Paris, 1691).27 1696 purchases include Robert Boyle’s Tracts about theCosmical Qualities of Things (Oxford, 1670); Jean Bonnart’s Semaine des medicamens desBarbiers (Paris, 1629); and Guillame de Houppeville’s La Génération de l’Homme (Rouen,1676).28 1697 purchases include John Rae’s Flora; seu de Florum Cultura. Or, a completeFlorilege, furnished with all requisites belonging to a florist (London, 1676); Edmond Martin’sCatalogus librorum qui venales prostant (Paris, 1683); Robert Sprackling’s Medela ignorantiae:or a ... vindication of Hippocrates and Galen (London, 1665); and Leonardo Fioravanti’s DellaFisica (Venice, 1610).29

Sloane’s copy of the final work entered on folio 1r, Dyonisio Daça Chacon’s Practica yTheorica de Cirurgia (Valladolid, 1595 and 1609), bears the purchase code for 1698.Examining this work in more detail points to a potential explanation for this and, byextension, similar anomalies such as those outlined above. Sloane owned at least two copiesof this book; it is therefore unclear whether the volume catalogued on the first page of thecatalogue was indeed the item purchased in 1698. The Practica y Theorica de Cirurgia is intwo parts and Sloane owned both a complete set and a copy of part II only. The completeset and the lone part II were different editions, but both were given the number C 129. Theduplicate copies are revealed because the first catalogue entry was not correctly indexed; thework was thus catalogued twice. Curiously, both catalogue entries cite both editions – thisinformation was apparently added subsequent to the penning of the main entry.30 Thevolume purchased in 1698 was part II of the 1609 edition.31 Sloane’s complete 1595 editionwas identified by the black stamp given by the British Museum to books originating inSloane’s collection, and by marks indicating a previous owner: Joseph Fenton. 32 Sloaneacquired several of Fenton’s books in 1686, and his early book list records his purchase of abook described as ‘Spanish Chyrurgia, Vallad. 1595, fol’, for one shilling in that year.33Thereis a strong possibility that this refers to Chacon’s work, and that it was this copy of Chaconwhich was catalogued on f. 1r.

27 Sloane MS. 3972C, I, f. 26r; Thomas Tryon A New Art of brewing Beer, Ale, and other sorts of Liquors (London,1691), BL, 969.a.42.(1).

28 Sloane MS. 3972C, I, ff. 23r, 25r, 31r; Robert Boyle Tracts about ye Cosmicall Qualities of Things (Oxford,1670), BL, 535.b.17; Jean Bonnart Semaine des medicamens des Barbiers (Paris, 1629) 778.a.7; Guillame deHouppeville La Génération de l’Homme par le moyen des oeufs, et la production des tumeurs impures par l’actiondes sels; examinées dans une lettre écrite à M*** D. M. sur l’ouverture du cadavre d’une femme, où l’on a trouvéplusieurs corps extraordinaires (Rouen, 1676), BL, 1173.e.8.

29 Sloane MS. 3972C, i, ff. 1r, 28r; 39r, 45r; John Rae, Flora; seu de Florum Cultura. Or, a complete Florilege,furnished with all requisites belonging to a florist (London, 1676), BL, 441.g.1; Edmond Martin, Cataloguslibrorum qui venales prostant (Paris, 1683), BL, S.C.16; Robert Sprackling Medela ignorantiae: or a ...vindication of Hippocrates and Galen from the groundless imputations of M[archamont] N[edham], wherein thewhole substance of his ... Medela Medicinae is ... considered (London, 1665), BL, 1038.f.23; LeonardoFioravanti, Della Fisica dell’Eccellente Dottore ... L. F. ... divisa in libri quattro, ... Di nuovo posta in luce, et conla tavola de’ Capitoli (Venice, 1610), BL, C.65.hh.8.(1.).

30 Sloane MS. 3972C, i, f. 1r; Sloane MS. 3972C, ii, f. 104v. 31 Dionysio Daça Chacon, Practica y theorica de cirurgia, vol. i (Valladolid, 1609), BL, 549.l.18.32 Dionysio Daça Chacon, Practica y theorica de cirurgia, 2 vols (Valladolid, 1595), BL, 549.l.19.(1.). 33 Sloane MS. 3995, f. 13r.



This example highlights the issue of duplicates in Sloane’s library, drawing attention tothe fact that when Sloane acquired a duplicate copy of a work, even if this was a differentedition to that he already owned, it was sometimes assigned the same Sloane number as hisexisting copy. Presumably either the two copies were shelved together, or, in some cases, theduplicate may have taken the place of the original on the shelves if, for instance, its conditionwas markedly superior.34 This practice provides an explanation for the occasional presenceof items which, on the basis of the currently identified extant copies, appear out ofchronological order within the catalogue.

Sloane worked alone on his library catalogue for five years. During this time, he enteredbibliographic data on only the recto folios of the catalogue, filling the entirety of volume Iand commencing volume II in this manner. This practice of writing on the rectos, however,ceased when other individuals took over the main responsibility for transcribing entries.Although it was only during the earliest stage of the library catalogue’s development, priorto Sloane employing any assistants, that the versos were left blank, catalogues of other partsof Sloane’s collections frequently contained entries only on the recto or only had the versosfilled at a much later date. For instance, in his 1685 book list, having filled up all the rectofolios, Sloane turned the volume upside down and filled in the versos from the backforwards. Likewise, entries in his catalogues of fossils, minerals and other objects were oftenwritten on the rectos only, leaving the versos free for greater detail to be added at a laterstage.35 For objects such as fossils, about which further information might emerge, it wasessential to leave space for the insertion of new data in order for the catalogue to function asa detailed and accurate record of Sloane’s collections. The bibliographic data associated withbooks would not, however, expand in the same manner. Accordingly, it is possible thatSloane began his book catalogue in the same format as other similar documents, but that arealization that space for expansion was unnecessary prompted a later change in practice, asdiscussed below.

The rectos of volume I and the section of volume II written in Sloane’s hand are the mostheavily annotated section of the catalogue. In addition to publication details and Sloanenumbers, Sloane marked some entries with a series of symbols in pencil and red crayon.These include lines and crosses, hands, clovers, and clovers with a cross through their stem(fig. 1). Some entries received multiple markings. The small hands and clovers appear to berelated to subject categorization, hands indicating works on travel or voyages, and theclovers, natural sciences. However, they appear to represent a sub-selection within theseclasses as not every potentially relevant work is marked with an appropriate symbol. Sincethe hands and clovers only appear on folios written by Sloane, it is evident that this attemptat categorization took place at an early point in the catalogue’s development and provedrelatively short-lived.

By contrast, the introduction of new Sloane numbers proved a longer-lived innovation.Examining the extant purchase codes on Sloane’s volumes reveals that ‘c’ and ‘p’ first cameinto use in 1695. In this year, Sloane married the wealthy widow Elizabeth Rose (néeLangley) and the couple moved into a new house together, though it is unclear whether thisentailed the relocation of his practice or book collection. The move to the ‘fashionable’ 3Bloomsbury Place serves as a reminder of the match’s ‘advantageous’ aspects for Sloane, asidentified by his biographer Arthur MacGregor.36 The increase in income attendant upon

34 For more on Sloane’s duplicates see William Poole, ‘The Duplicates of Sir Hans Sloane in the BodleianLibrary: A Detective Story, with Some Comments on Library Organisation’, The Bodleian Library Record,xxiii:2 (2010), pp. 192-213.

35 London, Natural History Museum [NHM], ‘Catalogue of Fossils’, 6 vols, 50.h.6; NHM, ‘Catalogue ofVegetable Substances’, 3 vols, MSS. SLO 25.e.13-15; NHM, ‘Catalogue of Insects’, 2 vols, S.B.q.S.8; NHM,‘Catalogue of Minerals’, 3 vols; NHM, ‘Catalogus Marmorum’, 224.r.I.

36 Arthur MacGregor, ‘Sloane, Sir Hans, baronet (1660–1753)’, ODNB.



Fig. 1. Sloane’s hand: hands and clovers next to some entries. Sloane MS. 3972C, i, f. 22r.



Sloane’s nuptials would certainly have facilitated the substantial increase in his bookpurchasing visible from 1696 onwards.

The latest dated publication entered by Sloane is of 1698; it is presumably from this thatNickson inferred that it was in this year that Sloane ‘decided to entrust most of the work [onthe library] to assistants’.37 Although Sloane’s paramount role in the development of hiscollections and library overall remained unchallenged, it is clear that other individuals alsoplayed an important part in expanding and developing Sloane’s catalogue from shortly afterits inception. It is to their contributions which we now turn.

Phase 2: Hand 1: 1698-1707 and Humphrey Wanley: 1701-3; Hand 2, 1707-09

Hand 138

Unfortunately, the identity of Sloane’s first assistant remains elusive, yet during hiscustodianship Sloane’s library catalogue developed substantially. Since scholarly interest hashitherto focused upon Sloane’s known assistants, exploration of the roles played by hisanonymous helpers has been an important aim of the current research. In the absence ofSloane’s household accounts, and faced with a vast quantity of correspondence in whichclues may or may not lurk, ascertaining the identity of the persons behind such hands ispotentially a convoluted process. In order to assist in the process of identifying hands,possible sources from which Sloane might have found appropriately qualified assistants havebeen identified, a list of suitable candidates drawn up, and samples of their handwritingcompared to hands in the catalogue. Since Sloane’s known employees often had connectionsto the Royal Society (discussed in each individual case below), the secretaries, librarians,foreign secretaries and other officers of the Society during the late seventeenth and earlyeighteenth centuries constituted a likely source of employees for Sloane and newidentifications have been made by this means. Nevertheless, several hands unfortunatelyremain unmatched and unidentified, including the first.

Sloane’s first library assistant undertook vast amounts of work on the catalogue,completing the recto folios of volume II, then filling in the verso folios of volumes I and II,before commencing work on volume III, entering bibliographical information on bothrectos and versos. The blank versos of volumes I and II were assigned roman numerals,running as a parallel page numbering system to the arabic numerals which Sloane hadplaced on the rectos. Volumes III-VIII however, have a single pagination in arabic numeralsthroughout.

Intriguingly, Hand 1 included entries not only for books which Sloane owned, whichtherefore have a Sloane number, but also for other books which appear without a Sloanenumber. Nickson suggested that these items constituted desiderata lists, although she didnot explore their provenance or the ways in which such lists reveal Sloane’s attitude to, andobjectives in, the expansion of his collection.

A number of items in the catalogue without Sloane numbers were marked with lower caseletters a, b, m or o by Hand 1: these are clearly not part of a Sloane number (fig. 2). Whilstitems marked ‘o’ and ‘b’ appear at intervals throughout the versos of volumes I and II, itemsmarked ‘a’ appear only in one lengthy consecutive list, again on the versos of volume II,

37 Nickson, ‘Books and Manuscripts’, p. 265. 38 Hand 1’s work is visible in: Sloane MS. 3972C, i, ff. 1-202, versos only; Sloane MS. 3972C, ii, ff.1-28, versos

only, and 29-159 rectos and versos; and Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, ff. 10r-16v, 51r -203v. Wanley’s work: SloaneMS. 3972C, iii, ff.16v-51r, his manuscript entries: Sloane MS. 3972B, ff. 475-522, 666-9, 716 (Sloane’spagination). Hand 2: Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, ff. 204r-216v and Sloane MS. 3972C, iv, ff. 1-58r.



whilst volumes marked ‘m’ appear in only one, shorter list, on the versos of volume II.39Examination of the interleaved pages of Lindenius Renovatus reveals that some of the entriescopied on to these were similarly marked with letters ‘a’ ‘b’ or ‘m’, of which only some werethen given Sloane numbers. These, it seemed, formed part of the same series as thedesiderata lists in Sloane MS. 3972C. Examination of the characteristics shared by thevolumes ascribed these letters revealed the following pattern:

‘a’: works of medicine, natural philosophy and travel written in Spanish orPortuguese only, alphabetically arranged by author’s first name.40 ‘b’: works of medicine, natural philosophy and travel in a variety of continentalEuropean languages, predominantly French, but also including works in German andItalian.41‘m’: list organized by author surname; books published 1667-1693 only. French andItalian works, mainly medical, some on other scientific topics.42‘o’: largely works on travel in a range of European languages, all published prior to1674; includes one manuscript.43

What did these letters signify and how did Sloane become aware of the existence of thevolumes in these lists? Beyond reflecting Sloane’s broad interest in medicine and relatedtopics, these letters evidently did not relate either to subject groups or, with the exceptionof ‘a’, to language groups. Consideration of the Sloane numbers assigned to those itemswhich were subsequently purchased revealed that the letters likewise did not relate to thebooks’ eventual shelving location. The striking lack of English vernacular works implies thatthese letters constituted a deliberate attempt to source foreign works in Sloane’s main areasof interest. That Sloane was interested in acquiring foreign works is clear from hiscorrespondence: in 1700, for instance, one of Sloane’s correspondents, Jezreel Jones, clerkto the Royal Society, promised to seek out information on Spanish books for Sloane duringhis stay in Cadiz.44 Beyond contact with correspondents abroad, however, bibliographies andcatalogues of foreign libraries constituted obvious places for Sloane to seek out informationabout foreign works of interest. Discovering the bibliographies and catalogues from whichthese lists were drawn revealed the meaning of two of the letters, ‘a’ and ‘b’, though theother two remain elusive.

As the ‘a’ list had the most defined common characteristic, in that all the books were inSpanish or Portuguese, it was the first for which a source was identified. At this point, manythanks are owed to the expertise of Barry Taylor, who immediately suggested NicolasAntonio’s two volume Bibliotheca Hispana (Rome, 1672 and 1696) as a possible source fromwhich Sloane might have acquired information about Spanish authors and their works.Antonio produced the most complete bibliography of Spanish vernacular writing and Latinworks by Spaniards in the early modern period.45 Examination of the British Library copyof the 1672 edition revealed that the work was filled with dots and lines in red crayon, which

39 ‘o’: BL Sloane MS. 3972C, i, ff. 163-165 versos only, 180v, Sloane 3972C, ii, ff. 33v, 36v. ‘b’: Sloane MS.3972C, i, ff. 158v-9v; 165v-6v, 181v-185v, 191v-197v, 201v-204v; Sloane MS. 3972C, ii, ff. 9v, 14v-16v, 19v,24v-32v. ‘a’: Sloane MS. 3972C, ii, ff. 79v-157v (versos only). ‘m’: BL Sloane MS. 3972C, ii, ff. 33v-36v(versos only).

40 Sloane MS. 3972C, ii, ff. 79v-157v (versos only). 41 Sloane MS. 3972C, i, ff. 158v-9v; 165v-6v, 181v-185v, 191v-197v, 201v-204v; Sloane MS. 3972C, ii, ff. 9v,

14v-16v, 24v-32v.42 Sloane MS. 3972C, ii, ff. 33v, 36v. 43 Sloane MS. 3972C, I, ff. 158v, 162v-165v, 180v; Sloane MS. 3972C, ii, ff. 36v-59v (versos only). 44 15/16 March 1700, Jezreel Jones to Hans Sloane, Sloane MS. 4038, f. 144. 45 Theodore Besterman, The Beginnings of Systematic Bibliography (Oxford, 1936), p. 44.



Fig. 2. Hand 1: the first page of the Antonio desiderata list. Sloane MS. 3972C, i, f. 79v.



sometimes appeared together and sometimes separately.46 Although not in themselvesunique to Sloane, red crayon lines feature heavily in the earlier entries made in Sloane’s copyof Lindenius. Comparison with the ‘a’ list in Sloane MS. 3972C revealed that volumesmarked with a red dot had been copied in the same order as they were listed by Antonio,whilst the details of unmarked works and those marked only with lines had not beentranscribed. The only exceptions to this rule were Latin medical works, which had beencopied into Lindenius. Sloane acquired the Bibliotheca Hispana in 1698, from WilliamSherard, an acquaintance of his then travelling on the continent.47

Since the vast majority of red lines and dots appeared together and the dots rather thanthe lines determined whether an entry should be copied, it appears probable that theserepresent different stages in a selection process. First, an initial suggestion was made,possibly by Sloane’s current librarian, Hand 1. Subsequently, this was refined, possibly bysomeone else (perhaps Sloane), before finally being transcribed by Hand 1 into thecatalogue. This practice stands in contrast to that evident in the auction catalogues examinedby Mandelbrote in which the initial selection was made by Sloane, then cross referencedagainst the library catalogue and refined by his librarians. Had this been the practice in thedesiderata lists, items marked with a line would have been rejected on the grounds that theywere already in the library and would thus be locatable in the catalogue. Since they are not,the alternative explanation for the two-stage process suggested above seems more plausible,suggesting, in turn, that practices in Sloane’s library varied over time.

The lower-case ‘a’ is apparently the initial of the surname of the author of the sourcebibliography. A source for the ‘b’ entries was identified when Michael Hunter noticed redcrayon marks in the manuscript catalogue of the library of Pierre Bonnet-Bourdelot, nowSloane MS. 85.48 Bourdelot’s relations with Sloane are an interesting topic worthy ofattention in their own right. In the Introduction to volume II of his Voyage to… Jamaica,Sloane recounted his contacts with Bourdelot and their shared hope to update Lindeniuswhich was terminated by Bourdelot’s death in 1708.49 This is borne out not only by thesurvival of MS. 85 among Sloane’s manuscripts but also by extant letters from Bourdelotand by related materials in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, including his ‘Notes surla Bibliographie médicale’.50 However, for the present purpose it is sufficient to note thatupon investigation the marks in Sloane MS. 85 were found to be identical to those made inthe Antonio bibliography. Furthermore, the practice of copying those entries marked withdots but not those marked only with red lines was evidently also employed in the process ofcopying entries from Bourdelot. In transcribing the entries, Hand 1 was generally veryaccurate, even copying numbers of pages from Bourdelot when these were given. However,whilst the format of entries in Bourdelot’s catalogue varied (author name could precede orfollow title, for instance), Hand 1 transcribed information in a standardized form,consistently following an author-title format.

46 Nicolas Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana, sive Hispanorum qui usquam unquamve, sive Latinâ, sive populari, sivealiâ quavis linguâ scripto aliquid consignaverunt, notitia. His quæ præcesserunt locupletior et certior, brevia elogia,editorum atque ineditorum operum catalogum, duabus partibus continens, quarum hæc ... de his agit qui post annumsecularem MD. usque ad præsentem diem floruere (Rome, 1672), BL, 616.n.8.

47 William Sherard to Sloane, 16 May 1698, Sloane MS. 4037, ff. 75-6, Sloane to Sherard, 2 Sept. 1698, RoyalSociety, MS. 251, no. 454; Sherard to Sloane, 20 Sept 1698, Sloane MS. 4037, ff. 123-4. I am grateful toArnold Hunt for drawing this reference to my attention.

48 Catalogue of Bourdelot’s library, Sloane MS. 85. 49 Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbadoes, Nieves, St Christophers, and Jamaica, 2 vols (London,

1707-25), ii, pp. iii-iv. 50 Sloane MS. 4037, ff. 89-90; MS. 4038, ff. 277-8; Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Latin 17851-6; see also

10368 and 16343-7 and Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal Fonds Français 5098, f. 215.



In the catalogue, Hand 1 added an additional letter alongside each transcription fromBourdelot, denoting the language in which the work was written: G for German, F forFrench, S for Spanish and so on. This code is also present in the ‘m’ and ‘o’ entries. Sincethe Antonio list was entirely in Spanish, it was evidently deemed unnecessary to provide alanguage designation for these titles. Further, unlike the Antonio entries, which were writtenas a single list of entries in exactly the order of appearance in the catalogue, the Bourdelotlist is split into several smaller lists. These are sometimes separated by several pages, andentries within these lists appear only partially in the order of the Bourdelot manuscriptcatalogue. The claim that Bourdelot’s catalogue does indeed provide the source for the ‘b’books thus requires further justification. Table C shows the correlation between the pageson which the entries appear in Bourdelot’s catalogue and the pages of Sloane’s catalogueonto which they were copied as desiderata list ‘b’.

51 Nickson, ‘Books and Manuscripts’, p. 265.

Table C

Sloane pagination Bourdelot pagination size

CLII - CLIII 37-49 folio

CLVIII-CLIX 9-15; 50-61 4o

CLXXIV-CLXXVI 20-36; 85-90 mainly 12o; some 8o & 4o

CLXXVII - CLXXVIII 90-105 8o

CLXXXIV-CLXXXIX 62-82; 165; 184-185; 190-209 4o

CXCIII-CXCVII 105-160 8o, 12o; followed by sequence of folio - 12o

CCVIII 281 folio

CCXIII-CCXV 221-49 8o

CCXVIII- CCXX 209-210; 282-4; 289-305 4o

CCXXI-CCXXV 253-280; 285-7 8o, 12o, 16o

Bourdelot’s catalogue organized books primarily by broad subject area, such as chemistry,medicine, natural history and so on. Within this, books were sub-divided by size, rangingfrom folio down to 16o. Hand 1 decided to regroup the Bourdelot material on principles ofsize alone: for example, on Sloane pages CLXXXIV-CLXXXIX, volumes from fourseparate groups of pages were copied together, thus bringing together four sets of books, allof them quartos. In combination with the possibility that Hand 1 took a role in the initialselection of books and in the marking up of the source bibliographies for the desiderata lists,this practice arguably demonstrates that Hand 1 had a more intellectually engaged role inthe library than Nickson attributed to Sloane’s unknown amanuenses.51

The fact that these desiderata lists were copied directly into Sloane’s catalogue is one ofthe most striking points about this early phase of the catalogue’s development. Rather thanmerely a record of books Sloane owned, it seems likely that Sloane MS. 3972C andLindenius also functioned as memoranda of books to purchase and as reference worksproviding details of books which Sloane knew existed but which he had not yet acquired.Several further sections of the catalogue may have functioned in the same way as the letter-lists described above. One is a list of travel literature published between 1620 and 1690 and



mainly in French, one side long and copied in Sloane’s hand, with variable and sometimesincomplete bibliographical details.52 None received a Sloane number; nor were they enteredinto the index. Unsurprisingly, therefore, one entry, Jean Struy’s Voyage en Perse & AuxIndes (Amsterdam, 1681), was entered in the catalogue a second time when a copy waseventually purchased.53 A further desiderata list was written out by Sloane’s later librarian,Thomas Stack (discussed in more detail below) on the final folio of volume IV, evidentlypreviously left blank, and headed ‘Titles of Books Extracted from Palmer’s History ofPrinting’.54 Sloane’s copy of this work has been identified; it is unannotated.55 Whilst theitems listed were dutifully provided with index entries, none were assigned Sloane numbers.

The provenance of the copied desiderata lists as extracts from bibliographies andcatalogues of other libraries indicates the great extent to which they should be seen in thecontext of Sloane’s broader practice of acquiring manuscript book lists and catalogues.56Some such lists were bound into Sloane MS. 3972C. For example, the final six folios ofvolume V consist of a list of broadly medical and scientific works, a number of which aremarked with red crayon lines comparable to those in Bourdelot and Antonio. The pages areheavily damaged, and the fact that they were not included in the original paginationindicates that they were inserted into this volume at a later, unknown, point.57 They mayeven have been inserted from elsewhere in Sloane’s papers once the catalogue had passedinto the Museum’s hands.

Volume III opens with a similarly inserted list of books written in the languages of, orotherwise related to, ‘the Indes’ (fig. 3). The vast majority of these works are marked with ared crayon dot; it is therefore possible that, since all of these works were considereddesirable, it was deemed more efficient simply to bind the desiderata list into the cataloguethan to copy it out in its entirety. This list was definitely bound into the catalogue when itwas in Sloane’s hands since these folios are included in the Sloane pagination.

In addition to using bibliographies to create desiderata lists of books, Sloane would alsooccasionally construct lists of objects based on what he had read in a particular book. Forinstance, on reading Pedro Fernandez de Navarrete’s Tratados historicos, politicos, Ethicos yReligiosos de la Monarchia de China (Madrid, 1676), Sloane drew up a list of objects whichappeared in the work.58 The rationale behind the list is unclear but these objects evidentlyexcited Sloane’s curiosity, and it appears likely that he would have been interested in seeingor acquiring these intriguing items. Navarrete’s work seems to have been particularlystriking for Sloane since, in addition to the list of objects, he cited the work in a note hemade on the verso of the ‘Indes’ book list: ‘Books of physick, natural history or voyagespublished since 1678. Navarette of China &c.’.59 Without further context the meaning of thememorandum is unclear; but this nevertheless provides evidence about Sloane’s bookcollecting objectives.

52 Sloane MS. 3792C, iii, f. 13r. 53 Sloane MS. 3792C, iii, ff. 13r, 55r. 54 Sloane MS. 3792C, iv, f. 205v.55 Samuel Palmer, The General History of Printing (London, 1732), BL, 619.l.11. 56 A few examples amongst many include: ‘Catalogue of a medical library’, Sloane MS. 267; Catalogue of the

Library of Pedro à Castro, BL Sloane MS. 2997, ff. 1-36; Catalogue of Works of Travel and Geography,Sloane MS. 3994; Daniel Foot, ‘Catalogue of the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge’, Sloane MS. 78, ff.133-49.

57 Sloane MS. 3972C, v, f. 292v; Sloane MS. 3972C, vi, f. 1r. The last Sloane pagination number assigned in vol.v is 1967; the first in vol. vi is 1971. Whilst one folio has evidently been lost this shows that the six unfoliatedpages do not fit in the sequence and must therefore be a subsequent insertion.

58 Sloane MS. 4019, f. 143. The book itself is catalogued in Sloane 3972C, iii, f. 146v, Sloane number H 106. 59 Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, f. 9v.



Fig. 3. Indes book list. Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, f. 1r.



A second work singled out in Sloane’s catalogue is Richard Hakluyt’s The PrincipalVoyages, Navigations and Discoveries of the English Nation (1598). Unusually, the catalogueentry for this book not only lists bibliographical data but also includes a transcription of thecontents of the book, which comprised a variety of eyewitness accounts of voyages andtravels. The list was probably sourced elsewhere and then bound into the catalogue (fig. 4).This is evident from a number of factors, first, foliation. Both the roman and arabicfoliations are present: these were added in a different ink to the main text of the list.Furthermore, in addition to the foliation added when it was bound in Sloane MS. 3972C,the list bears folio numbers which relate to an earlier binding elsewhere.60 Only one side ofeach folio, usually the recto but occasionally the verso, was filled and the blank sheets werelater used for unrelated catalogue entries by Hand 1 and Stack. The hand which transcribedthis list is highly distinctive and does not appear elsewhere in the catalogues. Works cited byHakluyt and included in this list have been added to the index independently fromHakluyt’s book itself.61 The contents list of Hakluyt could have been inserted as an aide-memoire to enable Sloane to locate particular accounts within the work. Since entries weredeliberately indexed it is highly unlikely that the list was simply found elsewhere andinserted opportunistically: this was a considered decision which created work for Sloane’slibrary assistants. The entry for Awnsham and John Churchill’s A Collection of Voyages andTravels (London, 1704), similarly cites and indexes individual travel accounts within it.62These entries were made by Thomas Stack, filling a blank section left by Humphrey Wanley,and, as with Hakluyt, it is likely that this was an aide-memoire not a desiderata list. Wanley’s(and Stack’s) work is discussed in more detail below.

Frustratingly, neither Sloane’s copy of Navarrete nor his copy of Hakluyt has yet beenidentified. The fact that they are not to be found in the British Library collections may,however, be due to the fact that they were heavily annotated or bore signs of wear and tearthrough heavy use. It is probable that both were in the British Museum in 1787. One copyof the Museum catalogue from that year is marked with the room, press and shelf numbersassigned to books; items originating in Sloane’s collection were housed in rooms 1 to 9. Acopy of Hakluyt was in room 5 and a copy of Navarrete in room 7: it is highly probable thatthese were Sloane’s.63 Between 1769 and 1832, the British Museum disposed of books ofwhich it held duplicates in a series of sales; in such cases the cleaner copy tended to beretained by the library and the marked version sold.64 At least two copies of Hakluyt wereauctioned, one in 1788 and the other in 1805, when a copy of Navarrete also went under the

60 Sloane MS. 3972C, ii, ff. 159r-192r. 61 See, for instance, ‘The Voyage of Thomas Banister & Geffrey Ducket agents for the Muscovy Company into

Persia the fifth time anno 1569’, bibliographic details: Sloane MS. 3792C, ii, f. 160r; index entry: Sloane MS.3792D, i, f. 40r.

62 Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, f. 51r. For the index entry for John Monck’s Voyage to Hudson’s Strait see Sloane MS.3972D, ii, f. 61r; for Navarrete’s Voyage to China see Sloane MS. 3972D, ii, f. 74r. Stack also cross-referencedthree further pages where the details of other volumes in the series could be located. All three places listedthe contents of the volume, but of these only two were indexed: Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, f. 113v (individualentries unindexed); Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, f. 125r (individual entries indexed); Sloane MS. 3972C, viii, ff.51r-52r (individual entries indexed).

63 I am grateful to John Goldfinch for bringing this to my attention and for his help in locating items in thecatalogue. Librorum Impressorum qui in Museo Britannico Adservantur Catalogus (London, 1787), BL,L.R.419.bb.3 (no page numbers are given, work organized by author surname).

64 F. J. Hill, ‘The Shelving and Classification of Printed Books’ in P. R. Harris (ed.), The Library of the BritishMuseum (London, 1991), p. 2; T. A. Birrell, ‘The BM Duplicate Sales 1769-1832 and Their Significance forthe Early Collections’, in Mandelbrote and Taylor (eds.), Libraries within the Library, pp. 244-57.



Fig. 4. Hakluyt contents list, opening page. Sloane MS. 3972C, ii, f. 159r.



salesman’s hammer.65 Sloane’s copy of the Churchill Collection of Voyages and Travels is,however, in the British Library; this volume contains extracts from Navarrete’s work.66

A third example, Theodore de Bry’s Historia Americae Sive Novi Orbis (Frankfurt, 1634),is more problematic. Two copies of the contents of this work survive in the catalogue, oneimmediately after the other. The copy which is bound into the catalogue second is the earlier.It was written by Sloane on only the rectos, hands were drawn next to certain entries, andthe Sloane numbers D 79 to 81 fit into the patterns of surrounding entries.67 Immediatelyafter these entries, Sloane detailed de Bry’s India Orientalis, in an unspecified edition,covering three volumes given Sloane numbers D 82-D 83, apparently at the same time as hisHistoria Americae list. However, Sloane’s entries have been scored through, the pages onwhich they appear are much more heavily damaged than other parts of volume I, and thebibliographic detail is minimal, appearing in a mixture of English and Latin.

In contrast, the copy of the catalogue entry bound directly before Sloane’s is written byThomas Stack using both rectos and versos and providing significantly more details ofworks, with entries transcribed entirely in Latin.68 Further, Stack catalogued five books toSloane’s three, including D 78 and D 81*. Apparently, D 79 had been split into two separatevolumes by the time Stack came to make his revised entry: accordingly one was given Sloanenumber D 78 and the item previously assigned the number D 78, a folio volume containingfour works including a dictionary, was given the new number D 142.69 D 81* was de Bry’sHistoriae Antipodum (1633-4) presumably included by Stack as a relevant later addition.70Stack’s new pages were probably originally intended to replace Sloane’s original in thecatalogue, since they were assigned the same folio numbers as that borne by Sloane’s originalentry, and the folio immediately following it. However, as we have seen, Sloane’s originalfolios were rebound alongside Stack’s work, and, according to the index entry for de Bry, noalternative catalogue entry was made for his Historiae Antipodum.71

To return to the desiderata lists, with the exception of the list of books drawn up by Stackfrom Palmer’s History of Printing, the desiderata lists all date from the period of Hand 1’semployment. This gives the impression that it was during the late 1690s and 1710s whenSloane’s library catalogue most frequently performed additional functions to recording

65 A Catalogue of the Duplicate Books Coins and Medals of the British Museum sold…by order of the Trustees(London, 1788) p. 142; A Catalogue of the Very Valuable Duplicate Books of the British Musuem (London,1805), pp. 20, 22. No British Museum duplicates of this work are recorded in Anthony Payne’s census ofcopies: Anthony Payne, Richard Hakluyt and his Books (London, 1997).

66 Awnsham Churchill and John Churchill (eds.), A Collection of Voyages and Travels, some now first printed fromoriginal manuscripts. Others translated out of foreign languages, and now first publish’d in English. To which areadded some few that have formerly appear’d in English, but do now ... deserve to be reprinted. With a general preface[attributed to John Locke], giving an account of the progress of navigation ... The whole illustrated with a greatnumber of useful maps, and cuts, etc. [With ‘The Catalogue and Character of most Books of Travels’ by EdmundHalley.] (London, 1704), BL, L.R.297.b.13.

67 Sloane MS. 3972C, i, f. 120r. 68 Sloane MS. 3972C, i, ff. 118r-119v.69 Sloane MS. 3972C, i, f. 117r. Part of this volume has been located: Antonio de Lexbrixa, Dictionarium ...

Præter Joannis Lopez Serrani ... labores, ex Ciceronis lexicis, et historicis, multa ... addita, index insuper ... in quoopposita, emendataque quotidiani sermonis barbaries, opera M. Joannis Alvarez Sagredo. Accesserunt ... vocabulaquæ a M. Fr. Petro Ortiz de Luiando antea ad calcem fuerunt addita, in proprias sedes ... reducta ... Aliaque ...vocabula ... quæ addit ... Guilielmus Ocahasa, hoc signum demonstrat ... Hac postrema editione omnia recognita,etc. (Diccionario de Romance en Latin.) (Madrid, 1686), BL, 625.k.5.

70 This volume has been located: Theodore de Bry, Historiae Antipodum, sive Novi Orbis ... pars nona, continens... descriptionem duarum navigationum Hollandicarum ... Omnia hactenus confuse ... edita, nunc ... sublatis ...mendis ... decenter & ordine accurata: studio & operâ Io. L. Gottofridi (Frankfurt, 1633), BL, 566.l.9.(1.).

71 Sloane MS. 3972D, f. 81r.



acquisitions and serving as a finding aid. During this period, it also served to record databoth for reference purposes, and, potentially, as a guide to future acquisition policy. Thesefeatures were unique to this period.

In addition to transcribing these desiderata lists, Hand 1 also appears to have streamlinedand simplified processes within the library. From c. 1699 alchemical date and cost codeswere no longer inscribed on volumes. It is tempting to interpret this as a sign that Sloane’sinvolvement in the library was being scaled back and new practices were being developed byhis new librarian. Whilst the two-stage process of compiling bibliographies on which to basethe desiderata lists indicates that Sloane retained an important role in selecting material forthe library, Hand 1 appears to have been given substantial responsibility in managing andcataloguing the collection for almost a decade. For three years of this period, however, 1701-4,Hand 1 was joined in work on Sloane’s library by a second assistant: Humfrey Wanley.

Humfrey Wanley72

Prior to his employment with Sloane, Wanley had worked at the Bodleian; throughout histime with Sloane he also served other masters, apologizing to Sloane on several occasions forhis slow or delayed progress with Sloane’s library due to his commitments to otherbibliophiles. 73 Most significant amongst these men was Robert Harley, with whom Wanleyeventually obtained secure employment from 1708 onwards. As emphasized by PeterHeyworth in his ODNB biography of Wanley, his association with Sloane was relativelyfleeting and unimportant in his overall career.74 Nevertheless, Wanley’s exceptionally neatand highly distinctive hand (fig. 5) renders his contribution to Sloane’s library catalogueinstantly recognizable, although he transcribed a mere forty-five folios of bibliographic datafor printed books, in addition to just over twenty folios of entries relating to manuscripts.75Pages which bear evidence of Wanley’s cataloguing of manuscripts were largely removedfrom Sloane MS. 3972C in 1758 and can now be located in the catalogue of Sloane’smanuscripts which resulted from this removal of pages, Sloane MS. 3792B.76 During hisrelatively brief period transcribing printed material, Wanley introduced three newclassmarks: E, G and w. The printed books which he catalogued were assigned exclusivelyto these letters and, as Nickson observed, Wanley also began to record the numbers ofmanuscripts in roman, rather than arabic, numerals.77 The relative lack of work by Wanleyon cataloguing printed items is probably explained by the fact that his main activities wereelsewhere in the library; foremost amongst such ventures was his work on Sloane’smanuscripts, his identification of duplicate printed material and his arrangements for thetransfer of such items to the Bodleian.78

Arguably, Wanley’s subsequent career as librarian to the Harleys led Nickson to overstatehis importance in Sloane’s library. Her observation that ‘Wanley was allowed to take over allthe cataloguing tasks in the library and he was probably influential in the selection of booksand manuscripts as well’ is undoubtedly accurate.79 However, as we have seen, the same canbe said of Hand 1, and of Sloane’s subsequent assistants. The degree of autonomy in day-

72 Wanley’s work: Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, ff. 16v-51r, and, for his manuscript entries, Sloane MS. 3972B,ff. 475-522, 666-9, 716 (Sloane’s pagination) .

73 7 April 1707, Wanley to Sloane, Sloane MS. 4038, f. 151; 12 October 1701, Wanley to Sloane, Sloane MS.4038, f. 252.

74 Peter Heyworth, ‘Wanley, Humfrey (1672–1726)’, ODNB.75 Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, ff. 16v-51r; Sloane MS. 3972B, ff. 475-522, 666-9, 716 (Sloane’s pagination).76 Sloane MS. 3972B, ff. 475-522, 666-9, 716 (Sloane’s pagination).77 Nickson, ‘Books and Manuscripts’, p. 265. 78 Nickson, ‘Books and Manuscripts’, pp. 265-6.79 Nickson, ‘Books and Manuscripts’, p. 265.



Fig. 5. Wanley. Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, f. 19r.



to-day library business which Wanley enjoyed was apparently the rule rather than theexception. Many of Sloane’s other library assistants have a more significant presence in theextant catalogues than Wanley, either in terms of quantity of work, length of service, orinnovative practice.

Wanley’s catalogue entries for Sloane’s manuscripts are interspersed amongst folioscontaining bibliographic data transcribed by Hand 1. Consideration of the publication datesof works immediately following Wanley’s entries suggests that his last work for Sloane wasundertaken in 1704. Hand 1 remained with Sloane for a further three years after Wanley’sdeparture, since the final dated publication entered in that hand is dated 1706.

Hand 280

Following Hand 1’s departure c. 1706, Sloane employed a second anonymous assistant,Hand 2, who remained with Sloane until 1709 (fig. 6). As with previous librarians, Hand 2was responsible for transcribing bibliographical data into the catalogue. There is no evidencethat he had any responsibility beyond shelving and cataloguing new acquisitions.

Whilst Sloane’s assistants undertook the bulk of the cataloguing work, Sloane continuedpersonally to catalogue certain categories of material. Broadly speaking, he tended to reservehis attention for more unusual items, a decision which may reflect either personal interestor a concern to ensure that these items were entered correctly. During the 1700s three newcategories of number were introduced: prints, designated ‘Pr’ in 1705; charters and rolls in1706; and miniatures (heavily illustrated works), the ‘Min’ class, in 1708.81 These entries,along with those of the ‘horti sicci’, are largely in Sloane’s own hand.82 As Peter MurrayJones recognized, the extent to which Sloane delegated the task of cataloguing his librarywas highly unusual in the context of the other catalogues of his collection. Jones suggestedthat this may have been ‘because Sloane could not rely on a secretary to describe objects inthe same way as he might transcribe the authors and titles of books’.83 This provides asimilarly plausible explanation for the division of labour within the library catalogue.

Phase 3: Hand 3, 1709-171584

In 1712 the manner in which Sloane numbers were assigned changed dramatically. Thisimportant development is worth examining. As we have seen, when Sloane commenced thecatalogue in 1692, all of the lower case letters, with the exception of ‘w’, were in use (furtherexceptions were ‘j’ as a synonym for ‘i’, and ‘v’ as a synonym for ‘u’). Subsequently, ‘l’ and‘m’ were expanded to include just under 2,000 and just over 1,000 volumes respectively, andfrom 1700-1707 over 800 recently acquired books were placed in the newly begun ‘w’classmark. From 1712-1732, however, new quarto acquisitions were usually assigned a ‘c’Sloane number, although ‘N’ also remained in use. Acquisitions in octavo size and smallerwere ascribed an ‘a’ or ‘R’ Sloane number. An overview of when particular classmarks werefirst used is provided by tables E and F, below. This change was overseen by Hand 3 (fig. 7).

The interiors of Sloane’s former residences have been much altered and, since no precisecontemporary descriptions survive, details of the physical layout of Sloane’s collections

80 Hand 2’s work: Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, ff. 204r-216v and Sloane MS. 3972C, iv, ff.1-58r81 For ‘Min’ items: Sloane MS. 3972C, iv, f. 15r; for ‘Pr’ items: Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, ff. 191v-195r; Nickson,

‘Books and Manuscripts’, p. 268. 82 For example, Sloane MS. 3972C, iv, ff. 15r-19r. 83 Peter Murray Jones, ‘A Preliminary Check-List of Sir Hans Sloane’s Catalogues’, BLJ, xiv (1988), p. 40. 84 See Sloane MS. 3972C, iv, ff. 61r-205r; Sloane MS. 3972C, v, ff. 1r-82r.



Fig. 6. Hand 2. Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, f. 204r.



Fig. 7. Hand 3. Sloane MS. 3972C, iv, f. 78r.



remain unclear. Nickson’s suggestion that the initial use of all the letters of the alphabetrelated to cases or shelves marked with these letters appears probable. However, it appearsas though suddenly, in 1712, two very large areas became available to shelve relatively smallbooks, since classmarks ‘a’ and ‘c’, for quarto and smaller books respectively, expandedgreatly. Reference to Sloane’s personal life again provides a compelling, albeit inevitablyspeculative, explanation for these developments in his collection storage.

In 1712 Sloane purchased the manor house at Chelsea, but it was not until 1742 that herelocated his collections and took up permanent residence there. In contrast to earlier claimsthat Sloane neglected Chelsea until he moved there, G. R. de Beer’s biography of Sloaneshows that he demonstrated substantial interest in Chelsea during the 1710s, 20s and 30s,devoting ‘a great deal of his time and attention to his country house’.85 In addition to thisclear interest in the property, circumstantial evidence implies that Sloane’s household anddomestic life, as distinct from his practice or collection, was at least partially based inChelsea from 1712 onwards. First, it should be noted that Sloane clearly held upward socialaspirations: in obtaining a ‘country’ house and keeping a residence in London as ‘a kind ofpied a terre’, Sloane was emulating, in all likelihood consciously and deliberately, establishednoble practice.86

This is not to argue for an absolute division of activities between the properties: Sloane’sfamily clearly continued to use the Bloomsbury Square house alongside the Chelsea onesince the only two extant letters to Sloane’s wife, Elizabeth, one without date and the otherwritten in 1723, were addressed to her there.87 Concrete examples of Chelsea as theproperty of choice for family life survive from the 1720s onwards. Johann GasparScheuchzer, discussed in more detail below, was not only Sloane’s librarian but the son of aclose friend and, as such, a member of Sloane’s household. The fact he died in Chelsea in1729 implies that by this point the ‘private’ aspects of Sloane’s life were firmly based inChelsea, confirmation of which at a later date is perhaps found in the fact that Sloane’s sisterwas resident in the property by 1736.88 It is likely that some books were also located inChelsea, but that these were used for leisure purposes rather than constituting part of thecollection. Since there is no firm evidence on the subject, which books might have been keptin Chelsea will remain a matter for speculation.

Although Sloane’s collections were not relocated to Chelsea until 1742, the purchasenevertheless had an immediate impact on their organization, since expanding collectionsrequire space, and in 1712 Sloane acquired a great deal more space than had hitherto beenavailable to him. It appears likely that as a result some domestic activities, and theirassociated objects, were relocated to Chelsea. Accordingly, rooms would have becomeavailable at Bloomsbury. It appears probable that two of these were assigned the letters ‘a’and ‘c’, and until c. 1732 they were filled with newly acquired volumes provided with an ‘a’or ‘c’ Sloane number. Newly acquired folio volumes were assigned ‘A’: it is plausible that athird large space or room was provided with shelves for these large volumes, although untilthe early 1720s, ‘H’ also remained in use: the shift in location for housing folios maytherefore date from that period.

85 Randall Davies, The Greatest House at Chelsey: An Account of Sir Thomas’ More’s House at Chelsea, Built in1520, to its Demolition by its Last Owner, Sir Hans Sloane, in 1739 (London, 1914); G. R. De Beer, Sir HansSloane and the British Museum (Oxford, 1953), p. 60.

86 Lawrence Stone ‘The Residential Development of the West End of London in the Seventeenth Century’ inB. C. Malament (ed.), After the Reformation: Essays in Honour of J. H. Hexter (Manchester, 1980), pp. 167-212, at p. 174.

87 M. Plowden to Lady Sloane, [7 October] 1723, Sloane MS. 4047, f. 65v; M. Plowden to Lady Sloane, 17 June[1723?], Sloane MS. 4067, f. 88r.

88 E. St John Brooks, Sir Hans Sloane: The Great Collector and His Circle (London, 1954), p. 204.



Such changes to the shelving system were roughly contemporaneous with a secondsignificant development, namely, the start of the two-volume index which is extant alongsidethe catalogue today. Nickson believed the index to have been commenced by Sloane and thatit was ‘probably begun fairly soon after 1693’.89 However, close comparison of the handswhich entered bibliographic data for an item in the catalogue to the hand which producedthe corresponding index entry tells a different story. Items which were catalogued by Sloane,Hand 1, Hand 2 and Wanley had their index entries written by a different person, Hand 3.90Further evidence that Hand 3 commenced the index is provided by the fact that it was Hand3 who wrote the capital letters which head each alphabetical section of the volume. Theentry for J. A. Gleichus in the index (fig. 8) may be compared with the correspondingcatalogue entry, completed by Wanley (fig. 5). Nevertheless, it remains likely that such alarge collection, with its hefty accompanying catalogue, would have had an index prior to c.1710-12; it may be that Hand 3 copied out a previous index, leaving a greater quantity ofspace for further expansion, filling only the rectos and leaving the versos blank. The layoutof the entries on the recto folios supports this conjecture. Hand 3 initially entered namesand titles consistently about an inch apart, leaving ample room for information to be addedbetween headings, thus implying that these were copied from an existing alphabetical listrather than being entered in an ad hoc order based on where items appeared in the catalogue.

Phase 4: Hand 4, 1715-19; Alban Thomas, 1719-2291

The next phase opens with another unidentified hand, Hand 4. Initially, Hand 4 used adistinctive catalogue layout, inserting red margins to the left and right of each page (fig. 9).Sloane numbers were entered by the left margin, author name and volume title in the centralcolumn, and place and date of publication to the right. Whilst information continued to belaid out in three columns throughout the period when this amanuensis was employed bySloane, Hand 4 abandoned the practice of drawing the red margins in 1718, about a yearbefore (s)he ceased to work for Sloane.92 During this period, Sloane’s household changedgreatly with the marriages of his daughters in 1717 and 1719. This does not seem to havecoincided with changes to the collection’s organization or arrangement, except that in 1719,a new series entitled ‘oriental manuscripts’ was begun and relevant items were provided witha new type of Sloane number, beginning MS Or, and, as noted above, ‘A’ became the onlySloane number ascribed to new folio purchases from the early 1720s.93 Nevertheless, anintriguing possibility as to the identity of Hand 4 is raised by the fact that Hand 4’scontribution to the catalogue ceased in the same year that Sloane’s daughter Sarah marriedGeorge Stanley. No samples of Sarah’s hand are known to survive, so this possibility canonly remain speculative.

Following Hand 4’s departure, Alban Thomas came to work as Sloane’s librarian (see fig.10). Thomas is one of the newly identified hands in the catalogue, therefore somebiographical information and an outline of his connection to Sloane is required. Welsh bybirth, in 1713 Thomas was appointed assistant secretary of the Royal Society. Not only hadWanley also held this post, but it was also often combined with the position of the Society’s

89 Nickson, ‘Hans Sloane’, p. 56.90 Sloane: entry for Jean Riolan, Sloane MS. 3792C, i, f. 1r, index at 3792D, f. 147r. Hand 1: entry for William

Leybourn, Complete Surveyor (London, 1674), Sloane MS. 3972C, i, f. 83v, index Sloane MS. 3972D, ii, f.13r. Hand 2: entry for Messengi, Sloane MS. 3792C, iv, f. 854, Sloane 3792D, f. 54. Wanley’s entry forWilliam Waller, Sloane MS. 3792C, iii, f. 422, and the index entry at Sloane MS. 3792D, ii, f. 54r.

91 Hand 4’s work: Sloane MS. 3972C, v, ff. 82r-168r. Alban Thomas: Sloane 3972C, v, ff. 195r-236v. 92 Sloane MS. 3972C, v, f. 110r. For the 1718 date see Sloane MS. 3792C, v, f. 108v. 93 Sloane MS. 3972C, v, f. 171v (f. 171r: an item published in 1719 catalogued).



Fig. 8. Index. Note the entry for J. A. Gleichus and see Wanley’s catalogue entry for this item in fig. 5. Sloane MS. 3972D, i, f. 208r.



Fig. 9. Hand 4. Sloane MS. 3972C, v, f. 85r.



Fig. 10. Alban Thomas. Sloane MS. 3972C, v, f. 218r.*



librarian, salaried for two days per week.94 In this capacity, Thomas obtained experience ofcataloguing a major acquisition: the bequest of Francis Aston.95 In 1719 Thomas obtainedhis MD from Aberdeen and he thereafter practised in London. In 1722-3, Thomasapparently departed London under a cloud, suspected of Jacobite political sympathies.96 Anineteenth-century antiquarian account of Thomas’s life includes the claim that hepractised ‘under the auspices of the celebrated Sir Hans Sloane’ although no reference forthis was given and the claim thus remains as yet frustratingly unverified.97 Nevertheless,there is evidence that the two enjoyed a warm relationship and that Thomas sought advicefrom Sloane. Two letters from Thomas to Sloane survive, both dated 1738. In both, Thomasconsulted the older and more experienced physician on professional matters, and signedhimself ‘your old sincere friend and most obliged humble servant’.98

The dates of Thomas’s residence in London as a practising physician, namely 1719-23,thus fit very neatly with the period when one hitherto unidentified hand was busily makingcatalogue entries for Sloane. Comparing this section of the catalogue to the two extantletters to Sloane in Thomas’s hand reveals a very strong match. For all his shared intellectualinterests with Sloane, however, Thomas did not undertake any particularly innovative workon his library catalogue.

Phase 5: Johann Gaspar Scheuchzer: 1722-2999

Johann Gaspar Scheuchzer arrived in London in 1723 and remained with Sloane as hislibrarian until his death on 10 April 1729.100 Like his employer, Scheuchzer’s interestsranged widely across medicine, the sciences more broadly, and travel.101 Scheuchzer’s mostimpressive achievement was undoubtedly his translation of Engelbert Kaempfer’s History ofJapan (London, 1727).102 Such independent intellectual projects did not, however, preventhim serving as an able librarian to Sloane: indeed, the fact that Scheuchzer’s hand can befound in the catalogues for other parts of Sloane’s collection, such as the fossil catalogue,indicates that his responsibilities were wider ranging than some of his predecessors andencompassed many areas of the collection.103

Scheuchzer’s main innovation in terms of Sloane’s library relates to hisreorganization of Sloane’s manuscript collections by size.104 Both new acquisitions andexisting volumes were provided with new numbers, with ‘A’ for folios, ‘B’ for quartos and‘C’ for octavos and smaller. Likewise, Scheuchzer took responsibility for reorganizing the‘Min’ classmark.105 Other than these innovations, however, no substantial changes to the

94 Marie Boas Hall, The Library and Archives of the Royal Society, 1660-1990 (London, 1992), p. 4. 95 Ibid., p. 7.96 John Edward and R. T. Jenkins et al. (eds.), Dictionary of Welsh Biography down to 1940 (London, 1959), p. 937.97 Samuel Rush Meyrick, The History and Antiquities of the County of Cardigan (London, 1810), p. 293.98 Alban Thomas to Sloane, 13 November 1738, Sloane MS. 4077, f. 265; Alban Thomas to Sloane, 30

November 1738, Sloane MS. 4077, f. 268. 99 Sloane MS. 3972C, v, ff. 237r-289r; Sloane MS. 3972C, vi, throughout; Sloane MS. 3972C, vii, ff. 1r-152r. 100 Arthur MacGregor, ‘The Life, Character and Career of Sir Hans Sloane’, in MacGregor (ed.), Sir Hans

Sloane: Collector, Scientist, Antiquary, p. 26; Andrea Rusnock, ‘Scheuchzer, John Gaspar (1702–1729)’,ODNB.

101 Rusnock, op. cit.102 Yu-Ying Brown, ‘Japanese Books and Manuscripts: Sloane’s Library and the Making of the History of Japan’,

in MacGregor (ed.), Sir Hans Sloane, pp. 278-90. See also Detlef Haberland, Engelbert Kaempfer 1651-1716:A Biography, trans. Peter C. Hogg (London, 1996).

103 Catalogue of Fossils II, NHM, 50.h.6, versos. 104 Nickson, ‘Books and Manuscripts’, pp. 266 and 275 n.33. 105 Sloane MS. 3792C, iv, f. 238r.



system of assigning Sloane numbers to volumes occurred during the period of Scheuchzer’semployment. Even the death of Sloane’s wife in 1724 entailed no reorganization of thecollection space. In combination with the lack of impact of the marriages of Sloane’sdaughters, and the significance of the year 1712 for the organization of Sloane numbers, thisappears to provide yet more support for the view that from 1712 onwards BloomsburySquare was used as a professional and collecting space whilst Chelsea became the locus fordomestic life.

Prior to his death Scheuchzer was engaged in a thoroughgoing procedure of checking thebooks. This is evident from a note by his successor as librarian, Cromwell Mortimer(discussed below), dated 26 October 1729, on the verso page opposite the entry for k 49,Bernard Palissy’s Discours admirables de la Nature des Eaux et Fontaines (Paris, 1580), in whichMortimer states: ‘here I began after Dr Scheuchzer to examin [sic] the books’.106 Furtherevidence of Scheuchzer’s active engagement with existing collection items, as well as newarrivals, can be found in his notes elaborating on catalogue entries and in notes made byStack after Scheuchzer’s death, including references to indexes completed by hispredecessor.107 Scheuchzer’s careful and thorough approach to Sloane’s catalogues makes itpossible to date the latter volumes of the catalogue with greater accuracy than earliervolumes, since he inscribed both volumes VI and VII with the day on which he commencedwork (fig. 11), a practice continued by Mortimer in volume VIII. Nickson had contendedthat the current division of Sloane MS. 3792C into eight volumes was of ‘recent’ originalthough she cited no evidence for this claim.108 In fact, the start dates inscribed on VI, VII,and VIII clearly demonstrate that these items retain their original format. The fact that asingle set of foliation of arabic numerals commenced at the start of volume III stronglyimplies that both it and its immediate forerunner, volume II, have also retained their originalformat. Volumes I and IV end with blank folios, sometimes later filled by Stack, or withnotes consistent with the end of a volume, implying in turn that volumes II and V alwayscommenced at their current point.109 Overall, it appears highly probable that the currentdivision into eight volumes reflects the original state of the catalogue, though their bindingdates from 1964.

Phase 6: Cromwell Mortimer and Thomas Stack: 1729-1741

Cromwell Mortimer and Thomas Stack worked together on Sloane’s catalogues of bothbooks and objects from shortly after Scheuchzer’s death in 1729 until the early 1740s. Bothmen transcribed a substantial number of bibliographic entries and made numerousadditions to existing catalogue entries. Such notes on works already entered bear witness totheir involvement in processes of checking and reorganizing Sloane’s books, whilst thepresence of their handwriting (see figs 12 and 13) in catalogues of objects indicates a broadersupervision of Sloane’s collections.110

Of the two men, Cromwell Mortimer appears to have been the more prominentboth in his own time and in the eyes of subsequent historians earning, unlike Stack, an entryin the ODNB.111 Mortimer’s hand appears immediately after the final entries by Scheuchzer,

106 Sloane MS. 3792C, i, f. 48v. 107 For a typical correction by Scheuchzer: Sloane MS. 3972C, i, f. 102r. A number of Stack’s notes can be found

at Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, ff. 191v-195r. 108 Nickson, ‘Hans Sloane’, p. 53. 109 Sloane MS. 3792C, i, ff. 207-9; Sloane MS. 3792C, iv, f. 205v.110 Stack: NHM, Catalogue of Minerals, vol. iii A, f. 171; Mortimer: NHM, Catalogue of Minerals, vol. iii A, f.

203. 111 W. P. Courtney, ‘Mortimer, Cromwell (c. 1693–1752)’, rev. Michael Bevan, ODNB.



Fig. 11. Scheuchzer: note the date on which the volume was commenced. Sloane MS. 3972C, vii, f. 1r.



Fig. 12. Mortimer: note the date on which the volume was commenced. Sloane MS. 3972C, viii, f. 1r.



Fig. 13. Stack. Sloane MS. 3972C, viii, f. 136r.



and it is evident from his note of October 1729, cited above, that one of his first duties wasthe continuation of Scheuchzer’s programme of book checking. Excluding entries whichcould have been made to fill in blank space, Stack’s hand commences 230 folios afterMortimer’s, indicating that Stack began work for Sloane later than Mortimer, c. 1733.112Their collaboration extended to projects beyond Sloane’s library, including their work forthe Royal Society, such as a scheme of 1739 to publish its registers.113

Since less is known about Stack’s life than some of Sloane’s more famous assistants,including his colleague Mortimer, it is helpful to commence with some brief biographicaldetails. As ‘a Physitian well known to many members of this Society for his skill in Anatomy,Chemistry and Natural History’ Stack was elected FRS on 26 January 1737: Sloane andMortimer were the first two names on his nomination.114 Stack left Sloane’s employment in1741; he subsequently held the position of Foreign Secretary to the Royal Society between1748 and 1751.115

In terms of library reorganization, Stack appears to have been more active than Mortimer,and from c. 1730 onwards he masterminded a major rearrangement of the books. Heavilyillustrated books assigned a ‘Min’ classmark were re-entered as a group in the catalogue, aprocess completed by 28 January 1738.116 A variety of new classmarks were introduced,including ‘fg’, ‘ef ’, ‘gh’ and ‘gf ’. Whilst these were sometimes ascribed to new acquisitions,in several instances books which had already received a Sloane number were moved andtherefore provided with a new number; ‘gf ’ constituting the exception since it was appliedonly to books which were being moved not to new purchases. Stack also introduced theSloane number ‘Pr Or’ for printed items of oriental origin, possibly intended as acounterpart to the more established ‘MS. Or’. Many of these items had initially beencatalogued by Scheuchzer, presumably in the course of his work on Japanese items obtainedfrom Kaempfer’s collection, but Stack’s hand can be seen in the ‘Pr Or’ numbers assignedto such volumes over their original Sloane number.117

Apart from the geographically or linguistically inspired organization behind ‘Pr Or’,Stack’s reorganization was mainly concerned with greater specificity in terms of size and, itappears, the quality of a volume’s binding. Whilst ‘a’ books had long been octavos andsmaller, and ‘c’ books quartos, Stack introduced greater precision in how books werearranged. Henceforth, volumes of the ‘largest imperiall’ octavo size were to be shelfmarked‘ef ’, ‘common size well bound’ volumes as ‘fg’ and ‘well bound’ volumes ‘gh’. Numerousvolumes formerly marked ‘a’ were reassigned to one of these numbers alongside a range ofnew acquisitions. Stack’s reorganization also entailed the expansion of existing classmarks,‘J’, now used for ‘Imperial Quartos’, and ‘L’, for standard sized quartos. Other letters whichwere expanded during this period having been out of commission for some time previouslyincluded lower-case ‘l’, ‘o’, ‘s’, ‘t’, ‘u’, ‘w’ and ‘y’ and upper-case ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘R’. Thisprecise ordering may have been motivated by a need to economize on space, or an attemptto create an ordered appearance within the library. The desire for an orderly library certainlymotivated Sloane’s contemporaries, such as Samuel Pepys, whose library was similarly

112 Mortimer’s first entry: Sloane MS. 3972C, vii, f. 152; Stack’s first non-note entry: Sloane MS. 3972C, viii,f. 75r. This is the point where Stack’s hand is seen consistently entering data: prior to this his hand appearsmaking notes rather than large numbers of entries.

113 Marie Boas Hall, The Library and Archive of the Royal Society, 1660-1990, p. 8. 114 Certificate of Election and Candidature for Thomas Stack, 27 October 1737, London, Royal Society Archive

[RS], EC1737/13. 115 Hall, Records of the Royal Society, p. 343. 116 Sloane MS. 3972C, i, f. 1r. 117 For example, Sloane MS. 3792C, vi, ff. 46v, 47v. For the main catalogue of Pr Or items see Sloane MS. 3972C,

viii, f. 79.



organized primarily on principles of size.118 Shelf space would also have been affected byStack’s reorganization of back numbers of serials so that they were shelved together, aneffort which can potentially also be interpreted as an attempt to impose greater order on thebook collection.119

It appears likely that it was during this reorganization that Stack commenced the practiceof inscribing ‘Bibliothecae Sloanianae’ on volumes. As table D reveals, books bearing thisinscription are drawn from relatively few letter categories, and many of them have morethan one Sloane number. In the majority of cases, the second number ascribed began with‘L’, ‘J’, or ‘A’, some of the categories which Stack was most active in rearranging as a means,as we have seen, of imposing a more precise size categorization.

Table D: Books inscribed ‘Bibliothecae Sloanianae’ entered on the Sloane PrintedBooks Database120

letter Number inscribed Number of which New letters‘Bibliothecae changed numbers assigned orSloanianae’ previous letters

c 56 48 L, J, c, g, F

d 1 1 L

g 1 1 L

m 2 1 J

r 1 0 -

y 1 0 -

z 1 1 L

A 135 95 J

B 8 6 H, A

C 1 1 A

E 2 2 A, L

F 1 1 c

H 17 5 A, B, Q , Min

J 21 11 c, m, A, N

L 35 20 c, n, z

N 3 3 Min, L, J

P 1 1 A

Q 1 1 H

118 K. Loveman, ‘Books and Sociability: The Case of Samuel Pepys’s Library’, Review of English Studies, lxi(2010), pp. 214-33, at pp. 227-30. See also Robert Latham et al. (eds.), Catalogue of the Pepys Library atMagdalene College, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1978-2004).

119 See, for instance, Sloane MS. 3972C, viii, ff. 166rv; 169v-170v. 120 http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/sloane/AdvancedSearch.aspx; search undertaken 30 November 2010.



Reorganization and checking was therefore an important aspect of the work of Sloane’slibrarians in the 1720s and 1730s, but it is unclear whether this was a continuous process oran annual event, and whether books were checked in shelf-order or in order of appearancein the catalogue. Several papers dated 1740 indicate that a large amount of checking activitywas undertaken in that year. On 5 May 1740 Stack produced a list of ‘Books set right’, aphrase implying the reshelving or replacing of books which were not in their properlocation. 121 Two days later, on 7 May, Stack made a further list, this time detailing ‘Doubtsremaining after the ReExamination’, including manuscripts which had been entered morethan once in the catalogue.122 Other, sadly undated, documents provide more details of thechecking process. One undated list of books, including entries such as ‘R 169 is right shouldbe R 179’, indicates that Stack was checking the accuracy of catalogue entries in addition toverifying the location of books.123

The detail with which individual volumes were traced and located during checks of thelibrary is revealed by a note next to the entry for a manuscript by one Ursini, entitled‘Numismata’, which records the loan of the volume to the Earl of Pembroke, who in turnpassed the volume to the Bishop of Ely, ‘in whose library it ought to be’.124 Since there is nodate on the note it is not possible to ascertain to which Bishop of Ely the manuscript waslent, but John Moore (1646-1714, Bishop of Ely from 1707) appears a likely candidate.125Moore had contact with Sloane, had a reputation for employing dubious methods to acquirebooks and had a policy of lending out his material – some of which was not returned.126Thepractice of lending books points to broader issues surrounding the function of Sloane’slibrary and his policy of access to it. A list of the books lent to ‘Several Persons’ during theperiod 1729-31 shows that loans were made on a regular, albeit infrequent, basis, to bothmen and women.127

Despite their careful approach to checking the library, Stack and Mortimer wereevidently willing to incorporate sheets with a provenance beyond Sloane’s library into thecatalogue. Three large sheets at the end of volume VII list single sheet items of largelypolitical subject matter, organized by title, dating from the late seventeenth and earlyeighteenth century with the latest given publication date of 1722.128 It is evident that thesewere bound into the catalogue as Mortimer was transcribing bibliographic data on thesurrounding pages since their foliation and original Sloane numbers (A 964, A 965 andA 966) are all in Mortimer’s hand and fit with the sequence of Sloane numbers being

121 ‘Books Set Right’, 5 May 1740, Sloane MS. 4019, f. 187v122 ‘Doubts remaining’, 7 May 1740, Sloane MS. 4019, f. 188v.123 Sloane MS. 4019 f. 184r.124 Sloane MS. 3792C, ii, f. 136r. The manuscript in question has not been identified. It has not entered the

collection of Diocesan Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library (see Dorothy M. Owen, Ely Records:A Handlist of the Bishop and Archdeacon of Ely (Chichester, 1971). Moore’s library was purchased by GeorgeI, who donated it to Cambridge University Library. If the manuscript were in Moore’s library at that point,it would be identifiable in early catalogues of CUL manuscripts, such as Charles Hardwick and HenryRichards Luard (eds.), A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge,5 vols (Cambridge, 1895). It is likely that this manuscript was a work owned or written by the collector FulvioOrsini, the Latin form of whose name was Fulvius Ursinus. Sloane also owned a copy of Orsini’s Imagines etelogia virorum illustrium et eruditor ex antiquis lapidibus et nomismatib (Rome, 1570), BL 551.e.6(3). A heavilyillustrated printed work, this was initially given the Sloane number H 238, changed to Pr Sloane numberswhen the series was introduced. The manuscript lent by Sloane, however, remains as yet unidentified. I wouldlike to thank Barry Taylor for his help in identifying Orsini.

125 Peter Meadows, ‘Moore, John (1646–1714)’, ODNB.126 David McKitterick, History of Cambridge University Library, vol. ii (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 74, 67-9, 80.127 ‘Account of Books lent to Several Persons’, Sloane MS. 4019, f. 201.128 Sloane MS. 3972C, vii, ff. 231-233, 238, 241.



employed at that point in the volume. However, the main text of these items is written in ahand which does not appear elsewhere in the catalogue. It is highly probable, therefore, thatthese sheets originated outside the library. More speculatively, it is likely that they arrived atthe library with the items which they served as index to, possibly bought en bloc as anexisting collection of ephemera, at which point Stack and Mortimer removed these findingaids from the collection which they served in favour of integrating them into the maincatalogue.

The latest dated items catalogued by both Stack and Mortimer were published in 1741.129The two men probably left Sloane’s employment at about the same time since their handscease to appear in the catalogue within a few folios of each other.130 That 1741 was the yearof both Stack’s and Mortimer’s departure is corroborated by a claim made by theirsuccessor, James Empson in 1753, that he had had the care of Sloane’s collections for twelveyears.131 By this reckoning, Empson joined Sloane in 1741.

Although apparently no longer involved in the day-to-day running of the library orcollections, Mortimer retained his connection with Sloane until at least 1748, when he waspresent at the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to Sloane’s collections in Chelsea.132In view of their long service with Sloane and their lively independent intellectual ambitions,the departure of the indefatigable duo from Sloane’s service would have meant that a greatdeal of knowledge and command of the library and collections would have been lost. Whythey left Sloane’s employment is unclear. It may be that his stroke in 1742 and thecollection’s consequent relocation to Chelsea rendered employment with Sloane lessattractive. In any event, it is unsurprising that their departure heralded a more static phasein the Sloane library, when acquisition and development gradually ground to a halt.

Phase 7: James Empson: 1741-52

Sloane was actively involved in the relocation of his collections to Chelsea, despite hisdeclining health.133 Since no new Sloane numbers were assigned to books at this stage, theimplication appears to be that their order remained roughly unchanged. However, the oftenquoted remark of the British Museum Trustees that in 1755 the books in Chelsea were‘disposed in a Very Irregular Manner, with little regard either to the Subjects or even Sizeof them’ suggests that Stack’s careful segregation of imperial octavo from octavo and poorlybound from well bound books had been undone by this date. Whether or not the books fellinto a state of disarray once they arrived in Chelsea, it is certainly possible that they werenot arranged as neatly there as they had been hitherto.

Sloane’s final entries in the catalogue (as shown in fig. 14) were apparently made in 1741or 1742, following those by Mortimer and preceding those in Empson’s hand.134 This mayindicate a period when Sloane lacked a library assistant and attempted to undertakecataloguing himself. Empson’s role appears to have been a less active one than that of manyof his predecessors. There is no evidence, for example, that he undertook large scalechecking of the collection. Such a reduction in activity is hardly surprising considering thatMortimer and Stack had worked together, whereas Empson had sole charge of Sloane’scollection: working alone, he could accomplish less. Empson made no major innovations inhow Sloane’s books were catalogued or arranged, continuing to enter bibliographic data inthe pattern set by his predecessors (fig. 15).

129 Sloane MS. 3972C, viii, ff. 318r, 324r. 130 Stack’s final entry: Sloane MS. 3972C, f. 324r ; Mortimer’s final entry: Sloane MS. 3972C, viii, f. 343r. 131 MacGregor, ‘The Life, Character and Career of Sir Hans Sloane’, p. 26. 132 Ibid., p. 35.133 Ibid., p. 28. 134 Sloane MS. 3972C, viii, f. 344r.



Fig. 14. Sloane’s hand in later life: the last entries he catalogued himself. Sloane MS. 3972C, viii, f. 344r.



Fig. 15. Empson. Sloane MS. 3972C, viii, f. 384r.



The extent to which the process of book acquisition slowed from 1742 until Sloane’seventual death in 1752 is neatly illustrated by the time periods covered by the extantvolumes. Whilst volumes VI and VII each covered approximately five years of acquisitionsand rearrangement, volume VIII, commenced on 4 August 1731, sufficed for the twenty-oneyears until Sloane’s death. Within volume VIII, the first 344 folios were complete by 1741,and only fifty-one were used in the final ten years of Sloane’s life.

Despite his lack of innovation, Empson evidently gained Sloane’s confidence as a curatorsince he was appointed a trustee of Sloane’s collection in his will. In this role, he wasprovided with an annual salary of £100 to care for the collection until a permanent homewas found.135 Empson therefore oversaw the collection’s transition from Sloane’s privatecabinet of curiosities to become the nucleus for the British Museum.

Afterlife of the catalogues

As a working document with a practical purpose in locating books, the utility of Sloane’scatalogues would have declined dramatically once Sloane’s books were removed from theirshelves in Chelsea and relocated. Like Sloane’s books themselves, the history of thecatalogue within the British Museum and thereafter the British Library is not fullydocumented: what follows is therefore a partly speculative, albeit probable, account of theirpost-Sloane fate.

It is clear that Sloane’s catalogues initially remained with his collections following hisdeath, and that they accompanied them to the British Museum. In 1755 the Trustees of theBritish Museum decided to separate Sloane’s manuscripts from his printed books.136 It wasprobably the separation of printed from manuscript volumes which prompted the Trusteesto order in 1758 that the folios containing manuscript entries should be removed fromSloane’s library catalogue and rebound in a new volume, creating what is now Sloane MS.3972B. Evidently, the Trustees’ initial intention was for entries related to printed books onthe removed pages to be copied, either back into the main catalogue or into a separatevolume.137 However, no evidence of such a list survives: entries were certainly not copiedback into the main printed books catalogue.138

Separated from the manuscripts, Sloane’s printed books were reshelved by subject,within which size order was observed.139 This may explain why the intention to copy thedetails of printed items catalogued amongst the manuscripts never reached fruition. As wehave seen, during Sloane’s lifetime, his library was not organized by subject. Therefore, evenif Sloane’s printed books had been shelved according to their existing pressmarks on theirarrival at the Museum, this subject-based reorganization would have rendered any catalogueof existing press or shelfmarks useless. By contrast, the newly created catalogue ofmanuscripts retained its usefulness, as evidenced by the annotations that it bears made bysubsequent Museum staff; we can therefore assume it continued to be used.

The ordering of Sloane’s collection would have been further altered when items wereremoved from the Museum for the duplicate sales between 1769 and 1832 and it seemsprobable that any remaining sense of Sloane’s books as a collection would have been lost

135 MacGregor, ‘The Life, Character and Career of Sir Hans Sloane’, p. 26. 136 F. J. Hill, ‘The Shelving and Classification of Printed Books’, p. 4. 137 Catalogue of Sloane Manuscripts, Sloane MS. 3972B, ff. 68v, 141r.138 Their index entries were not updated by deleting the old page reference and inserting a second entry in the

catalogue. Furthermore, no additional lists were inserted at the back of the catalogue or on remaining blankfolios.

139 Hill, ‘The Shelving and Classification of Printed Books’, p. 4.



during the major rearrangement of the books between 1790 and 1805.140 It is possible thatSloane’s printed book catalogue was housed in the Department of Printed Books rather thanof Manuscripts since it was not included in E. L. J. Scott’s 1904 index to the Sloanemanuscripts. If the printed books catalogue had been amongst the Sloane manuscripts in theDepartment of Manuscripts at that date it would presumably have been included. However,it was not: the entry for Sloane MS. 3972 refers to two volumes of a catalogue ofmanuscripts only. These were probably what is now Sloane MS. 3972B, the manuscript listbased on pages removed from Sloane’s original catalogue, and Sloane MS. 3972A, a later listof the Sloane manuscripts.141

In 1888, each volume of the catalogue was refoliated. The fact that this process wasundertaken at the same time for each volume implies that at this point all eight volumesremained together and retained their collective identity.142 By the early 1940s, however, thiswas no longer the case. In an article of 1941 J. S. Finch cites three volumes of Sloanecatalogues housed at Sloane MS. 3972, two of which, A and B, related to manuscripts, whilstC was a one-volume catalogue of printed books.143 Finch’s citation of the highest ‘R’ Sloanenumber it contains, R 427, and of G 395, the Series Chronologica Imperatorum Romanorum,(1655) enables it to be identified as what we now know is volume III of Sloane’s catalogue.144The current binding of all eight volumes of Sloane MS. 3972C dates from 1964. By thisdate, therefore, volumes I-II and IV-VIII had been reidentified and reunited with volumeIII. Whilst Sloane MS. 3972C has regained its cohesion and place amongst the Sloanemanuscripts, however, Lindenius Renovatus remains separate: although heavily annotated andinterleaved, it remains categorized as a printed book and is shelved separately from the otherparts of Sloane’s other book and manuscript catalogue.

Conclusions

By examining developments in Sloane’s library and collections in relation to events in hislife, a number of new facets of the organization and development of Sloane’s librarycatalogues have been brought to light. The date at which the catalogue was commenced hasbeen revised from 1693 to 1692, whilst the extant index volumes have been moresubstantially redated from 1693 to c. 1712. More broadly, the development of Sloane’scollections and their catalogues has been linked more closely to developments in Sloane’s lifeand career. Whilst known amanuenses have long been acknowledged as important inSloane’s library, this article has shown that the as yet unidentified assistants who helped inthe library were similarly significant.

Nevertheless, much remains to be learned about Sloane’s library catalogues. Whilstthe function and significance of the desiderata lists in the catalogue has been elucidated, thebibliographical sources for two desiderata lists, ‘o’ and ‘m’, remain as yet unidentified.Uncovering the identities of the remaining four stubbornly anonymous amanuenses isanother particularly desirable avenue for research. A potential clue as to the identity of oneof these men is found in a note made by Stack when checking the books in the 1740s, whichincludes the entry ‘R 387 Tryon mistook for R 827 – 898’.145 R 387 was the Sloane code for

140 Ibid., p. 5. 141 For more on Sloane MS. 3972A see Nickson, ‘Hans Sloane’, pp. 55-6.142 See the notes on the final, often unfoliated, sheets in each volume.143 J. S. Finch, ‘Sir Hans Sloane’s Printed Books’, The Library, 4th ser., xxii (1941), pp. 69-72, at p. 70.144 Finch, op. cit., pp. 70-1. Nickson, in error, claims that Finch was working from volumes I and II of the

catalogue. It is possible this misunderstanding arose from the existence of a photostat copy of volume III inthe British Library staff reference collection. This divided into two volumes marked only ‘Sloane Catalogueof Printed Books I’ and ‘Sloane Catalogue of Printed Books II’ on the spine. Nickson, ‘Hans Sloane’, p. 60.

145 Sloane MS. 4019, f. 184r.



Johann Albert Fabricius, Acta, Epistolae Apocalypses aliaque Scripta Apostolis Falso InscriptaSive codicis Apocryphi Novi Testamenti, the second volume of Codex apocryphus NoviTestamenti (Hamburg, 1703). It seems plausible from this that ‘Tryon’ was a library assistantengaged in checking the books. The entry for R 387 was made by Hand 1, and entries for R827-898 by Hand 2; ‘Tryon’ could therefore plausibly be Hand 2, 3, or 4.146

The British Library manuscripts collection contains samples of the hands of fourindividuals surnamed ‘Tryon’ active c. 1650-1750: none of these matches any of the handsin the Sloane catalogue.147 Of the two Tryons notable enough to achieve an Oxford Dictionaryof National Biography entry, the hand sample of one, William Tryon, did not match: theother, Thomas, died in 1703, and since his life dates would therefore only render him apossible candidate for Hand 1, it is unlikely the note could refer to him.148 Neither the RoyalSociety archive nor the manuscript collections of the Welcome Library contain papersrelating to a ‘Tryon’ which fall within the correct chronological range, and no-one of thisname held office as Secretary, Foreign Secretary or Assistant Secretary at the Royal Society,the holders of which posts, as we have seen, frequently moonlighted for Sloane. For now,therefore, ‘Tryon’ remains elusive.

Whilst on one level the catalogue functioned as a record of books which Sloane ownedand served as a finding aid, at various stages it also adopted more complex purposes, such asrecording books Sloane sought to acquire in particular areas of interest. Despite suchchanging functions, from its inception in 1692 until Sloane’s death in 1752, the catalogue ofhis library remained a working tool. Produced over sixty years, with contributions by elevenindividuals, in addition to pages bound in from other sources, it records several distinctstages and projects. As such, its complexity and richness as a multi-authored insight into oneof the great early modern libraries deserves greater recognition.

146 Sloane MS. 3972C, iii, f. 179v; Sloane MS. 3972C, iv, ff. 9v-11v. 147 For Samuel Tryon, JP of Collyweston: BL, Add. MS. 29565, ff. 288, 359, 535. Samuel Tryon was known to

Sloane, who produced a certificate of his health: Sloane MS. 4078, f. 379.148 Paul David Nelson, ‘Tryon, William (1729–1788)’, ODNB; Virginia Smith, ‘Tryon, Thomas (1634-1703)’,

ODNB. Sloane did, however, own a number of the latter’s works, including: Thomas Tryon, Pythagoras hisMystick Philosophy reviv’d; or, The Mystery of Dreams unfolded ... To which is added, A discourse of the causes,... and cure of phrensie, etc. (London, 1691), BL, 719.c.28; Thomas Tryon, The Knowledge of a Man’s Self thesurest guide to the true worship of God, and good government of the mind and body; ... or the second part of the Wayto Long Life, Health and Happiness (London, 1703), BL, 855.d.12. To date, nine more have been identified bythe Sloane printed books project and are entered on its database: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/sloane/.



Table E: first allocations of lower-case letters

1 re

cto fo

lios

1 ve

rso fo

lios

2 re

cto fo

lios

2 ve

rso fo

lios

(169

3-16

97)

(169

7-17

00)

(170

0-1)

(170

0-1)

3 (1

701-

7)4 (1

707-

12)

5 (1

712-

23)

6 (1

723-

8)7 (1

726-

32)

8 (1

732-

53)

a2-

280

281-

1295

1298

-227

822

86-4

389

4390

-602

0b

1-16

1c

1-20

020

2-86

087

0-17

6517

67-3

157

3160

-400

0d

23-5

00e

5-17

817

9-28

0f

2-15

0g

5-54

723

7-56

0h

8-17

113

2-34

5i

4-15

0k

8-15

010

5-87

6l

3-14

92-

1456

1467

-175

217

53-1

827

1846

-198

4m

7-17

515

5-85

21-

154; 897

-85

7-98

698

8-10

1391

1; 977

-87

n5-

180

o4-

164

p1-

405

423-

500

q2-

149

r4-

174

s5-

124

143-

150

t3-

134

137-

177

u3-

121

124-

360

w5-

886

901-

1000

x1-

162

164-

226

y2-

224

269-

460

z1-

243

130-

326

9-34

2fg

191-

254

ef10

4-14

9gh

290-

383

Num

erou

sap

pear

ance

s as

repl

acem

ent

num

bers



Table F: First allocations of Upper-Case letters and Min, Maps, Pr and Pr Or

1 re

cto fo

lios

1 ve

rso fo

lios

2 re

cto fo

lios

2 ve

rso fo

lios

34

56

78

(169

3-7)

(169

7-17

00)

(170

0-1)

(170

0-1)

(170

1-7)

(170

7-12

)(1

712-

23)

(172

3-8)

(172

6-31

)(1

731-

53)

A37

to 172

169-

437

328-

673

688-

1047

1052

-139

9B

3 to

156

157-

169

171-

401

C15

to 134

137-

153

D2 to

253

118-

186

214

E1-

220

F15

1-53

7G

1-54

6be

low 325

ish

146-

505

551-

1101

H2-

269

318-

789

773-

996

551-

1101

J58

-104

L12

7-20

7N

6-49

548

9-13

8013

09-1

992

1676

-184

9P

1 to

99

101-

197

Q1 to

13

99-2

9220

-90;

227-

356

358-

376

335-

347

R2-

759

761-

2663

2664

-400

039

2-54

823

02-3

878

Min

701-

189 (1

90-

117

348 ad

ded

by S

tack

and

M

ortim

er

post 172

9)Pr

1-74

392-

548

516-

719

721-

926

702-

1182

Pr O

r79

-171

Map

s21

-96



Table G: The size of books assigned to each Sloane number

A Folio a 8o

B Folio b 8o

C Folio c 4o

D Folio d 4o

E Folio e 4o

F 4o f 8o

G 4o g 8o

H Folio h 8o

I - i 4o

J 4o j -K - k 8o

L 4o l 8o

M - m 4o & smallerN 4o n 8o

O - o 8o

P Folio p 8o

Q Folio q 4o & smallerR 8o & smaller r 4o

S - s 8o

T - t 8o

U - u 8o

V - v -W - w 8o

X - x 8o

Y - y 8o

Z - z 4o

the library catalogues of sir hans sloane: their authors

Documents