The History and Provenance of Manuscripts in the Collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps: New Approaches to Digital Representation
The History and Provenance of Manuscripts in the Collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps: New Approaches to Digital Representation
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托马斯·菲利普斯爵士收藏的手稿的历史和出处：数字表示的新方法
作者：
Toby Burrows
托马斯·菲利普斯爵士（1792-1872 年）的手稿收藏是有史以来最大的私人收藏之一。菲利普斯是一位富有的曼彻斯特实业家的私生子，他收集了大量的手稿、书籍、绘画、素描、版画、照片和其他材料。手稿数量大约在四万到六万之间——比大多数当代公共收藏还要多。菲利普斯购买时，约翰·米尔曼、利安德·范·埃斯和理查德·赫伯等主要私人收藏品正在进入市场。这些藏品又是由 18 世纪末和 19 世纪初法国和意大利宗教图书馆的分散形成的。菲利普斯准备出价高于大英博物馆等机构，他说这是为了拯救脆弱的历史材料而采取的一项深思熟虑的策略。他的收藏包括大量档案文件，特别是与英国地区和当地历史有关的文件。他生前与大英博物馆和博德利图书馆的谈判未能找到藏品的存放地点，他去世后，这些藏品由他的女儿凯瑟琳·芬威克和她的丈夫继承。在采取法律行动推翻菲利普斯的遗嘱后，芬威克家族及其后代花了几十年的时间逐渐出售这些藏品。这种传播的第一阶段是 1890 年代至 1930 年代在伦敦苏富比拍卖行举行的一系列拍卖，同时还向欧洲各国政府和少数私人收藏家进行直接销售。 1946 年，剩余的藏品被卖给了伦敦书商 W. H. Robinson Ltd.，随着苏富比拍卖行的进一步拍卖、目录销售、
The manuscript collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872) was one of the largest private collections ever assembled. The illegitimate son of a wealthy Manchester industrialist, Phillipps was able to put together a vast collection of manuscripts, books, paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and othermaterials. There were somewhere between forty thousand and sixty thousand manuscripts—bigger than most contemporary public collections. Phillipps was buying at a timewhenmajor private collections, like those of Johann Meerman, Leander van Ess, andRichardHeber,were coming onto themarket. These collections, in their turn, had been formed from the dispersal of religious libraries in France and Italy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Phillipps was prepared to outbid institutions like the BritishMuseum in what he said was a deliberate strategy to save vulnerable historical materials. His collection included an extensive number of archival documents, especially relating to British regional and local history. Negotiations in his lifetime with the British Museum and the Bodleian Library failed tofinda home for the collection, andonhis death itwas inherited byhis daughter Katherine Fenwick and her husband. After legal action to overturn Phillipps’s will, the Fenwicks and their descendants spent decades gradually selling off the collection. The first stage in this dispersal was a series of auctions at Sotheby’s in London between the 1890s and the 1930s, accompanied by direct sales to various European governments and to a small number of private collectors. In 1946, the remainder of the collection was sold to the London booksellers W. H. Robinson Ltd., and the dispersal continued with further auctions at Sotheby’s, catalog sales,