Angela Burdett-Coutts Collection of Greek Manuscripts

By (author) Annaclara Cataldi Palau

Book cover: Angela Burdett-Coutts Collection of Greek Manuscripts

Extent: 472 pages

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Subjects: Book History, Conservation, & Museum Studies

Series: Bibliologia

Series volume number: 62

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(November 2021)

ISBN: 9782503593760

Price: $113.00

In stock

The story of Angela Burdett-Couts’collection of Greek manuscripts is investigated here for the first time; the author has identified and personally examined, described and reproduced her ca. 100 manuscripts in Ann Arbor University Library, in Athens Public Library, in London’s British Library and in Providence, Rhode Island, Brown Un


Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts (1814-1906), descendant of a wealthy and well-known family of bankers, inherited quite young, through a series of unpredictable circumstances, the enormous fortune of Thomas Coutts, her maternal grand-father. She spent most of her long life in London, where she occupied a prominent position in society, becoming well-known not only for her splendid life-style and her important literary and political acquaintances, as, for instance, Charles Dickens and Admiral Nelson, but for her active role as a philanthropist. This book explores a little-known side of her life; although she did not know Greek, she became the owner of ca. 100 Greek manuscripts, mostly theological, datable between the tenth and the sixteenth century, a part of which she donated to Highgate School. The manuscripts, with all the Baroness’s possessions, were dispersed at auction in 1921 and in 1987 and are now mainly divided between American and European University Libraries. This book has identified for the first time the Baroness’s Greek manuscripts, located and described them in detail, with special attention to their script style and their origin, adding to their description one or two plates of each codex.

  • By (author) Annaclara Cataldi Palau