See forwarded message below. This is a worrying development, and is of concern to us because the collection contains some important 16th-19th-century books in our field, e.g. the Genoa Psalter of 1517 (the second printed book containing Arabic typography) and other early books on the Ottomans, Islam, etc.
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Dr Geoffrey Roper
Bibliographical & Editorial Consultant
(Middle Eastern & Muslim areas & languages)
Leith, St Mark's Hill, Surbiton
London, KT6 4LW, Great Britain
[log in to unmask] +44 (0) 20 8390 0497
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Sent: 20 July 2012 10:12
Dear colleagues,
I am writing to ask for your support for a campaign (see
http://www.kent.ac.uk/news/stories/mendham-collection/2012 ) by the
University of Kent and Canterbury Cathedral to save the Mendham Collection,
a historic library of manuscripts and printed material.
Its founder, Joseph Mendham (1769-1856), was an Anglican vicar and, in the
words of the Dictionary of National Biography, a 'religious controversialist'.
The collection was given to the Law Society in the 1860s, and then loaned by
them to the University of Kent and Canterbury Cathedral in 1984. You can
browse through the collection's holdings on the University's
https://catalogue.kent.ac.uk/Search/Results?lookfor=mendham&type=AllFields&
submit=Find library catalogue by looking up the keyword 'Mendham'.
Although we have an agreement with the Law Society until the end of 2013,
they have suddenly decided to sell the most valuable items at auction to
plug a hole in their finances. On Wednesday, Sotheby's took away about 300
of the most valuable books.
Colleagues in and beyond Kent are extremely distressed by this and are
hoping to draw attention to the plight of the collection. We are entreating
the Law Society to pause so that we can try to find a way to preserve the
collection intact for current and future researchers. We have sympathy for
the Law Society's predicament but are nonetheless horrified that this
historic collection is to be sacrificed.
Yesterday
<http://www.kent.ac.uk/news/stories/petition-save-historic-collection/2012>
, we launched a petition
https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-law-society-of-england-and-wales-stop-the-break-up-and-sale-of-the-mendham-collection : please add your
signature if you would like to help us to secure the future of the Mendham
Collection.
Sincerely yours,
Dr Alixe Bovey
Chair, Mendham Collection Task Force
Director of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies & Lecturer in
Medieval History
School of History
University of Kent
[log in to unmask]
Links:
Our petition:
<https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-law-society-of-england-and-wales
-stop-the-break-up-and-sale-of-the-mendham-collection>
https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-law-society-of-england-and-wales-
stop-the-break-up-and-sale-of-the-mendham-collection
Press releases: http://www.kent.ac.uk/news/latest.html
Follow the campaign on twitter: #mendham and @alixebovey
Joseph Mendham in the Dictionary of National Biography
<http://www.oxforddnb.com.chain.kent.ac.uk/view/article/18555> [paywall])
Blog posts by Katie Birkwood <http://maedchenimmond.blogspot.co.uk/> and
Elaine Traherne <http://historyoftexttechnologies.blogspot.co.uk/>
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