Untold lives blog

Stage productions had been censored since the Tudor era but the Stage Licensing Act of 1737 established a procedure of theatre censorship overseen by the Office of the Lord Chamberlain.  Most of the work was carried out by an official reader, the Examiner of Plays.

The Examiner of Plays wielded a substantial amount of power. The theatre was a powerful means of communication and the censors decided the limits of creative licence, often influenced by their own moral, religious and political leanings.

The British Library’s collection of manuscripts for plays submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office for licensing begins in 1824 when playwright and theatre manager George Colman was appointed Examiner of Plays.

George Colman the Younger, unknown artist, early 19th century NPG D16212 © National Portrait Gallery, London

Colman was particularly concerned by political themes in plays, dictated, in part, by the tumultuous times in which he was working.  The government wished to repress radical reformist politics and passed new laws meting out harsher punishments for publishing blasphemous and seditious works.  Colman was quick to deny authors the chance to show their plays if he deemed them politically dangerous.

We can see how tough Colman was by his reaction to Mary Russell Mitford’s play, Charles the First, when it was submitted to him in 1825.

Add MS 42873, f.415. First folio of Mary Russell Mitford’s play Charles the First 

If we look at the entry in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office Day Book we can see that the play was refused a licence.

Add MS 53702, Lord Chamberlain’s Office Day Books, 1824-1852 - Mary Russell Mitford’s play Charles the First is refused a licence

Although, Mitford believed her play to be a favourable portrait of King Charles I, it was refused a licence.  Colman wrote to the Lord Chamberlain:  ‘…Charles the First (of England) – brings, instantly to mind the violent commotions & catastrophes of that unhappy Monarch’s reign…the piece abounds (blasphemously, I think) with Scriptural allusions & quotations, & invoked over & over again, by hypocrites, & regicides’.

Add MS 42873, f.408

As the threat of revolution was in the air, Colman deemed Mitford’s representation of the execution of a King far too dangerous to allow on stage.  The Lord Chamberlain agreed.  Colman’s reply to the theatre owner was casually dismissive: ‘I have less regret in communicating this intelligence as I think you might have anticipated it’.

Mitford’s response to her censor showed that Colman had already threatened to censor her next project: ‘I shall not now meddle with Henry the Second – especially as I believe that I perceive the reason which induces you to think the subject is a bad one’.

Add MS 42873, f.413

Mitford realised that themes of conflict and betrayal against authority were never going to pass the censor and so decided not to pursue her project, exercising self-censorship.  Colman’s reputation as a harsh judge meant that authors often chose not to test him, as it was likely they would fail to receive a play licence. 

To the dismay of many playwrights, Colman continued to hold the office of Examiner of Plays until his death in 1836.  Until the end, he proved dedicated to his cause and many playwrights after Mitford were refused the right to produce their plays.

Jessica Gregory
Curatorial Support Officer, Modern Archives and Manuscripts

Further reading:
J. R. Stephens, The Censorship of English Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)
Add MS 42865- 43038, Plays submitted to the Lord Chamberlain's Office for licensing under the provisions of the Acts regulating the performance of stage plays
Add MS 53702-53708, Chamberlain’s Office Day Books. Registers of plays received in the Lord Chamberlain’s office

While sorting through family papers, I discovered that my grandmother Gertrude Dimmock had written a book about Mermanjan, an Afghan noblewoman who had run away to India after falling in love with an English army officer in 1849.  This was a true story told by Mermanjan to my great-grandmother Beatrice Dunsterville, wife of a Surgeon Major in the Indian Medical Service.

Photograph of Mermanjan in the early days of her marriage - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304/5 

Beatrice inherited all Mermanjan’s ‘treasured relics’ including her traditional dress, her personal diary and letters, first-hand accounts of her story, and paintings and sketches by her husband Thomas Maughan.  She wanted her story to be told to the world. Many years later, my grandmother pieced together the story of ‘love and hate, joy and sorrow, faith, courage, and endurance’ and published Mermanjan – Star of the Evening.  Gertrude donated the papers and drawings to the India Office Private Papers at the British Library and the traditional dress is held in the British in India Museum in Nelson, Lancashire.

I decided to delve deeper into this extraordinary intercultural love story.  An account by Thomas Maughan tells how he met his future wife in 1849 when serving in Afghanistan with the Bombay Army.  Whilst out riding one evening, he happened to pass Mermanjan, aged about sixteen, mounted on a spirited black horse in her national costume, accompanied by male escorts. Mermanjan was the only daughter of an Afghan noble, niece of the Amir of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammed and of the Durani tribe of the Afghans. Her father owned a lot of land around Peshwar and her mother was Circassian who had tragically passed away a few years before. 

Sketch by Thomas Maughan of Mermanjan when they first met - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304/14 (Copyright - heirs of Mermanjan O'Kearney)

Maughan wrote how it was ‘love at first sight- a strong lasting never swerving devotion became our destiny from that moment'.

Sketches of Mermanjan by Thomas Maughan -  India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304/5 (Copyright - heirs of Thomas Maughan or Mermanjan O'Kearney)

The attraction was reciprocal: Mermanjan found Thomas to be ‘the most handsomest and most splendid figure of a man that she had ever seen, and childlike she turned to look after him as they passed and found that the officer also turned to look back at her’.

Sketches (maybe of Thomas Maughan?) and British soldiers carrying out drills - India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304/5 (Copyright - heirs of Thomas Maughan or Mermanjan O'Kearney)

They met again, ‘exchanging ardent looks’.   Mermanjan arranged to ride out alone, and Thomas followed her at a distance.  She led the way to a deserted orange garden, where the ‘romance that soon deepened into devotion’ started. They did not speak the same language, but Mermanjan reminisced romantically that ‘the language of the eyes is eloquent enough in the East’.

Mermanjan was a devout Muslim, and Thomas a Christian.  Christian marriage ‘would have been but a prelude to the certain and cruel death [of Mermanjan] at the hands of her incensed relatives’.  Therefore they were united by the simple ‘Nikkah’ ceremony which is a celebration of the marriage contract without religious rites or social festivities.

Then Thomas had to leave Afghanistan: ‘...vainly the infatuated man implored her to fly with him, tears even coursing down his manly cheeks.  However though she could not make him understand in her language that to attempt to leave with him would mean pursuit by her fierce father and valiant brothers  and certain death for her and renewed hostilities with the soldiers, she remained obdurate and with breaking heart took leave of her lover and true husband’.   Thomas returned to India, and Mermanjan became intensely depressed through separation from her beloved husband.

After a few months, Mermanjan decided to run away to find Thomas, accompanied by a faithful slave and armed with a dagger ‘to protect her honour on her perilous journey’.

To be continued…!

Felicia Line
Independent researcher

Further reading:
Gertrude Dimmock, Mermanjan, Star of the Evening (Hendon Publishing Co. Nelson, 1970) 
India Office Private Papers Mss Eur E304 Maughan Collection

Finding Mermanjan Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Mermanjan's diary 

As Pride month draws to a close we take a look at the censorship of Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the problems the censoring authorities had with its overt references to homosexuality.

Front cover of the copy of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office in 1955. British Library, Add MS 68871.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof stands as one of Tennessee Williams’ best-loved plays.  The play’s first performances on Broadway in 1955 met with popular and critical acclaim and it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama that same year.  Problems arose, however, when the play was prepared for production in England where it faced censorship at the hands of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office which was responsible for licensing all plays performed on the British stage.  Concerned at its content, the Lord Chamberlain’s Office sought to excise all swear words and references to homosexuality from the play.

Passages marked in blue pencil by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office were deemed inappropriate for public performance. Here the Examiner of Plays objects to the play’s swear words. British Library, Add MS 68871.

The Stage Licensing Act of 1737 (reinforced by the Theatres Act of 1843) required that all plays intended for public performance in Great Britain had to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office for examination and licensing.  Plays were submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office and were checked by an Examiner of Plays.  The Examiner recommended whether a licence for performance should be granted or not and any content that was considered inappropriate was cut.  All cuts and amendments were made in blue pencil by the Examiners.  Any play could be banned and the Lord Chamberlain did not need to provide a reason for his decision.  This process of censoring plays in Great Britain lasted from 1737 until 1968 when the law was repealed.   

Passages marked in blue pencil by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office objecting to the play’s references to homosexuality. British Library, Add MS 68871.

Set in the Mississippi Delta, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof examines the complicated relationships among members of Big Daddy Pollitt's family – particularly between Brick and his wife Cat.  Themes such as truth and falsehood, life and death, relationships and sexuality are explored throughout the play and it was this last, dealing with sexuality, that caused the Lord Chamberlain’s Office most concern. 

At the heart of the play is Brick, a troubled man who has become an alcoholic following the death of his friend, Skipper.  Brick’s family struggle to maintain functional relationships in the wake of his despair, whilst Brick’s wife, recognises the possibility that her husband may have had a romantic attachment to Skipper.

It was still a criminal offence to be gay in the United Kingdom in 1955 and the Lord Chamberlain’s Office cut all references to Brick’s homosexuality.  The cuts removed much of the depth and complexity in the relationship between Brick and Skipper and as a result Tennessee Williams rejected the amendments, forcing the Lord Chamberlain's Office to refuse a licence for the play to be performed.

 Passages marked in blue pencil by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office objecting to the play’s references to homosexuality, despite their importance to the play as a whole. British Library, Add MS 68871.

Yet, whilst the Lord Chamberlain’s Office could ban a play from public performance, it had no jurisdiction over private performances which could take place in ‘private’ theatres often established as club theatres where access was granted to audiences who paid a nominal subscription to the club.  Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was first performed ‘privately’ in Britain for The New Watergate Club at The Comedy Theatre in January 1958.  Founded with the intention of staging plays without censorship, the club boasted 64,000 members at the time of the play’s premiere and helped undermine the authority of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office enabling plays with LGBTQ content to be performed uncensored.

The Comedy Theatre, now The Harold Pinter Theatre, where The New Watergate Club put on the first British performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof despite the Lord Chamberlain’s ban. Image CC BY 3.0 from Wikipedia

Daniel Brass, King’s College, London, and Alexander Lock, Curator Modern Archives and Manuscripts

A radical political thinker known as the ‘father of Russian socialism’, Alexander Herzen (1812-1870) witnessed first-hand the democratic and liberal revolutions that swept through Europe in 1848. Leaving Russia for Paris in 1847, Herzen soon became disillusioned with the uprisings which sought to replace European monarchies with republican government, but which resulted in the deaths and exile of thousands of people. His collection of essays ‘From the Other Shore’ explores the failures of the revolution. Originally written in Russian and sent to his friends in Moscow, he described the work as ‘a record of a strife in which I have sacrificed many things, but not the boldness of knowledge’ (‘To my Son’, Add MS 89364/1).

‘The Two Shores’, title page, Add MS 89364/1

The British Library has recently acquired an English manuscript translation from the late 19th century entitled ‘The Two Shores’. Although unpublished and unsigned, the translation can been attributed to the English suffragist and writer Lady Jane Maria Strachey (1840-1928). A letter addressed to Strachey by her friend Mlle Souvestre refers to her translation of Herzen’s work (29 October 1874, 9/27/G/064, Strachey Letters, The Women’s Library, LSE) and this particular manuscript was sold from the papers of her son, Giles Lytton Strachey, in 2015.

Strachey was an active feminist with a keen interest in politics. She moved in literary and political circles that included George Eliot and the leader of the women’s suffrage movement, Millicent Fawcett. Bold and forward thinking, it is easy to see why Herzen’s essays appealed to Strachey. Her translation begins with Herzen’s address to his son Alexander, in which the revolutionary spirit of the work is clear:

‘I am not afraid of placing in your young hands the protest – at times bold to rashness – of an independent mind against a system which is obsolete servile & lying, against those absurd idols of former times which are now stripped of all meaning and are ending their days in our midst,
hindering some and terrifying others’.

‘To my Son’, Add MS 89364/2. Reproduced with permission from The Society of Authors as agents of The Strachey Trust.

Another passage articulates Herzen’s continued faith in socialist and individualist ideals – not dissimilar to Strachey’s own – despite his disappointment in the liberal revolutionaries:

‘… do not remain upon the shore of the old world – better perish, than seek safety in the hospital of re-action. Faith in a future social organisation is the only religion I bequeath you, it offers no paradise, & no rewards but those of our own Conscience’.

German and French editions: Add MSS 89364/3 and 89364/4

Acquired with the manuscript were the first printed edition of Herzen’s work, a German copy ‘Vom anderen Ufer’, published in Hamburg in 1850, and a French translation ‘De l’autre rive’ (Geneva, 1871). The French edition was the source for this translation, which appears in draft form and was seemingly never published. Indeed, the first English translation of ‘From the Other Shore’ was not published until 1956. In this case Strachey’s translation – if it is by her – is likely to be the earliest translation of Herzen’s essays into English.

As well as providing an insight into the translation process, then, this manuscript and its accompanying volumes also reveal the radical political reading of an important figure in the British feminist movement. It further hints at Herzen’s engagement with British intellectuals in London, where he lived during the 1850s and 60s, and the reception of his writing in British political thought.

Further reading:

All translations cited are from 'The Two Shores', an English manuscript translation of Alexander Herzen's ‘From The Other Shore’, Add MS 89364

Alexander Herzen, From the other Shore, translated from the Russian by Moura Budberg; and The Russian People and Socialism: an open letter to Jules Michelet, translated from the French by Richard Wollheim; with an introduction by Isaiah Berlin (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1956)

On Jane Maria Strachey, see: R. Vetch, ‘Strachey, Sir Richard (1817–1908), scientist and administrator in India’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) [accessed 28 May 2019]

By Sara Hale
Heritage Made Digital and Modern Archives and Manuscripts

There is a book-stamp on the front pastedown of Davis 692, Johann Carion, Chronica Carionis…Auffs neuve in Lateinischer Sprach beschrieben, und…vermehret…durch Herrn Philippum Melanthonem, und Doctorem Casparum Peucerum, Wittenberg: H. Krafft, 1573.  This indicates that the volume was formerly in the collection of Lucien Désiré Prosper Graux (1878-1944).  Graux’s name appears on a report listing French Private Collections compiled in 1943 by the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas (The Roberts Commission), as part of their identification of cultural property at risk on the European continent.

  Records of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historical Monuments in War Areas (The Roberts Commission), 1943-1946, National Archives, College Park, Maryland, M1944, Record Group 239, Roll 0021

Dubbed the ‘Prince of Bibliophiles,’ and collecting over two decades, Graux amassed one of the largest and most spectacular private collections of books and manuscripts in the first half of the twentieth century in France.  Consisting of over 10,000 volumes, the collection excelled in  French, German and Italian literature, fine-bindings, historical and literary manuscripts, music, and illustrated books, amongst others.  Housed in his mansion at 33 Avenue Kleber in Paris, books were not the only pursuits for which Graux was noteworthy: as a doctor, entrepreneur, writer and publisher, Graux crossed disciplinary boundaries, and contributed widely to medical, social, political and literary fields.
 

Detail, Ex-libris of Doctor Lucien-Graux on the front pastedown of Davis 692

Graux received his early training in medicine, finding success in his position as editor of the Gazette Médicale de Paris, and shortly thereafter wealth in filing a patent for the drug Urodonal.  At the end of the First World War, Graux turned his attention toward the founding of Arys, a perfume company.  He became an advisor to a number of French ministries during the 1920s, including the foreign trade, for which he oversaw a number of diplomatic missions.  His work for the French state ultimately earned him the title, Knight of the Legion of Honour.  Another venture, Graux’s publishing house Les Amis du docteur, published bibliophilic booklets, original engravings, and his own historical and biographical essays, fantastical novels, and topics including, medicine, science, and the occult, further reflecting his vast, varied and interdisciplinary interests.

With his interests in the occult and supernatural, some have referred to him as a spiritualist.  But his response to the depredation of man during the Second World War might characterize him as a humanist.  In June 1940, shortly after the German occupation of France, Graux joined the resistance.  Discovered and arrested by the Gestapo in the spring of 1944, he was deported to the Dachau concentration camp in June, where he was murdered on 10 October 1944.

Despite the wide-scale confiscation and looting of property throughout France under the Nazi occupation, and the Roberts Commission’s identification of Graux’s collection being at risk, Graux’s collection remained intact.  Retained by his widow, Mme Lucien Graux (née Léontine de Flavigny), Graux’s library was sold through the Galerie Charpentier at Hotel Drouot Auction house, Paris, in nine sales between 1953 and 1957.

Davis 692 is presumed to have been purchased from the sale on 26 January 1957 by antiquarian book-seller Bernard Breslauer, from whom it was purchased by Henry Davis on 6 August 1959.  In addition to Davis 692, many works under Graux’s authorship can be found in the British Library Catalogue.

Antonia Bartoli
Spoliation Curator, British Library Printed Heritage Projects

Further information:
The Nazi Destruction and Looting of Libraries public lecture given by Antonia Bartoli.
Findings from the Bindings: Nazi Era Spoliation Research I - The Nazi Destruction and Looting of Libraries
Findings from the Bindings: Nazi Era Spoliation Research at the British Library II - the Collection of Jean Furstenberg 

In August 1880, William Morris embarked with family and friends on an expedition along the Thames from his home in Hammersmith. The destination was the family’s country residence, Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire.

The trip inspired Morris, textile designer, poet and novelist, to write News from Nowhere. This utopic novel focuses on Morris’s socialist ideas, particularly emphasising common ownership of the means of production, and a libertarian, rather than state controlled, socialism.

An exhibition, currently running at Henley River and Rowing Museum explores William Morris’s connection to the Thames and the influence that the river had on his work. The exhibition includes Morris’s autograph manuscript describing his journey along the river, on loan from the British Library (Add MS 45407 A).

The manuscript on display (left-hand case) in the exhibition, An Earthly Paradise: William Morris and the Thames, at Henley River and Rowing Museum

The manuscript is full of anecdotes and details from their journey. After sharing a joke with a waiter in Sunbury, ‘some of the males of the party seemed to think that they were entitled to indulge in the most abominable puns for the whole of the rest of the journey’.

The party was ‘Towed into the middle of Maidenhead Regatta’ and after reaching Great Marlow that night the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights, rarely glimpsed in Britain, were visible.

William Morris, Account of river journey from Hammersmith to Kelmscott, Add MS 45407 A, f. 4. © Society of Antiquaries. Reproduced with permission of the Society of Antiquaries.

Once the travelling party reached Henley they ‘stopped for dinner on right bank; W.M. cooked in cabin of Ark; result excellent’. However the dinner was soon interrupted by a group of swans who, luckily, soon ‘retired without breaking any man’s arm’.

The manuscript reveals the spirit of camaraderie between the travelling companions and the details of the people encountered, towns visited and the astounding natural beauty that they witnessed hints at the idyllic world of which Morris was inspired to write.

William Morris, Account of river journey from Hammersmith to Kelmscott, Add MS 45407 A, f. 5. © Society of Antiquaries. Reproduced with permission of the Society of Antiquaries.

An Earthly Paradise: William Morris & The Thames runs until 14 July at Henley River and Rowing Museum and includes hand-drawn textile designs, a signed copy of News from Nowhere, materials from the Morris & Co. workshop, along with his Thames series of textiles.

Stephen Noble
Modern Archives and Manuscripts

Follow us on Twitter @BL_ModernMSS

Included in the Henry Davis Gift at the British Library is Davis 874: Ordinarium missae pontificalis, Venice, 1595, MS with a named scribe: Fr. Cyprianus Mantegarrius.  This manuscript is recorded in Répertoire des biens spoliés en France durant la guerre 1939-1945, an inventory compiled and published between 1947 and 1949 documenting the loss of French collections during the Second World War.  Described as ‘Ordinarium — Мissæ pontificales. Venise, ms. italien de 1595 copié par Fr. Cyprianus Montegarius (no. 396 32.069)’, the manuscript is listed as missing from the collection of Мonsieur Jean Furstenberg.

Répertoire des biens spoliés en France durant la guerre 1939-1945, tome VII Archives, Manuscript et livres rares, no 396 32.069 British Library General Reference Collection S.F.925

Jean, formerly Hans, Furstenberg (1890-1982) was a prominent German-French banker and book collector, with a vast collection excelling in French and Italian editions dating between the 16th and 19th centuries.  In 1938, as a Jew living in Nazi Germany, Furstenberg was forced to flee his home in Berlin.  By paying a punitive Reichsfluchtsteuer (flight tax), he was able to salvage his collection and transport his library with 16,000 volumes.  Settling in France, he took French citizenship, changed his name from Hans to Jean, and moved to the Renaissance castle Beaumesnil in Normandy.  However, in 1940, following the German occupation of France, Furstenberg was persecuted by the Gestapo, and fled to Switzerland.  Shortly afterwards his collection was confiscated by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, a Nazi looting task force, and brought back to Germany.  There it was transferred to the Zentral Bibliothek der Hoch Schule, the central library of a projected elite academy of the Nazi party.

Detail, Scratched out ex-libris of Monsieur Jean Furstenberg on the front pastedown of Davis 874 

Towards the end of the war, as the Third Reich’s loss became apparent, Nazi forces transferred their holdings of confiscated cultural property to depots throughout Germany and Austria.  Following liberation by allied forces, many items from Furstenberg’s collection were recovered at two castles in Annenheim and Tanzenberg, Germany.  Davis 874 was one of the items recovered postwar by Furstenberg.  It was offered for sale in London in 1958 by antiquarian bookseller Bernard Breslauer, the son of the German antiquarian bookseller Martin Breslauer and another German-Jewish émigré, who fled as a result of Nazi persecution.

Martin’s bookshop in Germany had been in Unter den Linden and subsequently in the Franzosenstrasse, areas very close to the young Fürstenberg’s family’s business.  The catalogue advertising Davis 874 was issued to mark the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the firm Martin Breslauer.  In a preface by Bernard Breslauer called ‘1898-1958,’ he discusses the life and career of Martin Breslauer, and mentions Hans Furstenberg amongst his father’s friends.  Bernard describes how the young Furstenberg made the acquaintance of his father, and how this developed into a genuine friendship.  Martin had evidently helped the young Furstenberg to form his bibliophilic tastes.

Antonia Bartoli
Spoliation Curator, British Library Printed Heritage Projects

Further information:
The Nazi Destruction and Looting of Libraries public lecture given by Antonia Bartoli.

Findings from the Bindings: Nazi Era Spoliation Research I - The Nazi Destruction and Looting of Libraries

Findings from the Bindings: Nazi Era Spoliation Research at the British Library III – The Collection of Lucien Graux

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi regime was responsible for the confiscation, destruction, looting, and coerced sale of hundreds of millions of art objects and other items of cultural, historical and religious significance from public and private collections throughout Nazi-occupied Europe.  While stories of paintings and art collections have received academic, institutional and public attention, the history of the Nazi looting of books, manuscripts, and other printed material, from public and private collections, is lesser known.

The exact numbers accounting for total loss and destruction can only be estimated, due to the widespread nature, and sheer volume of the plunder and destruction.  Recent studies, however, have indicated that 22 million volumes from 37,000 libraries, not including private libraries, were affected.  While many volumes were either burned, or sent to paper mills and re-purposed, others were retained for study, or sold to profit the Third Reich.  Likewise, numerous private collectors as well as book-dealers and antiquarian businesses were forced to liquidate their collections and either abandon their stock or sell them for below market value.

An American soldier amongst cultural property looted by the Nazis and stored in a church at Elligen, Germany in 1945.
Credit: National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD

At the end of the war, the western allies came across numerous repositories throughout Germany, and recently liberated territories within Europe, filled with the cultural property the Nazis had systematically plundered.  Specialist units of the armed forces were tasked with sorting and classifying the material, and where original owners could be identified, restituting the items, or returning them to their country of origin.  The post-war restitution and repatriations were not always comprehensive, however, nor were original owners able to be identified.  Likewise items that were sold on the market or changed hands between 1933 and 1945 have continued to circulate, ending up in public or private collections, or on the market, necessitating further research.

In 1998, the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art developed a consensus of non-binding principles to which forty nations signed on in a pledge to research Nazi confiscated cultural property, and achieve just and fair solutions for object restitutions.  With the UK as a signatory, and as a national institution, the British Library take its duties seriously to identify collection items that might have been confiscated, lost, sold under duress, or otherwise displaced, between the period 1933-1945.

Most recently, investigations have focused on the Henry Davis Collection of Bookbindings: an encyclopaedic collection of cloth, panel, painted, paper, embroidered, and leather-bound bindings spanning from the 12th through 20th century, made across the globe, and acquired from dealers and at auction between the 1930s and 1970s.  Gifted by Henry Davis, O.B.E, (1897-1977) to the British Museum in 1968, the collection came to the British Library in 1972.

The present blog post is the first in a series of five to highlight these investigations, share our most recent findings, and to illustrate provenance research methodology that is conducted on a daily basis within the library.

Antonia Bartoli
Spoliation Curator, British Library Printed Heritage Projects

Further information:
The Nazi Destruction and Looting of Libraries public lecture given by Antonia Bartoli.

Findings from the Bindings: Nazi Era Spoliation Research at the British Library II - the Collection of Jean Furstenberg

Findings from the Bindings: Nazi Era Spoliation Research at the British Library III – The Collection of Lucien Graux