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The Royal Collection contains around 125,000 books and manuscripts. The most significant and substantial parts of the collection are held in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. The Royal Library at Windsor was created in the 1830s at the instigation of William IV. It occupies a suite of rooms on the north side of the Upper Ward, adjacent to the State Apartments.
Although the majority of the volumes are printed books of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the Royal Library contains a small but important group of illuminated manuscripts, the best-known of which is the early 15th-century Sobieski Hours. There is also a fine group of incunabula, the earliest and rarest Western printed books, dating from the period before 1500. These include the Mainz Psalter of 1457, the second book ever to be printed with movable metal type.
The Royal Library also houses literary manuscripts of various authors, including Poets Laureate, and a small number of music manuscripts. (The old Royal Music Library is now part of the British Library.) Personal and political documents relating to the monarchy from the reign of George III onwards are held separately by the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle. However, the Royal Library contains a small group of Sovereign’s manuscripts dating from the 16th and 17th centuries.
Among the printed books, the chief subject areas are royal and political biography, natural history, heraldry, genealogy, travel, topography and religious books. New material continues to be added (either by gift or by purchase), largely in the above-mentioned areas.
History
The first royal library, founded in the 1470s in the reign of Edward IV and enriched over the following centuries, was presented in 1757 to the newly established British Museum by George II. His successor George III, a noted bibliophile, created his own library at Buckingham House (later Palace). Known as the King’s Library, this collection of over 65,000 books was given to the British Museum by George IV in 1823 and still forms a separate entity within today’s British Library. At the time of the gift, a small but important group of volumes was retained for royal ownership. These books from George III’s library, together with many of George IV’s books, have since been joined in the Royal Library by a number of fine books from earlier royal libraries, following dispersals of duplicates from the British Museum’s collections in the 19th century.
Information and access
Books from the Royal Library are frequently displayed as part of the Royal Collection exhibition programme in Windsor, London and Edinburgh. The books included in these displays may also be viewed on the Royal Collection’s e-Gallery. Recent publications relating to these exhibitions are available through the Royal Collection’s online shop.
Although the Royal Library is not open to the public, applications may be made to work on specific, unique items within the library’s holdings. Visiting researchers are subject to security clearance, details of which are made available when visits are arranged. Enquiries may be sent by post, fax or e-mail to:
The Librarian
Royal Library
Windsor Castle
Berkshire SL4 1NJ
Fax: +44 (0)1753 854910
E-mail royallibrary@royalcollection.org.uk
Publications
General
J. Roberts (ed.), Royal Treasures: A Golden Jubilee Celebration (exh. cat., The Queen’s Gallery), London, 2002, pp. 356-87
A Royal Miscellany from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle (exh. cat., The Queen’s Gallery), London, 1990
S. Patterson, ‘The Royal Library at Windsor Castle’, El Libro Antigua Espanol III: El libro en Palacio y otros estudios bibliograficos, 1996, pp. 201-23
R.R. Holmes, Specimens of Royal Fine and Historical Bookbinding, Selected from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, London, 1893
Particular monarchs and their books
T.A. Birrell, English Monarchs and their Books: From Henry VII to Charles II: The Panizzi Lectures, 1986, London, 1987
J. Roberts (ed.), George III & Queen Charlotte. Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste (exh. cat., The Queen’s Gallery), London, 2004, pp. 220-43
O. Everett, ‘The Royal Library at Windsor Castle as Developed by Prince Albert and B.B. Woodward’, The Library, 7th ser., III, no. 1, 2002, pp. 58-88
Western manuscripts
E. Spencer, The Sobieski Hours: A manuscript in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, London, 1977
J. Stratford, Catalogue of the Jackson Collection of Manuscript Fragments in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. With a Memoir of Canon J.E. Jackson and a list of his Works, London, 1981
J. Stratford, ‘Manuscript fragments at Windsor Castle and the Entente Cordiale’, in Interpreting and Collecting Fragments of Medieval Books, ed. L.L. Brownrigg and M.M. Smith, Los Altos Hills and London, 2000, pp. 114-35
Islamic manuscripts
M.I. Waley. ‘Islamic Manuscripts in the Royal Collection: A Concise Catalogue’, Manuscripts of the Middle East, VI, 1992
M. Cleveland Beach and E. Koch, King of the World. The Padshahnama. An Imperial Mughal Manuscript from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle (exh. cat.), London and Washington, 1997
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The Sobieski Book of Hours, c.1420-5
The Mainz Psalter, 1457
Buckingham House: The Octagon Library
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