Robert Curzon: Libraries of the Levant: manuscript, 1837

RLIN ID No.
NYGG03-A9

Main Entry
Curzon, Robert, 1810 -1873.

Title
Libraries of the Levant: notes of some of the original libraries in the Levant where manuscripts still exist… [manuscript], 1837.

Physical Description
[20] p. ; 20 cm.

Historical/Biographical Note
Educated at Charterhouse and Christ Church College, Oxford, Robert Curzon traveled widely in Egypt and Palestine in search of manuscripts during 1834 and visited Mount Athos in 1837. He was later an attaché at the British Embassy in Constantinople. His Visits to the Monasteries in the Levant, appeared in 1849. Curzon was also a student of the history of handwriting. He enjoyed the friendship of the book and manuscript collector Sir Thomas Phillipps and access to Phillipps’s ever growing library of manuscripts housed at his Middle Hill estate in Worcestershire; the collection included many Middle Eastern manuscripts.

Scope and Contents Note
This account of “some of the out of the way libraries that I have seen” lists manuscripts Curzon inspected on his 1834 tour; the material was amplified and extended for his book, Visits to the Monasteries in the Levant. Autograph letter signed to Sir Thomas Phillipps on first leaf is dated from Hagley [Worcesershire], 1837 Jan. 5.

General Note
Bound in drab terra-cotta colored boards similar to those used by Sir Thomas Phillipps for the publications of his Middle Hill Press.

General Note:
Entry No. 22,123 in The Phillipps Manuscripts: Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum in Biblioteca D. Thomae Phillipp, Bt.,… 1837 by Sir Thomas Phillipps with an introduction by A. N. L. Munby. London: Holland Press, 1968.

General Note
Item No. 6 in Miscellaneous Manuscripts section of appraisal list of Phillipps collection drawn up by Lionel and Philip Robinson, Ltd. of London.

Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift; Jean Mermin Horblit, widow of collector Harrison D. Horblit; 1995.

Publications about Described Materials Note
Visits to Monasteries in the Levant by Robert Curzon. London: John Murray, 1849.

Publications about Described Materials Note
Transcribed in: The Formation of the Phillipps Library up to the Year 1840 by A. N. L. Munby. Cambridge, [Eng]: Cambridge University Press, 1954. (Phillipps Studies, III).

Exhibitions Note
Exhibited: “The Collector Collected: The Horblit Archive of Sir Thomas Phillipps at the Grolier Club,” organized by the “Grolier Club 1997 May 20 to July 31.

Names
Horblit, Harison D., collector.
Horblit, Jean Mermin, donor.
Phillipps, Thomas, Sir, 1792-1872, correspondent.

Occupation (as reflected in collection)
Bibliographers. England. 19th century.

Subjects
Manuscripts. Middle East.
Monasteries. Middle East.

Locations
Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022-1098.