LECTURE: Lucy Gwynn (Queen Mary University), ‘Bibliotheca Abscondita’: the Library of Sir Thomas Browne (1604-1682), History of Libraries research lecture, The Warburg Institute, University of London, School of Advanced Study, Woburn Square, London WC1H, Tuesday 3 May 2016, 5.30 pm.
Thomas Browne, Norwich physician and one of the great essayists of the seventeenth century, was drawn to the indiscriminate dissolution and ruin brought by the passage of time, as ‘the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy’. His recreation of an impossible wunderkammer – the tract Musaeum clausum et bibliotheca abscondita – catalogued books, objects and artworks that had been lost to time, looting, war and exile.
This paper will compare the narrative of incompleteness and wistful recuperation in Musaeum clausum with the project to reconstruct of the contents of Browne’s own library, now only known to us through the catalogue of its sale in 1711. It will present evidence of Browne’s book ownership and use, and suggest ways in which Browne’s library, its contents, taxonomies and spaces, can be recovered.