Centralising National Heritage: The London Market in Medieval Manuscripts and Competition between Local, National, and International interests in 1920
14th October 2025
5.30 – 7.00pm
Hybrid | Online-via Zoom & IHR Pollard Seminar Room, N301, Third Floor, IHR, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
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Olivia Baskerville (School of Advanced Study, University of London)
In 1920 two illuminated manuscripts made in England were sold on the London Book Market from the collection of the prominent collector Henry Yates Thompson. Despite coming from a private collection, both were subject to claims of local and national importance when they came on the market. One, a copy of Bede’s Life of St Cuthbert (BL Yates Thompson MS 26) was purchased by the British Museum and the other, the ‘Carrow Psalter’ became the property of the American collector Henry Walters and is now in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (Walters Art Museum W.34). Drawing on records generated by the London book market, this paper compares the rhetorical claims made about the local and national value of these manuscripts to ask why one remained in Britain to become national heritage and the other was exported to an American collection. Who dictated the value of these manuscripts to the nation? To what extent were competing claims of national and local importance negotiated through market competition, and how? The answers to these questions reveal the contingencies of market machinations on the centralisation of British heritage in the early twentieth century.
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Founded in 1970, the London Society for Medieval Studies seeks to foster knowledge of and dialogue about the Middle Ages among scholars, students, and the wider public. Based in London and organised by a committee of postgraduates and early career academics, the Society’s mission is fourfold:
- to showcase the latest scholarship in all areas of medieval studies including, but not limited to, history, literature, art, archaeology, theology, philosophy, and economics;
- to champion the work of fellow postgraduate and early career researchers;
- to foreground and promote scholarship on underrepresented subjects and by scholars historically marginalised in the field;
- and to explore the critical and creative possibilities of collaboration and multi-/interdisciplinary work, recognising the productive intersections between academic, artistic, and public history practices.
Through regular seminars, both in-person and online, the Society cultivates an international intellectual community which critically interrogates, reimagines, and meaningfully connects contemporary questions to the medieval past.
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