The immense collection of broadsides forms one of the most remarkable features of this magnificent library. In volume iv. p. 201 of the Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, published in 1898, Lord Crawford informs us that 'in the last fourteen or fifteen years he had managed to collect something like nineteen thousand of them, including English, French, German and Venetian Proclamations (3000), Papal Bulls (11,000) and English Ballads (3000).' Among them are several very rare indulgences printed by Wynkyn de Worde and Pynson, and a large number of proclamations and ballads of special interest and value, far too numerous to mention.
The present Earl of Crawford, who is a Trustee of the British Museum, President of the Camden Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries, and who was formerly President of the Royal Astronomical Society, has printed catalogues of the English broadsides and ballads, and of the Chinese books and manuscripts in his collection, together with hand-lists to the Oriental manuscripts, the early editions of the Greek and Latin writers, and the proclamations issued by authority of the kings and queens of Great Britain and Ireland. He has also printed collations and notes of some of the rare books in the library.
FOOTNOTES:
[101] Mainly contributed by Mr. J.P. Edmond, Librarian to Lord Crawford.
[102] Lord Crawford's Seat, near Wigan.
[103] Since the above was printed it has been announced that Lord Crawford's MSS. have become by purchase the property of Mrs. Rylands of Manchester.
HENRY HUTH, 1815-1878
Mr. Henry Huth, who was born in London in 1815, was the third son of Mr. Frederick Huth of Hanover, who settled at Corunna, in Spain; but on the occupation of that town by the French in 1809 he came to England, where he became a naturalised British subject, and founded the well-known firm which is still carried on by his descendants. Mr. Henry Huth, we are informed in the preface to the Catalogue of the Huth Library, written by his son, Mr. Alfred Henry Huth, was intended for the Indian Civil Service, and was sent to Mr. Rusden's school at Leith Hill in Surrey, where he 'learned Greek, Latin, and French (Spanish was his mother-tongue), and had also got well on with Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic'; but in 1833, the East India Company having lost their Charter, his father removed him from the school and took him into his business. Office-work proving distasteful to him, he travelled for some years on the Continent and in America, rejoining his father's firm as partner in 1849. From his early years Mr. Henry Huth had been a collector of books, and on his return home he set energetically to work to form that splendid library which ranks among the finest in England, and which has been carefully preserved and augmented by his son, Mr. Alfred Henry Huth. Mr. Henry Huth gave commissions at most of the important book-sales, and we are told that 'he called daily at all the principal booksellers on his way back from the city, a habit which he continued up to the day of his death.' He was a member of the Philobiblon Society, and in 1867 printed for presentation to the members a volume of Ancient Ballads and Broadsides published in England in the Sixteenth Century, reprinted from the unique original copies he had bought at the Daniel sale. He was also a member of the Roxburghe Club. Mr. Huth died on the 10th of December 1878, and was buried in the churchyard of Bolney, in Sussex. He married Augusta Louisa Sophia, third daughter of Frederick Westenholz of Waldenstein Castle, in Austria, by whom he had three sons and three daughters.
Among the treasures in Mr. Huth's library are block-books of the Ars Moriendi, Ars Memorandi, and the Apocalypse; the superb copy of the Gutenberg Bible which was formerly in the libraries of Sir M. Masterman Sykes and Mr. Henry Perkins; two copies of the Fust and Schoeffer Bible of 1462, one on vellum; and a particularly fine copy of St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei, printed at Rome in 1468. The collection also comprises several of the pre-Reformation German Bibles; the first edition of Luther's Bible; the Coverdale Bible of 1535, and the Icelandic Bible printed at Holum in 1584; together with upwards of one hundred other Bibles, a large number of New Testaments, and various portions of the Scriptures in all languages.