File BHH/4/10 - Letter from J Forshale, Secretary, British Museum, to Brian Houghton Hodgson, 20 December 1844

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Reference code

GB 891 BHH-BHH/4-BHH/4/10

Title

Letter from J Forshale, Secretary, British Museum, to Brian Houghton Hodgson, 20 December 1844

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  • 20th Dec 1844 (Creation)

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(1753-)

Administrative history

The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. On 7 June 1753, King George II gave his royal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. The British Museum Act 1753 added two other libraries to the Sir Hans Sloane collection, those of the Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dating back to Elizabethan times, and the Harleian Library, the collection of the Earls of Oxford. They were joined in 1757 by the "Old Royal Library", now the Royal manuscripts, assembled by various British monarchs.

Montagu House, c. 1715
The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public and aiming to collect everything. Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests.[16] The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary and antiquarian element, and meant that the British Museum now became both National Museum and library

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Letter from J Forshale, Secretary, British Museum, to Brian Houghton Hodgson in which he is directed by the Trustees to acknowledge Hodgson's letter and to express the Trustees' thanks for the series of Skins and Drawings which Hodgson has presented to the Museum with the promise of completing the series. The trustees would like to accept this offer and will instruct their Officer to go to Hodgson at Canterbury to assist him on the preparations for these specimens and those for other institutions.. However the Trustees must also express their regret that they are unable to help with the publications which Hodgson has proposed - this falls beyond the remit they consider appropriate for them. Handwritten, 1 side, dated 20 December 1844.

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  • English

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