Edward Edwards (Librarian)

Edward Edwards (born December 14, 1812 in Stepney , London , † February 7, 1886 in Niton , Isle of Wight ) was a British librarian , (library) historian and biographer .

Childhood and youth

Edward Edwards was the son of contractor Anthony Turner Edwards and was accepted into his father's business as an apprentice at the age of 14. Otherwise little is known of Edwards' youth, except that he received private lessons from George Abbott and also took part in a reading group for German-language literature with the same. It can be assumed, however, that Edwards in the King's Weigh House Chapel , which he used to visit regularly , came into contact with the radical thoughts of the local clergyman Thomas Binney , who, among other things, strongly rebelled against slavery.

When his father's company went bankrupt in 1832 , Edwards took on small writing and research assignments that appeared to be his only source of income. During this time he also joined the Society of Wranglers , which saw itself as a kind of radical discussion club for literature and art. Among the other members were the architect George Godwin and the siblings Henry and Margaretta Hayward. The exchange within this society aroused in Edwards a keen interest in education, librarianship and craftsmanship.

First publications and political commitment

In 1836, Edwards published an anonymous pamphlet condemning university entrance restrictions and outlining the ideal of a freely accessible university education. A little later this was followed by an open letter to the politician Benjamin Hawes , who had been involved in a parliamentary committee on the British Museum the previous year . The numerous suggestions for improvement for the museum library caused a sensation, not least the suggestion that they should be made accessible to a wider public by longer opening times. The enormous interest in the letter made a second edition necessary when Edwards took up a position as cataloger at the British Museum in 1839.

In 1837 Edwards took a trip to France and researched Achille Collas ' method of engraving medallions and similar objects. On his return to England Edwards was enlisted by the wealthy Australian James Macarthur to do the research for a planned description of New South Wales . Although it is not mentioned by name in the finished work, much of it is believed to have been made by Edwards himself.

Also in 1837 Edwards published an art-historical treatise on the seals of British kings, which covers the period from Edward the Confessor to William IV and contains copperplate engravings of the seals in question. This can be seen as a sign of some sort of artistic turnaround that accompanied Edwards' co-founding of the Art Union of London in 1837. This phase lasted only for a short time, however, as Edwards was forced to leave the Art Union dishonorable in 1840 because of the embezzlement of funds from the Art Union.

Librarian activity

British Museum Library (1839–1850)

In 1838 Edwards again turned to the library of the British Museum (today: British Library ) with his suggestions for improvement , but this time in a personal letter to Antonio Panizzi , who had acted as Keeper of Printed Books there since 1837. The letter resulted in Edwards being hired as an additional assistant in the printing department in 1839. There he was also part of a five-person research group consisting of Panizzi himself, John Winter Jones , Thomas Watts , John Humffreys Parry and Edwards, who worked on the development of a new library catalog. That being said, it was Edwards' responsibility to catalog the George Thomason collection , which contains valuable documents from the English Civil War , Commonwealth of England and the Restoration and is still accessible today in the British Library.

On June 11, 1844, Edwards married his fiancée Margaretta Hayward, whom he had met in the Society of Wranglers .

In the late 1840s, Edwards turned to statistics and comparative library science . The results of his private research, which he carried out to the chagrin of his superiors during working hours, published Edwards in the British literary magazine Athenaeum . It soon became apparent, however, that Edwards' publications were mostly misleading and possibly deliberately manipulative. Thomas Watts , colleague and at the same time Edwards 'greatest opponent, published letters in the Athenaeum in which he pointed out the weaknesses of Edwards' research results under the pseudonym Verificator. However, this did not diminish the interest of the MP William Ewart , whom Edwards already knew from the Art Union of London and who enforced the Public Libraries Act in Parliament in 1850 . That same year, Edwards was fired from the British Library for a lack of work ethic and was given a job at the first public library established under the Public Libraries Act .

Manchester Free Library (1850–1858) and return to science

Shortly after his resignation from the British Museum, Edwards was offered the management of the Manchester Free Library. There he developed a classified catalog, which he published in a letter to Sir John Potter in 1850. Nevertheless, Edwards made himself unpopular with the management by rarely visiting the library personally, but using the official stationery for the maintenance of his private research.

After Edwards had already been released from two libraries, he turned initially back to science. He wrote several articles for the eighth English language edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica and published a biography of Sir Walter Raleigh . With the latter, Edwards had the misfortune that it came on the market almost at the same time as the Raleigh biography of the journalist James Augustus St. John . Critics found that each of the two biographies made up for each other's weaknesses and praised Edwards' work mainly for the second volume, which contained Raleigh's letters.

Queen's College Library (1870–1876) and Bodleian Library (1877–1883)

From 1870 to 1876 Edwards was employed at the library of Queen's College in Oxford to catalog them. It seems to have been one of the happiest times in his life, but it was suddenly interrupted by the death of his wife in 1876. When the Library Association (now: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals ) was founded in 1877, Edwards was proposed as president, but had to decline due to his increasing deafness. Nevertheless, Edwards began to work at the Bodleian Library in the same year, despite waning strength .

In 1882 Edwards was made an honorary member of the Library Association . In the same year, the 70-year-old was asked to revise the Newspapers and Post Office articles for the ninth English-language edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica . A year later, Edwards' last employment ended, as the Bodleian Library could no longer afford his salary due to economic bottlenecks.

Last years

After his resignation in 1883, Edwards retired in the village of Niton ( Isle of Wight ). After he could no longer pay his rent and was shown outside, the Baptist preacher John Harrison took him in for free. In November 1885, Edwards got lost on one of his long walks and was found in a state of hypothermia only after several days . Since then, Edwards suffered from pneumonia .

Edwards was finally found dead on the morning of February 7, 1886 and buried three days later in the local cemetery. The grave remained unmarked until Edwards' biographer Thomas Greenwood had a memorial erected on the site in 1902.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} Richard Garnett: Edwards, Edward (1812–1886) . In: Stephen Leslie (Ed.): Dictionary of National Biography . tape 15 . Smith, Elder & Co., London 1888, p. 115-117 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa} Alistair Black: Edwards, Edward (1812–1886), librarian and writer . In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Howard Harrison (Eds.): The Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000 . tape 17 . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004.
3. ↑ Thomason Tracts. In: British Library. Retrieved April 8, 2020 .