The British Library is, without a doubt, one of the country’s most incredible institutions, but one that many visitors to London miss out on visiting. It holds an astonishing treasure trove of well over one hundred and fifty million collection items, including manuscripts, maps, newspapers, magazines, prints and drawings, music scores, and sound recordings. And that collection is growing fast. The library has its main headquarters at St. Pancras, London, just down the road from Kings Cross station (famous for its magic platform 9 ¾, where Harry Potter boarded his train to Hogwarts.)
Global and historic
The huge purpose-built library receives a copy of every publication produced in the UK and Ireland. Three million new items are added every year. But although it’s called the ‘British Library’, it collects items from all over the world, in almost every language under the sun. Of course, much of the material is stored in archives, and some items are too fragile to be handled by the public, but a lot of it can be accessed by readers, either in person or online. You can find items as new as today’s newspaper and as old as a Chinese oracle bone (engraved animal bone used for divination), dating all the way back to 1600 BCE.
Access for all
There’s space for 1,200 readers to read and work at desks in the Library’s reading rooms and many thousands more access the online collections every day. A real highlight is the Treasures of the British Library exhibition. This is a free, permanent exhibition that gives visitors a chance to see some of the most fascinating items held by the library. These include historical items, such as a recording of Nelson Mandela’s famous trial speech.
Sacred and literary
There are artistic treasures too, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook and beautifully illustrated sacred texts, from the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and other traditions. There are letters from famous people, including Queen Victoria and Oscar Wilde, and early versions of literary works, handwritten by the authors, for example Alice in Wonderland (originally called ‘Alice in the Underground’.) You can see how maps have changed down the ages, and much more. Of course, it’s a delight to see the exhibits for real in the gallery at the library, but if you can’t visit in person, you can find photos and explanations of key exhibits online.
The Treasure gallery
In its Treasures Gallery, the British Library holds some of the greatest and most significant books and manuscripts from across the world. Here you can see everything from Shakespeare’s first folio to Leonardo’s notebook, to the oldest Bible in the world. The collection also includes the 13th-century Magna Carta, a document of huge historical importance. Speak Up met with Julian Harrison, a curator at the British Library. We asked him to tell us more about the manuscript.
Julian Harrison (English accent): The British library holds not one but two of the original manuscripts of Magna Carta, which is one of the most significant constitutional documents in the world. It was originally issued in the year 1215 by the king of England named King John. And that document sets out essentially the liberties of the English people.
Rare materials
And, said Harrison, sometimes the Library holds the world’s last surviving copy of a literary work.
Julian Harrison: At the British Library we hold many literary treasures; many of them date from the Middle Ages. And one of the most important is a poem known as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Now this poem was written… probably at the end of the 14th century, just around the year 1400. It comes from the time of Chaucer but we don’t actually know who wrote Sir Gawain. Quite curiously, the poem was completely unknown until the middle of the 19th century when somebody going through the archives, going through the manuscripts at the British Library, discovered it for the first time. But it’s one of the greatest English treasures from the 14th century. The style of writing is completely unique, and it introduced a whole new poetic style to England.
Epic poem
And he went on to talk about other profoundly important texts.
Julian Harrison: There are no other surviving manuscripts of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, so [if] that one manuscript hadn’t survived we would be completely in the dark about it and that’s true of other literary treasures. For example, the British Library holds the only mediaeval manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem known as Beowulf, which is an incredible artistic, poetic work. [It] dates from round about the year 1000; again survives in just one manuscript held at the British Library in London.
By hand
Authors’ handwritten manuscripts and notebooks give an insight into the writing process behind some of our great literary works, as Harrison explained.
Julian Harrison: Also, at the British Library we hold many other 19th century literary texts by the original authors. For example, we have the original manuscript of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens and one of the other great treasures that we hold is one of the original copies of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. And what’s always really fascinating when you get to see an original manuscript [is,] you can actually see the changes and alterations in the text. You know, nobody who’s actually handwritten a manuscript of their own text gets it right the first time and actually seeing how they change things and alter things and how they’ve pondered and thought about a phrase and reworked it. That’s always a fascination for me about looking at a literary manuscript like Jane Eyre.
Weird and wonderful
So, are there any exhibits that visitors should look out for in particular? Harrison picks a few that span the ages.
Julian Harrison: We have so many weird and wonderful treasures in the Treasures Gallery at the Library, everything from postcards showing the original lyrics of The Beatles to early printed texts, things like the Gutenberg Bible and even things much earlier than that from Asia, things like the Diamond Sutra which is the oldest printed text from China.