London has a rich literary legacy: Charles Dickens wrote “Oliver Twist” while living there. William Shakespeare penned some of his most famous plays in the city, including “Hamlet.” Virginia Woolf, who was born in the Kensington area in 1882, set “Mrs. Dalloway” in the British capital.
Original works by a number of august authors are on display at museums, libraries and book shops around the city and at Firsts London, a rare book fair that runs Thursday through Sunday at the Saatchi Gallery. Craving a closer look at Beethoven’s sketchbook for his “Pastoral” Symphony? Try the Treasures Gallery at the British Library. Want to pore over an illuminated manuscript from the Middle Ages? The Victoria and Albert Museum has you covered.
No matter whether you’re seeking illustrated, annotated or just plain quirky examples, here is a selection of spots to get your fill. (One perk of London’s libraries and museums: Many are free.)
British Library
This national library’s collection of more than 170 million items includes more than 13.5 million printed books and e-books, and another 310,000 manuscript volumes. It also contains two of the four surviving original copies of the Magna Carta, the 13th-century peace treaty that was an inspiration for the U.S. Bill of Rights ratified in 1791.
One Magna Carta is on display in the free ground-floor Treasures Gallery, where visitors can also see the only known surviving manuscript of the Old English epic poem “Beowulf”; the first collected edition, from 1623, of Shakespeare’s plays; and Virginia Woolf’s handwritten manuscript for “Mrs. Dalloway.”
If you want to see even more diaries, drafts and letters from authors such as Emily Brontë or Jane Austen, you can request items from the library’s online catalog and view them in the Manuscripts Reading Room on the second floor. (The only requirements are that you are at least 18 and that you register for a free Reader Pass.)
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington has an expansive portfolio of miniature books, including a 14th-century German devotional booklet that depicts episodes from the Passion of Jesus, which is made entirely of ivory. Another standout is an 18th-century Jewish manuscript prayer book that was made in Austria and features a tortoiseshell binding with silver-gilt ornamentation.
The collection also includes notable artist sketchbooks, among them a notebook of Leonardo da Vinci’s. And don’t miss the 15th-century illuminated manuscripts, especially the highly detailed books of hours — lavishly illustrated personal Christian prayer books — including one in Dutch from the mid-15th century.
Visitors can explore even more titles inside the museum’s National Art Library. Among its more than one million items: nearly 200 books printed before 1501; the complete libraries of the 19th-century scholars John Forster and Alexander Dyce; and art, fashion and design journals from the 18th century to the present.
The library recommends that people submit requests online for materials, which can be viewed in its reading rooms. (Bring a current ID to receive a free library card.)
A venture to the V&A East Storehouse in East London yields even more options: The space is home to the library’s vast children’s book collection, with titles available to view by appointment, as well as sketchbooks by the author Beatrix Potter, which can be requested using the museum’s Order an Object service.
Natural History Museum
Also in South Kensington, this museum holds one of the world’s oldest collections of books on natural science, field biology, zoology and botany.
Visitors to the museum’s Treasures Gallery can view an oversize page from the naturalist John James Audubon’s “The Birds of America” (1827-1838) — staff members swap out the page on display so light does not fade the illustrations — or consult an 1890 Dutch edition of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary treatise “On the Origin of Species.”
The museum’s library, which is open to the public by appointment, holds nearly 400,000 books, 22,000 journal titles and more than 350,000 original drawings and artworks. Among the items you can request to see: One of the earliest natural history encyclopedias, a 1469 first edition of Pliny the Elder’s “Historia Naturalis,” which is written in Latin and includes an account of a man with 16 toes.
Shapero Rare Books
This rare-books shop on Bond Street in Mayfair has managed to make ancient tomes trendy. Staff members regularly post behind-the-scenes videos on the shop’s Instagram account exploring books like an early 18th-century Bible with a prominent typo and exquisitely crafted pocket Qurans. (Both are currently available to view, tucked among the shop’s soaring white bookcases.)
Among the shop’s more than 11,000 items spanning the ninth to 21st centuries are books on travel, like Antoine Ignace Melling’s early 1800s illustrated “Voyage Pittoresque de Constantinople et des rives du Bosphore,” as well as natural history and children’s books such as a first edition of Dr. Seuss’s 1956 story “If I Ran the Circus.”
Hatchards in Piccadilly
The secret sanctum in this shop founded in 1797 is the third-floor rare-book room, where shelves of singular tomes in their original dust jackets beckon. Shoppers, for example, can see a glass case with a first edition of Winston Churchill’s four-volume “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples” (1956-58) — with the second volume signed by Churchill — or page through a first edition of “The Savoy Cocktail Book” from 1930 by Harry Craddock. Ned Fitzgerald, a specialist at Hatchards, called it “perhaps the definitive cocktail compendium.”
University Libraries
For advance planners, the Foyle Special Collections Library at King’s College London in the Holborn district holds a treasure trove of medical, scientific and religious literature. Visitors can ask to view titles from a rare books collection of around 12,000 titles that includes a 1483 Venice printing of the Latin epic poem “Punica” by the Roman orator Silius Italicus and first editions of the novels of Charles Dickens.
Other highlights include early works on astronomy by Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei; the first printed edition of Aristotle’s collected works; and 15th-century Latin and German Bibles illustrated with fine woodcuts. The library recommends that visitors make an appointment at least one working day in advance (and bring a photo ID).
To make an afternoon of it, pop over to University College London’s Special Collections library, which holds more than 100,000 rare books, pamphlets and periodicals dating from the 15th century to the present. A day pass costs 7 pounds, or about $9.50, and requires an online application at least two working days beforehand.
The collection includes a first edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s 1687 book “Principia,” in Latin, which explains his laws of motion and universal gravitation. James Joyce fans can also see first editions of all of the 20th-century Irish novelist’s major works, including “Ulysses.”
Sarah Bahr writes about culture and style for The Times.
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