Thomas Phillipps

Sir Thomas Phillipps, 1st Baronet (2 July 1792 – 6 February 1872), was an English antiquary and book collector who amassed the largest collection of manuscript material in the 19th century. He was an illegitimate son of a textile manufacturer and inherited a substantial estate, which he spent almost entirely on vellum manuscripts and, when out of funds, borrowed heavily to buy manuscripts, thereby putting his family deep into debt. Phillipps recorded in an early catalogue that his collection was instigated by reading various accounts of the destruction of valuable manuscripts. Such was his devotion that he acquired some 40,000 printed books and 60,000 manuscripts, arguably the largest collection a single individual has created, and coined the term "vello-maniac" to describe his obsession, which is more commonly termed bibliomania. The Collection In 1808, when Phillipps was 16 years old, he already owned 112 books (largely Gothic chapbooks). Later in life he is recorded to have said that he wanted to own one of every book in the world. Philipps began collecting in earnest while still at Rugby, and his manuscript catalogue from 1811, now at the Grolier Club, shows a turn in his collecting from 1808. He continued buying books when he went on to University College, Oxford and graduated in 1815. In 1820, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. A. N. L. Munby notes that, "[Phillipps] spent perhaps between two hundred thousand and a quarter of a million pounds[,] altogether four or five thousand pounds a year, while accessions came in at the rate of forty or fifty a week.". Phillipps would go into bookshops and purchase the entire stock; he would receive dealers' catalogues and buy all the listings; his agents bought entire lots of books at auction, outbidding his rival the British Museum. His country seat, Middle Hill near Broadway, Worcestershire, gave over sixteen of twenty rooms to books. After Sir Frederic Madden, the keeper of manuscripts of the British Museum, visited the house, he wrote in his diary:The house looks more miserable and dilapidated every time I visit it, and there is not a room now that is not crowded with large boxes full of MSS. The state of things is really inconceivable. Lady P is absent, and were I in her place, I would never return to so wretched an abode. . . .