Frederick S. Ferguson Book Collection

Date range: 1541-1648

Medium: Printed

Number of items: 366 items.

Frederick Sutherland Ferguson (1878-1967), managing director of Bernard Quaritch Ltd from 1928 to 1943, made an outstanding contribution to the first edition of STC: A. W. Pollard & G. R. Redgrave, A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640 (London: The Bibliographical Society/B. Quaritch, 1926). This portion of his personal library, purchased in 1966, contains a large number of 16th- and 17th-century items relating to Scottish history and literature.

The collection contains four works by the historian George Buchanan, including the first editions of his De Iure Regni apud Scotos: Dialogus (Edinburgh: Henry Charteris, 1579) and his Rerum Scoticarum Historia (Edinburgh: Alexander Arbuthnet, 1582). There are four editions of the Scottish royal book of King James, Basilikon Doron (London and Edinburgh, 1603), and some 25 items relating to Scottish parliamentary administration.

The Library also has a copy of Ferguson's own extensively annotated version of the first edition of STC.

Further information:

• Recorded in Library Search.
• David W. Riley, 'English Books of the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, with Particular Reference to History and Literature', Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 71.2 (Summer 1989), 87-102 (pp. 88-9).

Location:

• The John Rylands Library, Deansgate  [Map]
• Find out how to use the reading rooms in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library