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Library of Sir Thomas Browne

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Introduction

No single document gives better evidence of the extraordinary learning of Sir Thomas Browne, the man, encyclopedist, and philosopher, than the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue of the Library of Sir Thomas Browne. Not only is it testimony to the wide compass and depth of Browne's polymath learning in the spheres of science, religion and the arts, but it also provides a unique insight into the proliferation, distribution and availability of books printed in increasing number throughout 17th c. Europe and purchased by either the intelligentsia, aristocracy, priest, physician or educated merchant-class.

The 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue lists the reading material of an individual's life-time . It records the contents and volume of one of 17th century Europe's most wide-ranging, private libraries as well as some of the sources for the encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica more commonly known as Vulgar Errors. It also highlights the inter-relationship between science, religion and the arts in the seventeenth century, albeit through the microcosm perspective of the private library of one of it's leading thinkers; as once remarked-

to the student of the history of ideas in its modern sense of the inter-relationship between philosophy, science, art and philosophy, Browne is of great importance.

Browne graduated from the University of Leiden in 1637, having previously studied at the Universities of Montpellier and Padua for his medical degree. Upon his establishment in Norwich as a physician he was able to begin a life-time's bibliophilia, building a private library, aquiring and no doubt reading many of an estimated 1500 titles. Adept in no less than five modern languages, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Danish as well as Latin, Greek and Hebrew, the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue reflects the wide scope of Browne's amateur hobbies, who following the translation of his Religio Medici and encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica into French, Latin and Dutch was acknowledged as one of the great intellects of seventeenth century Europe.

Browne's erudite learning is reflected in the fact that the Classics of the ancient world as well as theology, history, geography, philology, philosophy, anatomy, antiquities, Biblical scholarship, cartography, embryology, medicine, cosmography, ornithology, minerology, zoology, travel, law, mathematics, geometry, literature, both Continental and English, the latest advances in scientific thinking in astronomy, chemistry as well as esoteric topics such as astrology, alchemy, physiognomy and the Cabbala are all represented in the Catalogue.

It was the American scholar Jeremiah Stanton Finch, Dean Emeritus Yale University who completed the indexing of the books of Sir Thomas and his son Edward Browne's libraries, 'after many years in many libraries' in 1986 . J.S. Finch noted that the Catalogue advertised books of Sculpture and Painting, which somehow never made it to the Auction. In the event, the Auction held upon January 8th-10th 1711 was attended by Jonathan Swift and buyers working on behalf of Sir Hans Sloane. Thus an unknown percentage of books auctioned from the Library of Sir Thomas Browne subsequently formed the foundation for the future British Library.

The one-time blind librarian Jorge Luis Borges, a life-long admirer of Browne, considered paradise itself to be a Library . The following titles represent only a fraction of the total volume of Library of Sir Thomas Browne and have been selected as a thumb-nail sketch of the omniverous reading material and bibliophilia which Thomas Browne engaged upon over the course of half a century.

Ancient World

Late Roman Empire/early Christian era

Renaissance and Contemporaries

Astronomy

Contemporary science

Philosophy

Medical

Esoteric

Natural History

Miscellaneous

  • Schindler, Lexicon Hebraic, Chaldic, Syrian, Arabic (1612
  • J.C.Scaliger On Insomnia (1610) Geneva
  • "Of the cause of purple rain in Brussels" (1648)

Literature'

Sources

  • A Facsimile of the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue of Sir Thomas Browne and his son Edward's Libraries. Introduction, notes and index by J.S.Finch pub. E.J.Brill Leiden 1986
  • Music, mysticism and Magic- A sourcebook ed. Joscelyn Godwin pub. Arkana 1986
  • The Strategy for Truth-Leonard Nathanson Chicago University Press 1967
  • The greatest benefit to Mankind. A medical history from antiquity to the present. Roy Porter Harper and Collins 1999
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