The Chester Beatty Library

Citation

O’Beirne, R. (2002), "The Chester Beatty Library", Library Review, Vol. 51 No. 6, pp. 322-323. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2002.51.6.322.18

Now based in Dublin City Centre, the Chester Beatty Library houses a unique collection of Islamic manuscripts together with Chinese, Japanese, Indian and other Oriental art. Early papyri including some of the first texts of the Bible and other early Christian manuscripts, western prints and printed books, complete what is one of the richest collections of its kind in the world.

Sir Alfred Chester Beatty was born in 1875 in New York, of Irish, Scottish and English ancestry. Chester Beatty was one of the world’s greatest collectors of manuscripts and works of art. Having started with a collection of Chinese snuff bottles (1,600 by the start of the First World War) his interests expanded to include paintings, manuscripts and oriental weaponry. His collections grew over a number of years and in 1954 were housed under one roof at Aylesbury Road in the southern suburbs of Dublin. On February 7 2000, the 125th anniversary of Chester Beatty’s birth, a new library, housed at Dublin Castle, was opened to the public. This library is now administered by a board of trustees and avails of grant funding from the Irish government. Chester Beatty was knighted in 1954 and made an Honorary Irish Citizen in 1957. He died in Monaco in 1968.

This extremely well illustrated and produced book is a real treasure from the Scala Publishing house. It is divided into three main sections based on the collection areas; Western Collections, East Asian Collections and Islamic Collections. There is a good balance between the illustrations and the accompanying text, which is both concise and highly informative. It is worth mentioning that the authors are all senior staff at the Chester Beatty Library: Michael Ryan – Director and Librarian, Charles Horton – Curator of the Western Collections, Clare Pollard – Curator of the East Asian Collections and Elaine Wright – Curator of the Islamic Collections.

The scene is set in the introduction, which outlines the history of the library, giving background information about how the collections were built up over the years. Each of the sections then highlights their collections and give many example illustrations.

The first section, the Western collections, starts with the papyrus collection. One example is an illustration of a papyrus scroll containing the text of the Egyptian love poems dated C.1160BC. From the Biblical papyri collection there are a number of illustrations of the earliest Christian texts such as the Gospel of Saint John, Greek text on papyrus, dated 150‐200AD. This section moves on through Christian manuscripts, medieval manuscripts, decorated letters, Gothic illumination, miniatures and renaissance illumination, taking the reader up to the invention of movable type. The focus then moves to printed books and bookbindings; again examples are given with illustrations. The section on Western collections concludes with a study of prints and drawings. Significant among these is an illustration of Albrecht Dürer’s Four Horsemen (woodcut Nuremberg, 1511).

The Islamic collections section begins with an introduction which informs the reader that Chester Beatty spent many winters in Cairo. This was for health reasons; he suffered from silicosis, having worked in mines for many years. His time in Cairo gave him the opportunity to focus on his collections. This section is divided into two sub‐sections; Qur’ans and other manuscripts expressive of the Islamic faith, and Regional expressions of the Islamic book. The latter covers the geographic regions of Iran, Turkey and India. Highlights include a Qur’an, dated AH 391 from Baghdad, which gives a rare example of the work of Ibn al‐Bawwab (d.1022) and is thought to be the earliest example of a Qur’an written in a cursive script. Also there are examples of the epic Persian poem Shahnama or The Book of Kings.

The third section, The East Asian collections, is made up of The Chinese collection, The Japanese collection, The Tibetan and Mongolian collections and The South and South East Asian collections. My favourite example from this section is The Great Encyclopaedia of the Yongle Emperor, from sixteenth‐century China, ink on paper. In its first edition of 1408, this encyclopaedia had 11,095 volumes. It was copied in the sixteenth century but only a few hundred volumes survive. The Chester Beatty Library has three volumes, which are on the subjects of paper, poetry and bamboo.

In conclusion, this book is a key to unlocking the treasures of this most unique library. It is well presented and guides the reader through the library in a well‐structured manner.