The Market for Pre-Modern Manuscripts and the Rhetoric of National Value in Britain, 1900-1939

This thesis examines how pre-modern manuscript codices were transformed into objects of ‘national’ heritage through their acquisition by the British Museum in the early twentieth century. Combining theories of material culture regarding the collection and circulation of objects as loci of value generation with methodologies for evaluating heritage production, this thesis critically evaluates national collecting practice of pre-modern manuscripts between 1900 and 1939. It challenges conventional assumptions that national heritage objects possessed inherent significance for the nation, going beyond common critiques of heritage-making within communities and museums to situate the construction of national value within the context of the London rare book trade and show the extent to which national value was determined by market mechanisms. Examination of the evidence generated by the market demonstrates that the national value of medieval manuscripts in private and foreign ownership was actively constructed through commercial market transactions that involved collaboration between prominent collectors and dealers as well as cultural, religious, and political authorities. It reveals the collaborative relationships between state institutions, religious authorities, and cultural elites that enabled public heritage campaigns, while documenting how ordinary citizens participated in creating national identity through collecting practices. In so doing, it challenges the prevailing notion that British national heritage was primarily preserved through private ownership, demonstrating instead that some works of heritage only came to represent the nation upon entering a public institution.
The thesis contributes to heritage studies, material culture history, and collective memory scholarship by demonstrating how commercial markets, rather than inherent historical significance, influenced national heritage value. The study ultimately shows how arguments for the public preservation of pre-modern manuscripts in early twentieth-century collections shifted over time from an opportunity to augment the quality of the British Museum’s collection and therefore its prestige on the national and international stage, to a form of representational heritage in which the British Museum’s collection of pre-modern manuscripts came to stand in the public mind for the nation’s ancient past.