Copyright

Karen Attar, Alexander Lock, Katy Makin, Jane Maxwell, Virginia Mills and Diana Smith

Published On

2024-09-04

Page Range

pp. 278–304

Language

  • English

Print Length

27 pages

11. Augustus De Morgan

The Archival Record

Chapter of: Augustus De Morgan, Polymath: New Perspectives on his Life and Legacy(pp. 278–304)
Correspondence and mathematical papers generated by De Morgan can be found in numerous libraries throughout the British Isles and, to a lesser extent, in the United States. The collections are of different sizes and levels of importance, including family letters among others at Senate House Library, University of London, correspondence with publishers (letters to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge at University College London) and communications with scientific organisations (the Royal Astronomical Society, kept at the RAS). Above all there are his letters to numerous scientists and mathematicians, such as Sir William Rowan Hamilton (Trinity College Dublin), Charles Babbage (British Library), William Whewell (Trinity College, Cambridge), Sir George Airy (Cambridge University Library), and Sir John Herschel (Royal Society). Some letters to De Morgan also survive through having been pasted into his books, now at Senate House Library. This chapter summarises the emphasis and salient features of each of the multiple archival collections to provide an overview, of a sort never attempted before.

Contributors

Karen Attar

(author)
Curator of Rare Books and University Art at Senate House Library at University of London
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0898-808X

Karen Attar is the Curator of Rare Books and University Art at Senate House Library, University of London, and was for many years a Research Fellow at the University’s Institute of English Studies. Her publications cover various aspects of book collecting, library history and librarianship. They include several book chapters on Augustus De Morgan’s library, which she also reconstituted within the University of London and catalogued. She is best known for the Directory of Rare Book and Special Collections in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland (3rd edn, 2016).

Alexander Lock

(author)
Curator of Modern Archives and Manuscripts at British Library

Alexander Lock is Curator of Modern Archives and Manuscripts at the British Library, where he is responsible for collections dated 1600–1950. He is a specialist in early modern British history and co-curated the Library’s best-selling exhibitions ‘Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy’ (2015) and ‘Harry Potter: A History of Magic’ (2017).

Katy Makin

(author)

Katy Makin is an archivist at UCL Special Collections, where she has worked since 2011. She manages collections of donated and deposited archives covering all genres and dating from the medieval period to the present day.

Jane Maxwell

(author)
Senior Manuscrips Curator at Trinity College Dublin

Jane Maxwell has for several decades been a senior manuscripts curator in the Library of Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin.

Virginia Mills

(author)
Archivist at Royal Society
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7374-3516

Virginia Mills is the early collections archivist at the Royal Society, where she is responsible for curating pre-1900 material and the records of the past Fellowship. She has previously worked in scientific archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Natural History Museum, London.

Diana Smith

(author)
Assistant Archivist at Trinity College Library at University of Cambridge
https://orcid.org/0009-0000-9031-3876

Diana Smith is Assistant Archivist at Trinity College Library, Cambridge. She most recently contributed a chapter about the Whewell papers at Trinity College Library to William Whewell: Victorian Polymath, edited by Lukas Verburgt as part of the University of Pittsburgh Press series Science, Culture, and the Nineteenth Century (autumn 2024).