Morrison Collection

Collection Details
Description of Collection
Subjects of the Collection
Collection Material and Size of Collection
Collection Management Information
Collection Catalogue Information
Collection Printed Catalogues
Links to Other Collections

Collection Details

Morrison Collection held at SOAS Library [Institution record]

Printed guides

Description of Collection

Content description

The Morrison Collection comprises the Chinese books accumulated by Dr. Robert

Morrison (1782-1834), the first Protestant missionary to China, during his

sixteen years residence in Canton and Macao between 1807 and 1823, together with

a small number of nineteenth-century additions to the collection.

At present the Morrison Collection comprises over a thousand books, which,

taking into account duplicates, represent just over 900 separate titles

History and development

Morrison started to buy locally printed Chinese books as soon as he arrived in

Canton in September 1807. Although Morrison may originally have intended to

merely buy a few books to help him further his own studies of the Chinese

language and gain a deeper understanding of Chinese history, society and

religion, he soon realised that books held the key to the unlocking of China for

future missionaries, and he started to collect books with a higher purpose in

mind. His ambition was to establish an academy for the study of Chinese language

and culture in England, and to this end he devoted much of his time and effort

to the accumulation of as many books on as many subjects as possible.

In 1823, after sixteen years in China, Morrison finally had an opportunity to

return to England for a short visit. In December of that year he set sail for

England, taking with him his entire Chinese library, which according to his own

reckoning comprised some 10,000 fascicles. Most of the books which Morrison

brought back from China are recorded in a manuscript catalogue of his collection

written by Morrison whilst en route for England, and dated February 20th 1824

(now held at SOAS as MS 80823).

When he finally arrived in England Morrison approached the universities of

Oxford and Cambridge, with the intention of donating his Chinese library to the

institution that would found a chair in Chinese. Whilst negotiations continued,

the collection was temporarily housed at the premises of the London Missionary

Society in London. However both universities evinced a remarkable reticence to

take up Morrison's generous offer, and when Morrison returned to China a year

later a permanent home for the books had still not been found.

Morrison never again returned to this country, and his Chinese library remained

gathering dust at the London Missionary Society until after his death in 1834,

when the newly-founded University College London (UCL) agreed to accept

Morrison's collection. The books were transferred to UCL in about 1836, where

they were housed as the Morrison Chinese Library. In accord with Morrison's

wishes a chair in Chinese was also established, and the first incumbent, Samuel

Kidd (1804-1843), was appointed Professor of Chinese in 1837.

During the nineteenth-century the Morrison Chinese Library expanded somewhat

with the addition of a small number of Chinese books, including a group of

twelve books dated circa 1840-1844 that were mostly published in Shanghai, and

two books by Dr. Benjamin Hobson (1816-1873) that were donated to UCL by his

widow.

The first systematic description of the Morrison Chinese Library was made by the

Astronomer and Sinologist, Mr. John Williams (1797-1874) in 1854. Sometime after

this date, probably during the 1870s or 1880s, a concerted effort was made to

catalogue and preserve Morrison's Chinese books. Firstly catalogue slips for

most of the books in the collection were produced, and 710 of these were pasted

into a folio-sized volume to make the "Catalogue of the Morrison Chinese

Library" (now held at SOAS as MS 58685). Then all but two of the works thus

catalogued were bound in a distinctive Western-style binding.

In 1917 the School of Oriental Studies (later to be renamed School of Oriental

and African Studies) was founded in order to act as the centre for the teaching

of Oriental and African languages, literature, history, religion and customs in

the University of London. To this end, the University of London Senate resolved

in June 1917 to allow an exchange of Western language books inherited by the

School of Oriental Studies from the London Institution for books on Oriental

subjects held by the libraries of University College London and King's College

London, as well as those held by the University General Library. Under this

arrangement the Morrison Chinese Library at UCL was to be deposited on permanent

loan at SOAS. In April 1922 the Morrison books were finally transferred to SOAS,

where, together with the Marsden Collection that had been transferred from

King's College in 1920, they finally formed the foundation for a centre of

academic excellence that Morrison had hoped to see established a hundred years

earlier.

Whilst SOAS was the ideal repository for Morrison's collection, it was

unfortunate that the Morrison Chinese Library lost its distinct and unique

identity after it had been transferred to its new home. Instead of being shelved

separately, as they had been at UCL, the Morrison books were intershelved with

all the other Chinese books at SOAS, and as the SOAS collection grew over the

years the books from the erstwhile Morrison Chinese Library became more and more

diffused throughout the collection.

Finally in 1996 a project to catalogue the Morrison Collection, generously

funded by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, was initiated. In addition to making

the individual items in the collection available on-line via the RLIN

bibliographic database, a general catalogue of the collection, "Catalogue of the

Morrison Collection of Chinese Books" by Dr. Andrew West, was published by SOAS in 1998.

Strengths

Morrison was not a connoisseur of fine books, but simply wanted to build up a

library of books that would be useful for the study of Chinese language,

literature, history, religion and culture. He therefore bought whatever books

were available and affordable, with the result that the majority of books in his

collection were the output of the contemporary commercial publishing industry.

The Morrison Collection is thus very broad in content, encompassing almost all

subject areas. Nevertheless, there are certain strengths and weaknesses in the

collection. Morrison was particularly interested in understanding as much as

possible about the native religions he had to contend with, and so not

surprisingly the collection has numerous Buddhist and Daoist works, many with

multiple copies. Like most missionaries, Morrison was also actively involved in

medical work (he had opened a dispensary in Canton, run by a local doctor), and

this is reflected in the exceptional collection of medical texts in the

collection, which largely represent the contents of a medical library purchased

by Morrison. Other areas of particular strength in the collection include

vernacular fiction, literary tales and anecdotes, examination essays, and

letters.

Paucity of individual editions in areas such as early philosophy and pre-Qing

prose and poetry is made up for by an impressive number of collected editions of

texts, including collected editions of the "Thirteen Classics", the "Seventeen

Histories", the "Ten Philosophers", as well as ten general collections of texts

covering some 1,115 titles in 808 fascicles. The collection also boasts a large

number of mostly voluminous reference works (together comprising some 1,279

fascicles) compiled under the auspices of the Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong and

Jiaqing emperors.

In chronological terms, the collection is highly representative of the early and

mid-Qing publishing output. In particular there is a concentration of books

printed during the Qianlong (1736-1795) and Jiaqing (1796-1820) periods.

In addition to the printed works which comprise the vast majority of the

Morrison Collection, the collection includes eleven manuscript items, nine of

which are not known from printed editions. Of these the most important is a 1549

transcription of ten of a set of thirteen vocabulary lists for foreign languages

that are believed to have been compiled by the Interpreters Institute between

about 1492 and 1549 (MS 48363).

General arrangement and access regulations

This collection is entirely closed access.

It may be requested and consulted in the Special Collections Reading Room on Level F of the Library.

Subjects of the Collection

Regions of Asia

East Asia.

Countries

China.

Languages of material

Chinese.

Subjects

Agriculture, Anthropology, Archaeology, Arts, Communication and media, Development, Economics, Education, Environmental sciences, Geography, History, Human rights, Industries, International relations, Language, Law, Literature, Medicine, Music, Philosophy, Politics and government, Recreation, Religion, Science and technology, Sociology, Travel, Women.

Names relevant to the collection:

Dr. Robert Morrison (1782-1834), the first Protestant missionary to China
Professor Samuel Kidd (1804-1843)
Dr. Benjamin Hobson (1816-1873)
Mr. John Williams (1797-1874)
Dr. Andrew West

Collection Material and Size of Collection

Material Types

Archival materials (includes non-published & mixed material), Books, Manuscripts, Maps (includes all types of cartographic material), Newspapers (includes microfilm editions), Official publications, Public records, Serials, Visual materials (includes photographs, prints, drawings, videos & films).

Total size of collection

over 10,000

Size of collection - vernacular

Over 10,000

Collection Management Information

The collection is not being actively developed.

Content date range

0 to 0 AD

Interlibrary loan procedure

Collection Catalogue Information

Catalogue

The online library catalogue offers access to all material acquired since 1989 and a substantial part of the material collected prior to that date. Work to add records for the earlier collections from the card catalogue is ongoing and by the end of 2002 all material acquired since 1979 will be included as well as significant parts of the rest of the collection. For those who cannot access the card catalogue on site the Library's catalogues have been published (details below).

Catalogue transliteration schemes

Since 1989 all records have been created using the current Library of Congress transliteration schemes, with the exception of Japanese which uses Modified Hepburn. As records are added to the online catalogue the transliterated records are being updated to these schemes.

Catalogue scripts

The current cataloguing and some of the earlier records for the following languages contain author and title fields in the relevant script: Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Ladino, Persian, Yiddish.

Collection printed catalogues

Catalogue of the Morrison collection of Chinese books= 馬禮遜藏書書目
West, Andrew Christopher
London : University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, 1998.
ISBN: 072860292X