Heythrop Library

This is the second post in a series for our blog. It shares the reports written by Alison Felstead, Rare Books Cataloguer at Campion Hall, who has since April 2024 done sterling work on creating detailed records for those Heythrop Library rare books which are stored at Campion Hall. Below is the report received by Alison for the Heythrop Library Committee meeting in October 2024.

At the time of writing (10 October 2024), 357 books (i.e. discrete bibliographical entities, as opposed to physical volumes) have been catalogued onto the Oxford Libraries Information System (OLIS) and made available to scholars worldwide via the University’s SOLO resource discovery interface. As previously reported, most of the material catalogued dates from the 16th and 17th centuries, with a much smaller proportion from the 18th and 19th centuries and a handful of 20th century items (mostly private press books). The earliest item catalogued is 1502 and the latest 1956. About forty-six percent of the material catalogued to date represents titles not previously catalogued in SOLO, which is an indication of the importance of this collection.

A file of new catalogue records is now sent to the Heythrop Librarian approximately every four weeks. This file includes both bibliographic and copy-specific information in the MARC [MAchine-Readable Cataloguing] exchange format, compatible with the Heythrop Library online catalogue and other MARC-based bibliographic databases.

As part of the cataloguing process, any provenance information associated with the books continues to be identified where possible and recorded in the catalogue record in a standardized and searchable form. Marks of provenance such as unidentified ownership stamps or bookplates, or indecipherable hand-written names or inscriptions, are photographed and logged for future research. For security, a register of this unidentified provenance information and the accompanying image files are backed up on the Oxford University “DigiSafe” secure storage system.

Brief notes on some of the more interesting items catalogued since my last report on 3 June 2024 follow:

1) Gerard Manley Hopkins’s own copy of Paradisus animæ Christianæ by Jacob Merlo Horstius (Mechlin, 1858; BT2611 MER) bearing his signature and including a pencil note below it in an unknown hand that reads “Obit hodie June 8/89 ‘Ego hodie, Tu cras.’” (“He died today June 8/89 ‘I today, you tomorrow.’”)

2) A rare bound set of 17th century pamphlets containing English translations of Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s Exercitia spiritualia (BT2543.E4). According to a handwritten bibliographical note in the item, only two other sets are known to exist, one at Stonyhurst and the other at Farm Street (114 Mount Street). They bear no publication details but are believed to have been printed in Rouen or Saint Omer around 1630.

3) One of three copies owned by Heythrop Library of the Douai version of The New Testament of Jesus Christ (Antwerp, 1600; BS2080), which belonged to Gabriel Colford (d. 1628). Colford was imprisoned and tortured for his involvement in the English Catholic book trade and was also a translator of recusant material, a merchant and intelligencer, and a lay procurator of the English College at Saint Omer.

4) A copy of Cardinal William Allen’s (1532-1594) De Sacramentis inscribed in 1580 by the author – the theologian and founder of the English College at Douai (Antwerp, 1576; BT1234 ALL c.1). A second copy of the same work owned by Heythrop bears the title-page inscription “Ex libris Thomæ Stapletonij ex dono Authoris,” identifying it as Thomas Stapleton’s (1535-1598) copy, a gift from William Allen (BT1234 ALL c.2). Allen and Stapleton served together at the English College.

Alison Felstead, Rare Books Cataloguer, Campion Hall (10 October 2024)