Collections used in this exhibition

The material in this exhibition draws on various named special collections within Senate House Library, as well as the general special collections of purchases and of single or dispersed gifts. Named collections used are:

• Bromhead Library: Ca 4,000 items, mainly 17th-20th century, on the history of London, collected by Lt. Col. Alfred Claude Bromhead (1876-1963). The 17th cent is particularly well represented (ca 1,250 items).
• Durning-Lawrence Library: Ca 5,750 titles, 15th-21st century, mainly collected by Baconian protagonist Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence (1837-1914) to support the Baconian theory. Strengths include titles by Sir Francis Bacon, the Bacon-Shakespeare authorship controversy, Shakespearean sources, and early editions of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature and history generally.
• Ethel M. Wood Biblical Collection: Over 400 English and American Bibles and books on biblical studies, 1492/3 onwards; includes 32 16th-century and 51 17th-century works. Primarily the collection of Ethel Mary Wood, née Hogg, (1876-1970).
• Francis Bacon Society Library: Ca 1,300 books and pamphlets pertaining to Sir Francis Bacon, mainly 19th/20th century but with nearly 500 earlier items (especially 17th-century).
• Harry Price Library of Magical Literature: Nearly 13,000 books, pamphlets and periodical titles, 1472- (mainly 19th/20th-cent) on all aspects of magic: legerdemain, witchcraft and the occult, prophecies, abnormal phenomena, scientific phenomena, and psychical research. Based on the library of psychical researcher Harry Price (1881-1948).
• Incunabula: 134 books and fragments, 1470-[?ca 1515], predominantly Italian, printed or formerly thought to have been printed before 31 December 1500.
• Littleton Collection: 33 rare landmark volumes of music and musical treatises published between 1480 and about 1728 from the library of the music publisher Alfred Henry Littleton.
• Sterling Library: Over 7,000 volumes of first and fine editions of English literature, 15th-20th century, including a section on private press books which boasts the complete output of the Kelmscott Press. Based on the collection of Sir Louis Sterling, given in 1954.