Hans Sloane's Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge

by Alice Wickenden

On his death in 1753, Hans Sloane's collection of books and manuscripts was estimated at 50,000 volumes, and, combined with his collected objects, would become the founding core of the British Library and British Museum. Delving into the particular history of this remarkable collection, Alice Wickenden asks wide-reaching questions about archival practices and knowledge production, showing how books function both as and alongside objects. Hers is the first book to bring the theoretical questions and methodologies arising from material culture and book history alongside a full-length study of the founding book collection of the British Library. Each carefully-selected case study raises questions that, though seemingly playful, strike at the heart of past and present practices of collecting and knowledge how might books of dried plants be books? Is something a book if nobody can read it? Why collect duplicates? And how, after all, do we actually define a library?

264 pages, Hardcover

Published December 18, 2025

Reviews

[lucy snow · Rating 5 out of 5]

a really engaging and insightful look at specific case studies within sloane's library, in an attempt to define / understand his practices of collecting. wickenden does conclude, though, that despite having aimed to explore how a line could be drawn between the nature of a library and a museum, this quesiton was 'more spacious' than imagined. essentially, it is messy and convoluted and sometimes, categories are simply down to chance, or small archival decisions at some point in the history of an object.

i especially liked chapter 3, about duplications within sloane's printed collections - the value of these duplications for sloane, wickenden argues, is in their varied annotations, in their materiality. she explores how the intentions of these annotators are now, often, lost, but they remain valuable, having once been understood. (this links interestingly to chapter 4 and its exploration of 'unreadable books').

the introductory chapter on the history of libraries more broadly, and the discussion of sloane's book catalogues and the impact of the british museum's institutional, inflexible organisation system on his previously more flexible categorisation will be so useful in my own research.

the call to action in the conclusion, for all those working in the heritage sector to question 'what the value and history of a 'named' collection is', is vital. our archival choices now will have just as much impact on the provenance of these objects as sloane's did!