George Thomason (d. April 1666) was an important English book and tract collector. He is famous as the man who brought together the great collection of books and tracts published during the time of the English Civil War and the interregnum; this was formerly called the "King's Pamphlets," but is now known as the "Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts." George Thomason was a London bookseller, whose life contains few items of interest save the fact that he was concerned in a royalist plot in 1651. During the years just before the outbreak of war a great number of writings covering every phase of the questions in dispute between king and people were issued, and in 1641 Thomason began to collect these. Working diligently at his task for about twenty years, he possessed nearly 23,000 separate publications in 1662, and having arranged these in chronological order he had them bound in 1983 volumes.[1] Prior to his death in 1666, Thomason entrusted the collection to the care of Thomas Barlow, provost of The Queen's College at the University of Oxford and a future Bishop of Lincoln. Barlow and his agents attempted to sell the tracts to the university, the British government, and private collectors, but found that none were willing to meet their price. Finally, in 1762, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute purchased the collection on behalf of King George III and that same year donated it to the British Museum. In 1973, the museum transferred the Thomason Collection to the British Library.[2]
References
- ^ This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition article "THOMASON GEORGE", a publication now in the public domain.
- ^ Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts, British Library
