After 1700

Abstract

Abstract While modern losses such as the 1731 Ashburnham House fire and the wartime bombings of London’s libraries tend to dominate discussions of modern manuscript survival, the past 300 years have been marked rather by a tendency towards preservation. Indeed, the greatest threat to England’s manuscripts today is their perceived value. This chapter explores manuscript destruction of the past 300 hundred years and shows that more manuscripts have been lost to theft and to deliberate dismemberment for resale than to either of the World Wars. As manuscripts increasingly came to be viewed as irreplaceable cultural heritage artefacts, their preservation came to be assured as a matter of national interest.

Authors 1

1. Krista A Milne corresponding Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden University ,