William drummond of hawthornden: Book collector and benefactor of edinburgh university library

Abstract

Great libraries owe much to the generosity of benefactors and, in common with many other libraries of historic foundation, the early years of Edinburgh University Library attest to the enlightened philanthropy of donors. The new University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, was fortunate in having immediate access to a collection of theological books bequeathed in 1580 to the town and kirk of Edinburgh by Clement Little, one of the town commissaries. This small nucleus of 276 volumes, containing 325 works (Finlayson, 1980), was quickly transferred by the town councillors to the fledgling university which they had established. Subsequent development of the library is characterized by a pattern of benefaction. The first books acquired by the library were presented by students when they graduated and these early donations from students such as John Ruthven, third Earl of Gowrie, and his brother Alexander Ruthven, William Little (nephew of Clement Little), or James Reid and Robert Foster still survive in the library (Finlayson, 1963, 35). In due course the practice of graduation gifts was sensibly replaced by the payment of graduation feesmade over to the library for book purchases so that duplicates could be avoided. In the early years after its foundation, the library also received bequests of money which proved to be a valuable source of income, since the financial base of the library had not been properly established at the outset. And so a pattern of acquisition and library development was established which led up to the donations of the first major benefactor of Edinburgh University Library, William Drummond of Hawthornden, in the 1620s and 1630s. © 2008 Springer-Verlag London Limited.