The Departing Soul's Address to the Body (Dodo Press)

Sir Thomas Phillipps, 1st Baronet (1792-1872) was an English antiquary and book collector who amassed the largest collection of manuscript material in the 19th century. Phillipps began his collecting while still at Rugby School and continued at Oxford. Such was his devotion that he acquired some 40,000 printed books and 60,000 manuscripts and coined the term “vello-maniac” to describe his obsession. His success as a collector owed something to the dispersal of the monastic libraries following the French Revolution and the relative cheapness of a large amount of vellum material, in particular English legal documents, many of which owe their survival to Phillipps. He was an assiduous cataloguer who established the Middle Hill Press in 1822 not only to record his book holdings but also to publish his findings in English topography and genealogy. During his lifetime Phillipps attempted to turn over his collection to the British nation and corresponded with the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Disraeli in order that it should be acquired for the British Library. Negotiations proved unsuccessful and ultimately the dispersal of his collection took over 100 years.