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Lloyd Roberts Collection

Date range: 16th-19th centuries

Medium: Printed

Number of items: 2,400 items.

David Lloyd Roberts (1835-1920) was the son of a Stockport cotton spinner who became a distinguished Manchester doctor and lecturer in Clinical Midwifery at Owens College. After his death most of his medical books went to the Royal College of Physicians in London, with a smaller donation of books to University College Bangor.

A substantial portion of the collection is devoted to first editions of major English authors ranging from Thomas Browne to Lord Byron and John Ruskin. However, the bequest added significantly to the Library's holdings of early editions of Ariosto and Dante Alighieri, and the collection also contains some mid 18th-century costume books by Tommaso Maria Mamachi.

There are a large number of fine bindings dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, including bindings commissioned for Jean Grolier and Giovanni Battista Grimaldi, with the characteristic Apollo and Pegasus cameo stamp.

There are also numerous examples of the work of 19th-century binders such as Zaehnsdorf, Bedford and Chambolle-Duru.

Further information:

  • Recorded in Library Search.
  • See also 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, vol. 71, no. 2 (1989), pp. 98-9.

Location:


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