page_title: Garrick Collection
section_title: Collection in the British Museum and Library
hierarchical_section_title: Garrick Collection / Collection in the British Museum and Library
caption_attribution_description: English: The binding of David Garrick's copy of Greville's Workes, part of the Garrick Collection at the British Library. Sir Anthony Panizzi, the British Museum's Keeper of Printed Books, suggested the rebinding of the Garrick Collection in 1840, and it was his idea to stamp the Garrick arms on the bindings.
context_page_description: The British Library's Garrick Collection is a collection of early printed editions of English drama amassed by the actor and playwright David Garrick. The collection was bequeathed to the British Museum in 1779.
context_section_description: Garrick's collection was transferred to the Museum in 1780 and was said to have been delivered from the actor's home in the Adelphi to the British Museum on a hand cart escorted by three Museum representatives. Since then it can be said to have had a turbulent history.
  In 1767 the British Museum had been authorised by an act of Parliament "to exchange, sell, or dispose of, any duplicates of printed books ... laying out the money arising by such sale, in the purchase of other things that may be wanting in, or proper for, the said Museum". The first such sale took place in 1769 and raised £564. The second sale occurred in March 1788 and raised £529. Included in the later sale were approximately 43 items from the Garrick Collection identified as duplicate items and deemed inferior to copies already in the Museum's possession. The checking of copies was, however, not rigorous and the Museum ended up selling unique editions and printings.
  In the period 1805-06 the Museum implemented a policy of transferring items from other collections to supplement the now incomplete Garrick Collection. This was in part to allow for a new subject arrangement of the Museum's rooms. Twenty items were removed from the Thomason Collection and at least three from the Sloane Collection. The sources of other transferred items cannot be identified.
  In 1840 Anthony Panizzi, the Museum's Keeper of Printed Books, recommended that the Garrick Collection, still largely bound in tract volumes, be broken up and the items bound individually. Although there was opposition to this plan from within and without the Museum, in 1841 the Trustees gave their approval, and by the beginning of 1846 the rebinding programme was completed. During the process of breaking up the tract volumes Museum staff had taken the opportunity to more closely examine the individual printed items with the view to making copies more perfect. Approximately twenty Garrick items were improved in various ways: some by the addition of facsimile leaves, others through the exchange of leaves between duplicates. In some instances leaves were removed from Garrick items to improve plays in the King's Library.
  The last recorded disturbance of the Garrick Collection was announced in October 1956. A significant number of leaves stolen from British Museum items were identified as being bound in volumes in Thomas J. Wise's Ashley Library, a collection acquired by the Museum in 1937. Further investigations proved that stolen leaves were also present in the collection that Wise had assisted John Henry Wrenn in amassing (the Wrenn Library is held at the University of Texas's Harry Ransom Center). In total 206 leaves were identified as being stolen, the majority of these from the Garrick Collection. The worst example of theft occurred in the Garrick copy of James Shirley's play of 1640, The opportunitie, which lost seventeen leaves.
caption: David Garrick's copy of Fulke Greville's Workes, showing the family arms on the binding.
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