British Museum

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

Resources

The British Museum was founded by Act of Parliament which received the royal assent from King George II on 7 June 1753. It was the first such collection in the world, a national collection, available to the public, not the collection of a private individual, or of a monarch, or of a church. Its very diversity signalled an age of enlightenment in which every aspect of culture and nature were being seen as worthy of detached, scholarly, intellectual and rational attention. It announced the modern world.

The initial core of the collection was the bequest of the private collection established by the physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753). This extraordinary collection, one of the greatest in the world at this time, amounted to some 40,000 books, 7,000 manuscripts, 377 volumes of

236 words

Citation: Clark, Robert. "British Museum". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 February 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=146, accessed 19 March 2024.]

146 British Museum 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.