Robert Burns' priceless First Commonplace Book.
Honresfield Library Auction on Hold
The Honresfield Library includes the First Commonplace Book1 of Robert Burns. The story of the Honresfield Library is complex and outlined by Patrick Scott in Electric Scotland.2
William Law was the brother who first became prominent as a collector of literary manuscripts. …In 1894, he bought two major items: Walter Scott’s manuscript for Rob Roy, and Robert Burns’s First Commonplace Book…Alfred Joseph Law was the son of William’s brother John, who inherited both Honresfield House and his uncle William’s library. Something of the library’s range can be seen in a news story from 1915, about a visit to Honresfield by the Rochdale Literary and Scientific Society to see “the collections formed by the late Mr. William Law, uncle of the present owner.” Items on display included a first folio of Shakespeare, two quarto Shakespeare plays, “manuscripts of Walter Scott novels and some cantos of ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ Brontë relics, Burns’s commonplace book, and letters by many English authors. ” 3
Davidson Cook, “that assiduous delver into overlooked corners of Burns tradition” wrote about the collection in 1925. 4
Sotheby’s Auction House was to auction the Honresfield Library in July 2021, but has announced it will postpone the auctions to allow for a bid from the Friends of the National Libraries.5 (to prevent it being sold piecemeal to private collectors).6 The FNL has launched an appeal with an additional donation from its own resources and will be working over the next months to fundraise with the public and private philanthropists. Institutions involved include the Bodleian Libraries, the British Library, The National Library of Scotland, Brontë Parsonage Museum and Jane Austen’s House.7
Robert Burns - “Auld Lang Syne” as sung by Dougie MacLean (click the link below).
Ewing, James (1938). Robert Burns's Commonplace Book 1783-1785. Gowans and Gray.
Scott, Patrick A “Lost” Collection of Robert Burns Manuscripts: Sir Alfred Law, Davidson Cook, and the Honresfield Collection.Electric Scotland.
Ibid.
By mid-1925, Cook had been welcomed at Honresfield to examine its treasures and begun to write about them. His first article, in the Bookman for September 1925, was a general report on “Literary Treasures at Honresfield.”
Flood, Allison (2021).UK libraries and museums unite to save ‘astonishing’ lost library from private buyers. (June 17).
Ibid.