A.D. 1850
The Hebrew collection was still further increased in this year by the purchase of sixty-two MSS., of which fifty-seven had been brought from Italy; and in 1851, by the purchase of some printed books collected by Dr. Isaac L. Auerbach, of Berlin, who had recently deceased. Every year about this time347 saw additions to this branch of the Library, made chiefly through the agency of the late Mr. Asher, the well-known Jewish bookseller of Berlin, and also through the late Hirsch Edelmann, a learned Rabbi, who was for years a frequent reader in the Bodleian, from whence he commenced the publication of a series of extracts (see under the year 1693). Mr. Edelmann died a few years since in Germany. A series of works illustrating the history, civil and ecclesiastical, the geography, &c. of Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, and other neighbouring provinces of the Austrian Empire, amounting to 400 volumes, was purchased for £78; and a similar but much larger collection, relating to the history of Poland, numbering no fewer than 1200 volumes, was purchased for £366. Three hundred and twenty volumes of early printed works, some of which were fine specimens of incunabula, were obtained at the sale of the duplicates from the Royal Library at Munich. It was announced at the end of the Annual Catalogue that a special list of these, together with a catalogue of the Hebrew MSS. noticed above, and of the Hungarian and Polish collections, would be printed and circulated in the following year; this, however, was not done.
A series of 600 English sermons, printed between 1600 and 1720, bound separately, was purchased for £59.
Various specimens of the first beginning of printing in one of the Friendly Islands, Vavau, consisting of the Bible in the Tonga language, and of several elementary books, were presented by Capt. Sir Jas. Everard Home, R.N. as also some elementary books printed at Apea by the natives, under the direction of the Missionaries, for the use of the natives of the Navigators’ Islands.
Dukes’ Shropshire Collections. See 1841.
Notes
347 In 1845, about 320 printed volumes were purchased from a catalogue issued at Berlin by A. Rebenstein, or Bernstein, and D. Cassel.