We know some things about the English Civil War because George Thomason, bookseller at the Rose and Crown in London, collected 14,942 pamphlets, 7,216 newspapers and other items from 1640 to 1661.
Yesterday’s note mentioned that pamphlets could have documentary value.
The Thomason tracts are an example. All ages should have such a collection.
You can find out what people — great and ordinary — were thinking about the events of their times. There are speeches, debates and sermons. There are poetry and plays.
During the war and restoration, people continued to go about the business of making a living, courting beloveds, burying the dead, and reading literature. An awful lot of what they did and thought is here.
Thomason knew what was being printed during that era would be important. And so he collected, despite the enormous trouble and expense.
He had the materials — 22,255 items — bound in 2008 volumes. They eventually were acquired by the British Museum, which turned them over to the British Library in 1973.
The trustees of the museum had a catalog of the collection printed in 1908. G.M. Fortescue, keeper of printed books, wrote the preface.
Fortescue said Thomason collected just about everything printed in London. Thomason was content to get the London reprints of works published in Edinburgh and Scotland. He collected some, but not all, of the works printed by regional presses, including those in Oxford and Cambridge.
If there’s a hole in collection, it’s in Quaker tracts. That was a remarkable era for Quaker writing. Thomason had 44 pamphlets by George Fox and 24 by James Naylor, but that was far from a complete collection. Fontescue suggests that Thomason, a Presbyterian, simply didn’t like them.
• Source: You can find the two-volume catalog of the collection here:
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