Formed Collection
Kashnor Collection (Political Economy of Great Britain and Ireland)
This collection was formed over a period of some forty years by the late Leon Kashnor, the proprietor of the Museum Bookstore in London, as a personal collection. It was purchased by the National Library in 1953.
It consists of 4 774 books, 5 995 pamphlets and slightly fewer than 2 000 manuscripts and covers the period 1650 to 1870. The former owner of the collection had the good fortune to secure many of the items from the library of William Wyndham Grenville (1759-1834), a member of many ministries and from 1806 to 1807 leader of the "Ministry of All the Talents". To these were added manuscripts and other items from the Townshend family, with later gatherings from the Holland House sale and, in the case of Chartist material, a most interesting group of over one hundred rare pamphlets sold at auction in 1950. The great houses of England, Scotland and Ireland were the source of many rarities added to the collection over a period of more than forty years. In acquiring the collection, the Library had the advice of Professor G.D.H. Cole of Oxford, Professor J.A. La Nauze of Melbourne, Dr Rosenbaum of the London School of Economics, and L.W. Hanson of the Bodleian Library.
A feature of the collection is its accumulation of the works of the major British and Irish political economists, as well as of lesser writers, together with many of the great rarities of the eighteenth and first part of the nineteenth centuries. Thomas Mun, Sir William Petty, Josiah Child, Adam Smith, Ricardo and McCulloch are excellently covered, and good collections are included of Charles Davenant, Lauderdale, Patrick Colquhoun, Nassau Senior, Malthus, George and Thomas Chalmers, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Richard Jones and Thomas Joplin. There is an outstanding set of Robert Owen's works and a useful collection of Robert Dale Owen as well as a number of works about the Owenite movement. Of the less orthodox writers there are rarities in the works of John Lilburne and a good collection of Thomas Paine while the Cobbett items include some of the earlier American pamphlets. Notable items too, include first editions of Richard Cantillon, J.F Bray, Brisbane's Social destiny, Davies' Case of the labourers in agriculture, all the early editions of Godwin's Political justice, interesting collections of Richard Carlile, Feargus O'Connor, J,M. Morgan, Richard Price, Thomas Spence, William Thompson and some David Urquhart tracts and his Diplomatic review.
The early Irish writers are exceedingly well covered. Chartist material includes a complete file of the Chartist circular, the 1838 and 1839 editions of the People's charter and a run of the scarce Reynold's Political instructor, and there is much on Labour and Radical movements. Most of the early nineteenth century works on the agriculture of the various counties is included as well as useful material on the development of the banks and trading companies.
Continental writers are not well represented. There is a large collection of Bastiat and a good one of Mirabeau and, of the unorthodox economists, a first edition of Sismondi, a first German edition of Marx's Communist manifesto, and a first collected edition of Fourier.
The main bulk of the manuscripts is made up of some fifteen hundred pieces from the Townshend papers relating chiefly to the period 1688 to 1753. Apart from the principal group the collection includes Gregory King's Observations and conclusions, natural and political, upon the state and condition of England, etc., some letters of John Stuart Mill, a number of letters from Robert Owen, a small group written mainly by Chartists to J.A. Roebuck, and a considerable group of letters and other material of W.J. Linton.
