PRIVATE COLLECTOR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 719, 24 April 1953, Page 13

PRIVATE COLLECTOR

THE FAMILY AFFAIRS OF SIR THOMAS PHILLIPPS, by A. N. L. Munby; Cambridge University Press. English price, 15/-. HE subject of this memoir was the greatest collector of manuscripts of the 19th Century. Even as a university student on an allowance of £300 a year (quite a sum in 1811) his book purchases ran him substantially into debt. The early death of his father left him free to indulge his interest, till in the end he became a formidable figure in the auction rooms, on one occasion outbidding the Dutch Government for an important collection of historical documents. After his death, the Government of Holland, determined not to be beaten a second time, secured from Phillipps’s estate what were indeed important national archives. Phillipps is one of a great group of private collectors, to ‘whom scholarship owes a debt. Much of his collection is now publicly owned. This was hardly what he intended. Private collectors tend (continued on next page)

BOOKS

(continued from previous page) to think their collections will remain together for all time. Death duties and executors usually decide otherwise. The present volume is one of a series on Phillipps, and his library. Most of the series will be concerned with his catalogue and its contents, but the editor has decided to devote a _ short volume to the collector’s life and character. "It cannot be denied," he has to admit, "that Phillipps divorced from his library cuts a very disagreeable figure." Disagreeable and mean he certainly was, and the reader will get a certain grim amusement from the record. But he would do well to remember at the same time that half the scholars in Western

Europe used his collection and acknow-

ledged its greatness.

I.A.

G.