British Library Sound Archive

In 1757, the actor David Garrick commissioned the sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac to make a full-size marble statue of William Shakespeare for Garrick's octagonal Temple to Shakespeare, erected near his villa beside the River Thames at Hampton, to the west of London. The sculpture cost 300 guineas and was installed at Garrick's temple in 1758; it remained there until it was bequeathed to the British Museum along with Garrick's books in 1779. The sculpture was transferred to the new British Library in 2005, where it is displayed on a new travertine plinth beside the main staircase in the main entrance hall. The sculpture depicts Shakespeare standing, leaning with his right arm on a lectern covered with a fringed cloth. His right foot is forward and body leaning to the right, with his hips thrust out awkwardly to the left. His right hand is holding a quill pen while the left hand is raised to his chin with the index finger extended along the jawline, as if in thought. The subject is balding but bearded, with ringlets of hair at his temples. Rather than Tudor costume, he is wearing anachronous 17th century "Van Dyke" dress, including a shirt with an elaborate lace collar and cuffs; a long jacket with many buttons, but unbuttoned over the lower body; short trousers with fringed legs; stockings and heeled shoes; all draped in a billowing cloak. The art historian Margaret Whinney describes Roubiliac's bust as having "Van-Dyckian elegance" and notes that "he has greatly ennobled the head".

The Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections previously called the Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC) form a significant part of the holdings of the British Library in London, England.

The Harold Pinter Archive in the British Library is the literary archive of Harold Pinter, which Pinter had first placed "on permanent loan" in the British Library in September 1993 and which became a permanent acquisition in December 2007.

The Harleian Library, Harley Collection, Harleian Collection and other variants (Latin: Bibliotheca Harleiana) is one of the main "closed" collections (namely, historic collections to which new material is no longer added) of the British Library in London, formerly the library of the British Museum. The collection comprises 7,660 manuscripts, including 2,200 illuminated manuscripts, more than 14,000 original legal documents; and more than 500 rolls. It was assembled by Robert Harley (1661–1724) and his son Edward (1689–1741). In 1753, it was purchased for £10,000 by the British government. Together with the collections of Sir Robert Cotton (the Cotton library) and Hans Sloane (the Sloane library) it formed the basis of the British Museum's collection of manuscripts, which were transferred to the new British Library in 1973.The collection contains illuminated manuscripts spanning the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance. There are important early British manuscripts, many from Western Europe, and several Byzantine manuscripts in Greek and other languages.

The India Office Records are a very large collection of documents relating to the administration of India from 1600 to 1947, the period spanning Company and British rule in India. The archive is held in London by the British Library and is publicly accessible. It is complemented further by the India Papers collection at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. The records come from four main sources: the English and later British East India Company (1600–1858), the Board of Control (1784–1858), the India Office (1858–1947), and the Burma Office (1937–48). The collection also includes records from many smaller related institutions. Overall, the collection is made up of approximately 175,000 items, including official publications and records, manuscripts, photographs, printed maps and private papers. These items take up approximately nine miles of shelving units.

The Alan Turing Institute is the United Kingdom's national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, founded in 2015. It is named after Alan Turing, the British mathematician and computing pioneer.

West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song was a major four-month exhibition at the British Library in London — the first of its kind in the UK to explore in detail the cultural history of the region, through literature, artefacts, art, music and performance — which ran from 16 October 2015 to 16 February 2016. It has been described as "undoubtedly the most ambitious exhibition to date at the British Library".

The Cotton or Cottonian library is a collection of manuscripts once owned by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton MP (1571–1631), an antiquarian and bibliophile. It later became the basis of what is now the British Library, which still holds the collection. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, many priceless and ancient manuscripts that had belonged to the monastic libraries began to be disseminated among various owners, many of whom were unaware of the cultural value of the manuscripts. Cotton's skill lay in finding, purchasing and preserving these ancient documents. The leading scholars of the era, including Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, and James Ussher, came to use Sir Robert's library. Richard James acted as his librarian. The library is of special importance for having preserved the only copy of several works, such as happened with Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The British Library is a major research library, with items in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library's collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and items dating as far back as 2000 BC. The library maintains a programme for content acquisition and adds some three million items each year occupying 9.6 kilometres (6 mi) of new shelf space.Prior to 1973, the Library was part of the British Museum. The Library is now located in a building purpose-built on the disused site of Midland Railway's Somers Town Goods Yard and Potato Market, on the north side of Euston Road in Somers Town, London (between Euston railway station and St Pancras railway station), and has an additional storage building and reading room near Boston Spa, near Wetherby in West Yorkshire. The St Pancras building was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 25 June 1998, and is classified as a Grade I listed building "of exceptional interest" for its architecture and history.

Newton, sometimes known as Newton after Blake, is a 1995 work by the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi. The large bronze sculpture is displayed on a high plinth in the piazza outside the British Library in London. The sculpture is based on William Blake's 1795 print of Newton: Personification of Man Limited by Reason, which depicts a naked Isaac Newton sitting on ledge beside a mossy rock face while measuring with a pair of compasses or dividers. The print was intended by Blake to criticise Newton's profane knowledge, usurping the sacred knowledge and power of the creator Urizen, with the scientist turning away from nature to focus on his books. Paolozzi had admired Blake since viewing a large print of Newton at the Tate Gallery in the 1940s. He was also a friend of Colin St John Wilson, the architect of the British Library, since they both participated in the This is Tomorrow exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956. Wilson intended to site a seated sculpture at the junction of the two main axes in the piazza of his library. Paolozzi was then working on a sculpture of Newton, and he was commissioned to create the sculpture for the library. The new library was constructed from 1982 to 1999, and the sculpture was installed in 1995. The sculpture includes Paolozzi's self-portrait as the naked Newton, measuring the universe with his dividers. The eyes were copied from Michelangelo's David. It can be interpreted as symbolising a confluence of the two cultures, the arts and the sciences, and illustrating how Newton changed our view of the world to one determined by mathematical laws. The sculpture makes the body resemble a mechanical object, joined with bolts at the shoulders, elbows, knees and ankles. The sculptures shows the visible seams of Paolozzi's technique of dividing his model and reassembling the pieces, for example on the head. The final full-size sculpture stands 12 feet (3.7 m) high, and is mounted on a high plinth. The bronze was cast by the Morris Singer foundry; it was funded by the Foundation for Sport and the Arts. It was included in the Grade I listing of the library, granted in 2015. A maquette was donated by the artist to the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. A bronze model cast in 1988 "from the model made to show the Library committee", has been held by the Tate Gallery since 1995.A similar sculpture from 1989, Master of the Universe, is at the Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art in Edinburgh, with another example in Hong Kong.

The Lawrence Durrell Collection is a special collection of books and periodicals by, about or associated with the novelist and poet Lawrence Durrell, donated to the British Library by Alan G. Thomas.

The Lady Eccles Oscar Wilde Collection is a special collection of materials by, about and associated with the novelist and playwright Oscar Wilde, donated to the British Library by Lady Eccles.