Whitley Stokes Library

Topic(s)

Celtic subjects, folklore, folk literature, philology, and religion.

Extent

Around 2000 items

Scope and content

The collection deals mainly with Celtic subjects, folklore, folk literature, philology, and so-called ‘Eastern’ religions. Apart from many scarce books, the most interesting feature of the collection is the large number of autograph letters inserted in the books from Whitley Stokes himself and Dr. Kuno Meyer (who taught Celtic at UCL between 1908 and 1913), and from philologists such as W.O.E. Windish, A. Bezzenberger, M.H. d'Arbois de Jubainville, G.I. Ascoli, V. Henry, H. Zimmer and F. Max Muller. There is a typescript hand list of the books containing autograph letters. There are also some personal papers of Whitley Stokes in the Archives and Manuscripts collections.

History

The library of Whitley Stokes (1830-1909), the Indian legal administrator and folklorist, was presented to UCL in 1910 by his daughters. Originally 3500 volumes in size, part of the collection was later transferred to the Dante Collection.

Access

The collection is fully catalogued. To browse the records, conduct a shelfmark search for WHITLEY STOKES on Explore.