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10. Augustus De Morgan’s Library Revisited: Its Context and Its Afterlife

Chapter of: Augustus De Morgan, Polymath: New Perspectives on his Life and Legacy(pp. 248–276)

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Metadata
Title10. Augustus De Morgan’s Library Revisited
SubtitleIts Context and Its Afterlife
ContributorKaren Attar(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0408.10
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0408/chapters/10.11647/obp.0408.10
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightKaren Attar
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-09-04
Long abstractEven during his lifetime Augustus De Morgan was well known for his library of nearly 4,000 titles on mathematics and its history published between 1474 and 1870, in which landmarks of mathematical and astronomical literature jostled with multiple editions of popular textbooks and obscure rare works. This library was coveted after his death and continued in the twentieth century to be praised in superlative terms, for example as ‘one of the finest accumulations of books on the history of mathematics in the country’ (1996). It is particularly remarkable because, according to studies of book-collecting, mathematics was not a major collecting area. Yet De Morgan was neither the first, nor the sole, mathematical collector. His library is known largely because it was one of few mathematical libraries amassed by Victorians to remain intact after the owner’s death, when it was acquired by the University of London. Because De Morgan’s library has not yet been studied within the context of contemporary collecting, this chapter looks at the mathematical libraries, intact and dispersed, of De Morgan and some of his contemporaries to contextualise and reassess his library in comparison to other Victorian mathematical collections. We also discuss how the library fared after De Morgan’s death and why it continues to stand out.
Page rangepp. 248–276
Print length29 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Karen Attar

(author)
Curator of Rare Books and University Art at Senate House Library at University of London
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0898-808X

Karen Attar is the Curator of Rare Books and University Art at Senate House Library, University of London, and was for many years a Research Fellow at the University’s Institute of English Studies. Her publications cover various aspects of book collecting, library history and librarianship. They include several book chapters on Augustus De Morgan’s library, which she also reconstituted within the University of London and catalogued. She is best known for the Directory of Rare Book and Special Collections in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland (3rd edn, 2016).

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