To be extended soon
British Museum, Great Russell Street, WC1. Kelly describes the founding of the British Museum as the outstanding event in museum history in the eighteenth century. It opened in 1759 although it was created six years earlier through the purchase for the nation of the Sloane collection of various works of art, antiquities and natural history collections. They also gained several libraries from elsewhere, thus laying the foundation for the British Library. The reading room still can only be accessed by students, scholars and on recommendation. Writers such as Carlyle and Shaw and most famously Lenin and Marx were frequent users of the library.
To be added to...
© Mark K. Smith 1997, 2002.
