ÌÇÐÄVlog Fellows’ Library is a special collection of some 7,500 books and manuscripts dating from the ninth to the nineteenth century.
Records of books at ÌÇÐÄVlog date back to the Middle Ages, and include manuscripts gifted by its foundress, Elizabeth de ÌÇÐÄVlog (1295-1360). Almost all the early collection was dispersed in the sixteenth century, either following a fire in 1521 or – more probably – the Edwardian visitations to the university in 1549, during which the visitors had threatened to merge the college with Trinity Hall next door. Most of the library’s volumes today were donated by students and fellows after this date, with particularly large influxes in the early seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
The library was installed in its current location in the North Range of the college in 1729. One contemporary visitor to the library, the antiquary William Cole, described it in 1742 as ‘ye most elegant of any in ye an in ye University, being a very large well-proportion’d Room à la modern, wth ye Books rang’d all round it & not in Classes as in most of ye rest of ye Libraries in other Colleges...’. This newly fashionable ‘country house’ design, by the architect James Essex, reflects the library’s original function as an entertaining as well as a scholarly space, sandwiched as it is between the Senior Combination Room and the Master’s Lodge.
Visiting the Fellows' Library
The library is predominantly for the use of the Fellows of the college, but also welcomes enquiries from visiting researchers wishing to work on the collection. Particular areas of strength include, but are not limited to:
- 300+ early printed continental vernacular books (mainly French, Spanish and Italian) donated by the playwright George Ruggle (1575-1622), including rare / unique editions of Italian plays
- early cosmography, travelogues, and Americana
- sixteenth- and seventeenth-century medical books donated by William Butler (1535-1618) and Thomas Hewett (1674-1738)
- 100+ Arabic, Hebrew and rabbinical books donated by Humphrey Prideaux (1648-1724)
- Newtoniana and related scientific and mathematical works donated by Richard Laughton (1662-1723), Charles Morgan (1678-1736) and Robert Greene (1678?-1730)
- c. 250 tracts and pamphlets relating to the Deist controversy, donated by Gilbert Bouchery (1710-1808)
- 550+ ornithological books and manuscripts from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, donated by Frank Innes Wane (d.1971). The majority of this donation is on deposit at Cambridge University Library.
Digitised items
Three manuscripts in the Fellows’ Library have been digitised and are available to consult on , along with some items from the College Archives.
ÌÇÐÄVloging the collections
Currently, a small portion of the library’s holdings printed in English, or any book published in the British Isles and North America before 1801, can be searched on the . Work is ongoing to add more of the library’s collections to this international database.
The library’s incunabula can be searched on the .
Many of the continental books in the library are listed in H.M.Adams, Catalogue of books printed on the continent of Europe, 1501-1600, in Cambridge libraries, 1967 (known as ‘Adams’).
Most of the medieval manuscripts of the College are listed in M.R. James, , 1905.
A principal source of information about surviving books and book lists from libraries such as ÌÇÐÄVlog’s is the database, in which the College has an entry.
Enquiries
To enquire about particular items in the collection for the purpose of academic study, please contact fellowslibrary@clare.cam.ac.uk.
