The British Library is home to some of the most famous written and printed works in the English-speaking world. From two of the four original Magna Cartas, the Lindisfarne Gospels and Shakespeare’s First Folio to works by Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Lewis Carroll. Then there are manuscripts of Handel’s Messiah, Elgar’s Enigma Variations and even the hand written words for the Beatles’ ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’.

All this and more can be found in this famous library which holds almost 14 million books, over 4 million maps and more than 8 million stamps. There are something like 170 million catalogued items in total which makes it the largest library in the world by volume.

Unbelievably, it wasn’t until 1973 that all these treasures were brought under one umbrella when an Act of Parliament created the National Library, and even then, there was no one main library building to speak of. That was rectified in 1997 when a new library was built at St. Pancras. Although there’s a northern offshoot at Boston Spa in West Yorkshire, most of the collection is housed in London.

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Originally posted 2021-03-04 16:56:27.