Abstract
This chapter focuses on the Museum’s approach to knowledge construction in the mid-nineteenth century. Of particular interest are the 1857 Reading Room and its embodiment of the Museum’s core epistemic preconceptions and educational assumptions. I demonstrate that in the foreground to the Reading Room’s approach to knowledge was a social Darwinist notion that Anglo-Saxon males possessed superior mental capacities, due in large part to their distinctive skull size. I also contend that this sense of cranial superiority was emboldened further by the grandeur of British Imperialism, which, in turn, was inscribed into the Reading Room’s architectural design and spatial logic. As a result, Anglo-Saxon (i.e. white) males were designated as the Reading Room’s ideal readers in that they were the most mentally apt to engage in encyclopedic learning and acquire panoptic knowledge. For female readers in the 1857 Reading Room, the expectations for learning and knowledge production were less ambitious.
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- 1.
Richards, The Imperial Archive, 3.
- 2.
Seymour, Report of the Commissioners (1850), 2.
- 3.
Richards, The Imperial Archive, 15.
- 4.
Ibid., 11.
- 5.
Augustus Freeman, The Origin of the English Nation (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1879), 126–27. In short, “English” and “Anglo-Saxon” are words that mean exactly the same thing, and to say that English men are not Anglo-Saxons is exactly the same thing as saying that English men are not Englishmen.
- 6.
St James Gazette, “The British Museum,” The Friend 75 (June 1902): 397; John M. MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion 1880–1960 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1984), 2, 253–54; Herbert L. Sussman, Victorians and the Machine: The Literary Response to Technology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 5.
- 7.
Parson Lot [Charles Kingsley], “The British Museum,” in Politics for the People (London: John W. Parker, 1848), 183–85; Charles Kingsley, Charles Kingsley, His Letters, and Memories of His Life, vol. 1, The Novels, Poems, and Memories of Charles Kingsley (Cambridge, MA: University Press, 1899), 131.
- 8.
Inderpal Grewal, “The Guidebook and the Museum: Imperialism, Education and Nationalism in the British Museum,” in Culture and Education in Victorian England, ed. Patrick Scott and Pauline Fletcher (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1990), 214.
- 9.
William Temple Hornaday, Two Years in the Jungle: The Experience of a Hunter and Naturalist in India, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula, and Borneo (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Company, 1885), 4.
- 10.
Edward Edwards, Lives of the Founders of the British Museum with Notices of Its Chief Augmentors and Other Benefactors 1570–1870 (London: Trübner and Company, 1870), 2:551.
- 11.
Richards, The Imperial Archive, 15–16.
- 12.
Anthony Alan Shelton, “Museum Ethnography: An Imperial Silence,” in Cultural Encounters Representing ‘Otherness,’ by Brian V. Street, ed. Elizabeth Hallman (London: Routledge, 2000), 159.
- 13.
Grewal, “The Guidebook and the Museum,” 214; Shelton, “Museum Ethnography,” 158; Hornaday, Two Years in the Jungle, 4.
- 14.
British Museum, A Guide to the Exhibition Rooms of the Departments of Natural History and Antiquities (London: Order of the Trustees, 1860), 58. For a list of benefactors (1753–1893) to the British Museum from whom additions to the collection were received, see British Museum, “List of Benefactors,” in A Guide to the Exhibition Galleries of the British Museum (Bloomsbury) (London: Order of the Trustees, 1894), xv–xxxi.
- 15.
“The British Museum,” The Speaker: A Review of Politics, Letters, Science, and the Arts 9 (March 24, 1894): 331.
- 16.
Melvil Dewey, “Sir Anthony Panizzi,” The Library Journal 4 (May 1879): 164.
- 17.
Grewal, “The Guidebook and the Museum,” 214.
- 18.
John Thurman (alternatively spelled Thurnham), “Tumular Cemetery at Lamel Hill, York,” The Archaeological Journal 6 (1849): 128–29n8; Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed. (1893), s.v. “Anthropology”; Crania Britannica: Delineations and Description of the Skulls of the Aboriginal and Early Inhabitants of the British Islands: With Notices of Their Remains, vol. 2, Plates and Descriptions (London: Printed for Subscribers, 1865), 29. In 1844, Swedish anthropologist Anders Adolf Retzius introduced the “cephalic index” as a scientific measure of human head forms. The cephalic index was calculated from the maximum length and maximum breadth of the cranium. Retzius divided the human races into two great orders: the “Dolichocephalæ,” or those with a lengthened oval form of cranium; and the “Brachycephalæ,” or those with crania of a shortened oval form. Each of these classes he subdivided into two orders: the “orthognathæ,” or those with upright jaws; and the “prognathae,” or those with prominent jaws. Retzius’s skull measurements were determined by measuring the longer diameter from front to back as 100, and if the shorter or cross diameter falls below 80 the skull may be classified as long (dolichocephalic), while if it exceeds 80 the skull may be classified as broad (brachycephalic). Retzius also introduced a third division, the “mesocephalic” intermediate, comprising skulls with a cephalic index of 75–80. By the late nineteenth century, anthropologists did not entirely agree regarding the precise limits of the cephalic index with each of Retzius’s three primary head forms. In describing the Anglo-Saxon skull from cemetery Firle in South Downs, Sussex, Joseph Barnard Davis and John Thurnham argued that the “ovoid cranium is a good example of the chief forms common among Anglo-Saxon skulls—a form that has evidently descended from pre-Norman times to the English people of the present day.” For further discussion, see Timothy Parsons, The British Imperial Century, 1815–1914: A World History Perspective (Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 25.
- 19.
Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800–1960, St Anthony’s/Macmillan series (Oxford: Macmillan Press, 1982), 96–98; Paul Jorion, “The Downfall of the Skull,” Royal Anthropological Institute Newsletter 48 (1982): 8–11; James Urry, “Englishmen, Celts, and Iberians: The Ethnographic Survey of the United Kingdom, 1892–1899,” in Functionalism Historicized: Essays on British Social Anthropology, ed. George W. Stocking, Jr., vol. 2, History of Anthropology (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 85–86.
- 20.
“Reviews: View of the Present State of Ethnology, in Reference to the Forms of the Skull, by Anders Adolf Retzius,” The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 9 (January 1859): 119.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Christine Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), 38–39.
- 23.
Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science, 97. For a systematic study of ancient British skulls, see Davis and Thurnham, Crania Britannica.
- 24.
Cornelius Donovan, A Handbook of Phrenology (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1870), 96. For a discussion of the brain of Englishmen, see Joseph Barnard Davis, “Contributions Towards Determining the Weight of the Brain in the Different Races of Man,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 16 (January 1, 1867): 236–41; For a discussion on phrenology aimed at the general public, see L. N. F., “The Study of Phrenology Made Easy,” The Phrenological Magazine: A Journal of Education and Mental Health 3 (1882): 407–09, 452–56, 496–501; David de Giustino, Conquest of the Mind: Phrenology and Victorian Social Thought (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975), 12–30.
- 25.
George Rolleston, “General Remarks upon the Preceding Series of Prehistoric Crania from British Barrows,” in Scientific Papers and Addresses, ed. William Turner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884), 1:243–44.
- 26.
Anders Retzius, “A Glance at the Present State of Ethnology: With Reference to the Form of the Skull,” trans. William Daniel Moore, British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review 50 (April 1860): 366–67.
- 27.
In the years immediately following Retzius’s four skull divisions, British anthropologists classified the head form of the modern Anglo-Saxon Englishman as dolichocephalic (long-headed), which was traced to a Teutonic source. With the accumulation of human skull measurements, additional categories were added to Retzius’s fourfold skull division. This led to classifying the head shapes of the modern Englishman as ovoid or moderately dolichocephalic (Teutonic type), combined with a medium stature, and generally with fair skin and light eyes and hair. John Thurnham, “On the Two Principal Forms of Ancient British and Gaulish Skulls,” in Memoirs Read Before the Society, ed. Anthropological Society of London (London: Trübner and Company, 1865), 1:127. By the turn of the nineteenth century, the majority of Englishmen were classified as either dolichocephalic or mesocephalic, with the latter skull shape being of a mixed race that was formed from the intermarriage of Iberians and Teutons. Nottidge Charles MacNamara, Origin and Character of the British People (London: Smith, Elder, and Company, 1900), 202, 230. For the British Museum’s skull classification of the modern Englishman, see Charles H. Read and Reginald A. Smith, A Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age of the Central and Western in the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities (London: Printed by Order of the Trustees, 1905), 105; Charles H. Read, A Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age in the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities (London: Printed by Order of the Trustees, 1902), 73.
- 28.
William Chambers and Robert Chambers, “Anthropology,” in Chambers’s Information for the People (London: W&R Chambers, 1875), 10–11, 14.
- 29.
Mark Olssen, Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1999), 32.
- 30.
William E.A. Axon, “The British Museum in Its Relation to Provincial Culture,” in Transactions and Proceedings of the Conference of Librarians Held in London, eds. Edward B. Nicholson and Henry R. Tedder (London: Chiswick Press, 1878), 29.
- 31.
Ann Laura Stoler, “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance: On the Content in the Form,” in Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory: Essays from the Sawyer Seminar, eds. Francis X. Blouin and William G. Rosenberg (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 270.
- 32.
Ruth Hoberman, “Women in the British Museum Reading Room During the Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Centuries: From Quasi- to Counterpublic,” Feminist Studies 28, no. 3 (Autumn 2002): 492.
- 33.
Eric Ketelaar, “The Panoptical Archive,” in Archives, Documentation and Institutions of Social Memory Essays from the Sawyer Seminar, eds. Francis X. Blouin Jr. and William G. Rosenberg (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 145.
- 34.
Edward Miller, Prince of Librarians: The Life and Times of Antonio Panizzi of the British Museum (London: Deutsch, 1967), 209. Details about Panizzi’s plan appeared in the column “The New Reading-Room at the British Museum,” The Literary Gazette, April 10, 1858; see William Hosking, Some Observations upon the Recent Addition of a Reading Room to the British Museum (London: Edward Standford, 1858).
- 35.
E. Maunde Thompson, “The British Museum: Its Origin and Growth,” Leisure Hour (February 1896): 228. The ground formerly occupied by Montagu House, as well as its garden, covering all seven and half acres, was now practically filled; Benjamin Kidd, “Glimpses in the Reading-Room at the British Museum,” Chambers’s Journal 62 (1885): 363; P. R. Harris, A History of the British Museum Library 1753–1973 (London: The British Library, 1998), 181; Louis Alexander Fagan, The Life of Sir Anthony Panizzi, K.C.B. (London: Remington & Co, 1880), 1:354–59; Hosking, Some Observations, 17.
- 36.
William Chambers and Robert Chambers, “Our National Study,” Chambers’s Journal 26 (1856): 383.
- 37.
The English Cyclopædia: A New Dictionary of Universal Knowledge, vol. 5, comp. Charles Knight (London: Bradbury, Evans, and Co., 1857) s.v. “Sydney Smirke”; Thomas Nichols, A Handbook for Readers at the British Museum (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1866), 8; Harris, A History of the British Museum Library, 187.
- 38.
Antonio Panizzi to Sir William Molesworth, June 9, 1853, Appendix to Sir Charles Barry’s Report, British Museum.
- 39.
J. Winter Jones, A List of the Books of Reference of the Reading Room of the British Museum, rev. ed. (1859; repr., London: Woodfall and Kinder, 1861), xvii.
- 40.
“The New Reading-Room at the British Museum,” in The Year-Book of Facts in Science and Art: Exhibiting the Most Important Discoveries and Improvements of the Past Year (London: W. Kent & CO., 1858), 105; similar reports appeared in the Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal 20 (1857), The Leisure Hour (1896), and several British Museum guide books, see British Museum: New Reading-Room and Libraries with a Plan (London: John Murray, 1867).
- 41.
W. P. Courtney, “The British Museum Library,” The Fortnightly Review, October 1, 1879, 585.
- 42.
Thomas A. Markus, Buildings and Power: Freedom and Control in the Origin of Modern Building Types (London: Routledge, 1993), 178.
- 43.
Thomas A. Markus and Deborah Cameron, The Words Between the Spaces: Building and Language (London: Routledge, 2002), 68–70; Harris, A History of the British Museum Library, 180–93; Robert Cowtan, A Biographical Sketch of Sir Anthony Panizzi (London: Asher & CO., 1873), 73–76.
- 44.
Under Reviews, “Carthage and Her Remains,” Architecture of the Victorian Age (1862): 92; Amy Levy “Readers at the British Museum,” Atlanta (April 1889): 449, 452; Thomas A. Markus posits that “throughout Europe, America and in the colonies, the dome became the ubiquitous space of post-Enlightenment knowledge or reason, as an umbrella for explanation-through-representation of some powerful scientific or philosophical concept.” See “What Do Domes Mean?” Critical Quarterly 41, no. 4 (2003): 9.
- 45.
William Chambers and Robert Chambers, “Our National Study,” 383.
- 46.
W. K. Kelly, “Our National Library,” The National Magazine (1858): 70.
- 47.
“New Reading-Room at the British Museum,” Leisure Hour, August 13, 1857, 519.
- 48.
Hoberman, “Women in the British Museum Reading Room,” 492.
- 49.
Henri Lefebvre contends that the discourse of space bears witness to the logic of visualization inscribed in the space. The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1991), 37, 98.
- 50.
Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 98; Markus, Buildings and Power, 178.
- 51.
Joseph Bizup, Manufacturing Culture: Vindications of Early Victorian Industry (Charlottesville, NC: University of Virginia Press, 2003), 58.
- 52.
Samuel Gerald Collins, Library of Walls: The Library of Congress and the Contradictions of Information Society (Duluth, MN: Litwin Books, 2009), 46.
- 53.
This idea of machine and arrangement of space is informed by Henri Lefebvre’s notion of a social production of space, see The Production of Space, 83–85. Particularly helpful is Mary Poovey, Making a Social Body: British Cultural Formation 1830–1864 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 25–43. Her central claim is that modern industrial capitalism demanded a fundamental reorganization of space. For a discussion on modern Victorian notions of machine, see Martin Hewitt, “Why the Notion of Victorian Britain Does Make Sense,” Victorian Studies 48, no. 3 (Spring 2006): 395–438; Bizup, Manufacturing Culture, 4–5.
- 54.
Nichols, A Handbook, 10.
- 55.
Chris Otter, The Victorian Eye: A Political History of Light and Vision in Britain, 1800–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 1–4. Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon; or, The Inspection-House: Containing the Idea of a New Principle of Construction Applicable to Any Sort of Establishment, in Which Persons of Any Description Are to Be Kept Under Inspection; and in Particular to Penitentiary-Houses, Prisons, Houses of Industry, Work-Houses, Poor-Houses, Manufactories, Mad-Houses, Lazarettos, Hospitals and Schools: With a Plan of Management Adapted to the Principle: In a Series of Letters, Written in the Year 1787 (Dublin: T. Payne and the Mews-Gate, 1791). In 1854, the Royal Panopticon of Science and Art opened in Leicester Square. Among its major attractions was a permanent exhibition of working models of machinery. Annual of Scientific Study, or A Year-Book of Facts in Science and Art (London: Trubner and Company, 1854), 387–88. Michel Foucault writes, “The Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form.” Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1995), 205; Bizup, Manufacturing Culture, 200–02.
- 56.
Nichols, A Handbook, 21.
- 57.
Kidd, “Glimpses in the Reading-Room,” 363.
- 58.
Levy, “Readers at the British Museum,” 449.
- 59.
“The British Museum and the People Who Go There,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, August 1888, 213.
- 60.
Nichols, A Handbook, 1; Age for admission was raised from 18 to 21 in March 1862, see Harris, A History of the British Museum Library, 284.
- 61.
Nichols, A Handbook, 2.
- 62.
In English usage the term “respectable” was often applied to people in the middle classes, see Woodruff D. Smith, “Colonialism and the Culture of Respectability,” in Germany’s Colonial Past, eds. Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, and Lora Wildenthal (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 7; for further studies on the ideology of middle-class respectability in Victorian society, see Mike Huggins, “More Sinful Pleasures? Leisure, Respectability and the Male Middle Classes in Victorian England,” Journal of Social History 3, no. 3 (2000): 585–600; F. M. L. Thompson, The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain 1830–1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).
- 63.
Nichols, A Handbook, 4.
- 64.
Ibid.
- 65.
A Reader, “Our Library,” Golden Times (May 1880): 313; Nichols, A Handbook, 9; Kelly, “Our National Library,” 70; British Museum, Reading Room and Library (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1884), 15. For a more comprehensive analysis of female readers in the British Museum Reading Room in the late nineteenth century, see Susan David Bernstein, “Too Common Readers at the British Museum,” in Victorian Vulgarity: Taste in Verbal and Visual Culture, eds. Susan David Bernstein and Elsie B. Michie (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 101–17; Ruth Hoberman, “ ‘A Thought in the Huge Bald Forehead’: Depictions of Women in the British Museum Reading Room, 1857–1929,” in Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present, eds. Janet Badia and Jennifer Phegley (London: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 168–91; Hoberman, “Women in the British Museum Reading Room,” 489–512.
- 66.
British Museum, Reading Room and Library, 15.
- 67.
Robert Cowtan, Memories of the British Museum (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1872), 223–24; Nichols, A Handbook, 9 (footnote); for detailed discussion on the type of chairs present at the “ladies tables” in the 1857 Reading Room of the British Museum, see Hermentrude [E. S. Holt], “Reading Room Chairs at the Museum,” Notes and Queries (September 6, 1884): 186–87; response articles by C. A. Ward, John Maclean, and E. Cobham Brewer, all of which fall under the title “Reading-Room Chairs at the British Museum,” Notes and Queries (October 4, 1884): 277–78; and counter-response by Hermentrude [E.S. Holt], “Reading-Room Chairs at the British Museum,” Notes and Queries (November 1, 1884): 354.
- 68.
A. H., “Art at Home,” Arthur’s Home Magazine 52 (June 1884), 373; Orrinsmith, The Drawing-Room: Its Decorations and Furniture (London: Macmillan and Co., 1878), 109; for a contemporary text that offers architectural details designed to help readers create a drawing room, see Robert Kerr, The Gentleman’s House: How to Plan English Residences, from the Parsonage to the Palace, with Tables of Accommodation and Cost, and a Series of Selected Plans (London: John Murray, 1865), 99–114; for descriptions of the use of chairs stuffed with horse hair, see Joseph Hassell, Common Things and Elementary Science in the Form of Object Lessons (London: Blackie and Son, 1884), 12, and Charles Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and Other Details (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1869), 157–58; for illustrations of hair-stuffed chairs for the drawing room, see Thomas Webster, Encyclopaedia of Domestic Economy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1845), 274.
- 69.
John Walsh, A Manual of Domestic Economy (London: G. Routledge & CO., 1856), 200.
- 70.
Orrinsmith, The Drawing-Room, 109.
- 71.
For a prevalent nineteenth-century view of the woman’s role in Victorian society, see John Ruskin, “Of Queens’ Gardens,” in Sesame and Lilies (New York: John Wiley & Son, 1865).
- 72.
Andrea Kaston Tange, Architectural Identities: Domesticity, Literature, and the Victorian Middle Classes (London: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 86.
- 73.
Cowtan, Memories of the British Museum, 223–24.
- 74.
Bernstein, “Too Common Readers at the British Museum,” 103.
- 75.
Kerr, The Gentleman’s House, 123.
- 76.
For the household study or library, many writers of advice texts recommended library tables with embossed leather tops—a feature that made it easier to write on the table; see Webster, Encyclopaedia of Domestic Economy, 260; Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste, 135–36; and Walsh, A Manual of Domestic Economy, 198–99.
- 77.
Edward Walford, Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places (London: Cassell & Company, Limited, 1876), 4:506.
- 78.
Orrinsmith, The Drawing-Room, 129.
- 79.
Ibid.
- 80.
Cowtan, Memories of the British Museum, 223–24.
- 81.
“The British Museum and the People Who Go There,” 213.
- 82.
Ibid.
- 83.
W., “Visit to the Reading-Room of the British Museum,” Monthly Religious Magazine and Independent Journal 23 (January 1860): 24.
- 84.
British Museum, Reading Room and Library, 13; Cowtan, A Biographical Sketch of Sir Anthony Panizzi, 59.
- 85.
W., “Visit to the Reading-Room,” 27.
- 86.
Nichols, A Handbook, 10.
- 87.
Hoberman, “Women in the British Museum Reading Room,” 492; Angelia Poon, Enacting Englishness in the Victorian Period: Colonialism and the Politics of Performance (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 11.
- 88.
Walford, Old and New London, 6:506.
- 89.
Florence Fenwick Miller, “The London Literary Hive,” Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly 32 (November 1891): 611.
- 90.
Fagan, Anthony Panizzi, 1:372; Nichols, A Handbook, xvi.
- 91.
“Readers at the British Museum,” The Spectator, May 12, 1866, 528.
- 92.
Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus (Notes Towards an Investigation),” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001), 146.
- 93.
Nichols, A Handbook, 9.
- 94.
Ibid.
- 95.
“Report from the Select Committee on the Condition, Management and Affairs of the British Museum; Together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index (6 August 1835),” in Selection of Reports and Papers of the House of Commons (London: House of Commons, 1836), 33:351, 362, 525–30; Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Constitution and Government of the British Museum; With Minutes of Evidence (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1850), 267–68; Selection of Reports and Papers of the House of Commons, 33:429.
- 96.
“British Museum,” Chambers’ Encyclopaedia: A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge for the People (1874), 359; Courtney, “The British Museum Library,” 599.
- 97.
Robert Scott Moffat, “The Reference Library of the British Museum,” The National Review, February 1893, 858.
- 98.
Courtney, “The British Museum Library,” 599; the first reference book under theology, as indicated on page 22 of Nichols’s 1866 A Handbook, was John Kitto’s Daily Bible Illustrations.
- 99.
Sugirtharajah, The Bible and Empire, 2–3; Musa W. Dube, “Consuming a Colonial Cultural Bomb,” in Postcoloniality, Translation, and the Bible in Africa, ed. Musa W. Dube and R.S. Wafula (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2017), 11–12.
- 100.
Brooke Foss Westcott, Christian Aspects of Life (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd, 1897), 147.
- 101.
John Winter Jones, A List of the Books of Reference in the Reading Room of the British Museum (London: Printed by Order of the Trustees, 1871), xxi.
- 102.
“The Retirement of Dr. Richard Garnett,” The Speaker, February 25, 1899, 227–28.
- 103.
Edward B. Nicholson and Henry R. Tedder, eds., Transactions and Proceedings of the Conference of Librarians Held in London (London: Chiswick Press, 1878), 109, 188–89.
- 104.
Edward Edwards, Notes on the Classification of Human Knowledge, with Especial Reference to the Methods Which Have Been Adopted, or Proposed for the Arrangement or Cataloguing of Libraries (Liverpool: T. Brakeli, 1858), 4, 11, 12, 15, 21, 23; Thomas Hartwell Horne, Outlines for the Classification of a Library: Respectfully Submitted to the Consideration of the Trustees of the British Museum (London: G. Woodfall, 1825), 3.
- 105.
Nichols, A Handbook, 1–8; British Museum, Statutes and Rules for the British Museum. The 24th of June, 1871 (London: Woodfall and Kinder, 1871), 18–22.
- 106.
Nichols, A Handbook, 2.
- 107.
Ibid., 3.
- 108.
Ibid., 4.
- 109.
Mark Twain, Mark Twain Speaking, ed. Paul Fatout (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1976), 71.
- 110.
“The British Museum and the People Who Go There,” 217.
- 111.
Edward B. Aveling, “Some Humors of the Reading Room at the British Museum,” Progress 1 (May 1883): 312.
- 112.
Ibid., 312–13.
- 113.
As reflected in multiple volumes of the British Museum’s “Signatures of Readers,” there are a consistent number of readers who signed with the title “Reverend.” For the first year of the new Reading Room, each month (May–December) revealed signatures with the title “Rev.,” “Revd.,” “Rev’d.,” or “Reverend,” all of which totaled 47 clergymen. See British Museum Signature of Readers, September 22–February 24, 1858, MS, British Museum Central Archive. In sampling other volumes, the appearance of readers with the “Reverend” title reveal a steady flow of clergy readers. See British Museum Signature of Readers, February 25–December 1858; January 8–December 1872; January 8–October 22, 1873; October 22–December 1873; August 13–December 1874; August 18–December 1875; January 13, 1882–April 10, 1883; October 11, 1888–March 7, 1890.
- 114.
In examining multiple admissions applications held at the British Library, clergymen appear both as applicants and as recommenders. See British Museum Reading Room Papers, 1872–79, Add MS 45747–48, ff. 4, 38, 43–45, 51, 68, 70, 99, 128, 129, 152, 223; ff. 83, 116, 127, 150, Western Manuscript, British Library and British Museum Reading Room Papers: a selection of applications and recommendations for tickets of admission to the Reading Room of the British Museum, consisting of letters, printed forms, and so on (1837–81), Add MS 48340–41, ff. 176, 185, 198, 208, 215, 268, 276, 328, 359; ff. 21, 29, 47, 181b, 199b, 233, 237, 242, 246, Western Manuscripts, British Library.
Bibliography
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A. H. 1884. Art at Home. Arthur’s Home Magazine, June.
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Bentham, Jeremy. 1791. Panopticon; or, The Inspection-House: Containing the Idea of a New Principle of Construction Applicable to Any Sort of Establishment, in Which Persons of Any Description Are to Be Kept Under Inspection; and in Particular to Penitentiary-Houses, Prisons, Houses of Industry, Work-Houses, Poor-Houses, Manufactories, Mad-Houses, Lazarettos, Hospitals and Schools: With a Plan of Management Adapted to the Principle: in a Series of Letters, Written in the Year 1787. Dublin: T. Payne and the Mews-Gate.
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Brewer, E. Cobham.1884. Reading-Room Chairs at the British Museum. Notes and Queries No. 249 (Saturday, October 4, 1884): 277–278.
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Cuéllar, G.L. (2019). Books and Bodies in the British Museum Reading Room. In: Empire, the British Museum, and the Making of the Biblical Scholar in the Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24028-8_3
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