William Hunter 1718-1783

William HUNTER 1718-1783

Biographical Note

Hunter was born on 23 May 1718 at Long Calderwood, East Kilbride, Lanarkshire. He was the seventh child of John Hunter, farmer, and Agnes Paul. He attended a local school before becoming a student at Glasgow University between 1731 and 1736. He did not graduate. He then became apprenticed to Dr William Cullen who practiced at Hamilton, and continued his medical studies by attending Alexander Monro’s anatomy lectures at Edinburgh University in 1739 and going to London to study midwifery under William Smellie, who also hailed from Lanarkshire, the next year. He was assistant to Dr James Douglas in 1741 and then studied anatomy in Paris. Settling permanently in London in 1744 he built up over the following years a large and successful surgery and midwifery practice, including many aristocratic patrons, and started to give anatomy lectures himself; his courses, highly successful, continued until his death. He became physician extraordinary to Queen Charlotte in 1762 and was involved in her frequent pregnancies. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1767 and the following year became Professor of Anatomy at the newly-founded Royal Academy of Arts. Over time he became very wealthy and was able to indulge his passion for collecting all sorts of materials. His large folio masterwork, Anatomia uteri humani gravidi tabulis illustrata - The anatomy of the human gravid uterus exhibited in figures - was issued by John Baskerville at Birmingham in 1774. He died at his home, which also contained his collections and a lecture theatre, in Great Windmill Street, London, on 30 March 1783.

Books

Books and manuscripts were but one facet of Hunter’s omnivorous collecting. He built up a very fine collection of coins and medals (second only, it was said, to the French royal collection), minerals, shells, corals, insects, pictures, prints, ethnographic material and other miscellaneous objects. His printed book collection numbered around 10,000 items by his death, and included 534 incunabula (including the two Fust and Schoeffer Ciceros issued in Mainz in 1465 and 1466, ten Caxtons and the 1499 Hypnerotmachia Poliphili). It was a great bibliophile’s collection as well as a scholar’s. Around a third was of medical material, ranging from ancient texts to modern-age breakthroughs (e.g. Vesalius and Harvey) and contemporary controversies (including the rabbit woman of Godalming). Hunter was very interested in and knowledgeable of fine typography and the history of printing. Some 2,300 items in his library were issued in the sixteenth century, from many eminent continental presses, and eighteenth century items include over a hundred editions from the Foulis brothers of Glasgow, Strawberry Hill imprints (often presentation copies from Horace Walpole) and Baskerville productions, to which he subscribed. There are many fine natural history folios, scientific classics (e.g. the 1543 Copernicus), and works of exploration and travel. Fine printings of vernacular literature are well represented. Earlier owners include Jean Grolier, Thomas Cranmer, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Donne, William Laud, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Robert Hooke, Robert Harley, and Charles James Fox. He acquired material from many celebrated auction sales, such as those of Richard Mead, Anthony Askew, John Ratcliffe, Jean Gaignat and Pieter Burmann.

Of his 650 manuscripts, over a third are medieval, and these include a superbly illustrated Psalter produced in the north of England at the end of the twelfth century, but also such things as a 14th century manuscript of Marco Polo’s travels and over a hundred Arabic, Persian and Turkish manuscripts, as well as some important Chinese items (in printed form as well as manuscript).

He bequeathed all his collections to Glasgow University, along with £8,000 to build a museum for them, but stipulated that his collections were to remain in London for thirty years to facilitate the work of his nephew, Dr Matthew Baillie. However, Baillie waived his rights early, and Hunter’s bequests arrived in Glasgow in 1807. Ever since, they have been the jewel in the crown of the Glasgow University’s collections, have been much studied and have been the source of much research and exhibition material. A catalogue of the Hunterian manuscripts was published in 1908 and a catalogue of the books in 1930. All information given in these publications, and more, is now available through Glasgow University Library’s on-line catalogues.

Characteristic Markings

Hunter had no bookplate, but sometimes commissioned bindings personalised with his device of a hunting horn. He frequently tipped in manuscript notes into books in his collection, and also added marginalia and annotations.

Sources

• Baldwin, Jack, William Hunter, 1718-1783, Book Collector: Catalogue of an Exhibition, Glasgow University Library, 14 April – 30 September 1983, ([Glasgow]: Glasgow University Library, 1983).
• Bateson, Donal, ‘William Hunter’s Numismatic Books’, in E. Geoffrey Hancock, Nick Pearce and Mungo Campbell, eds., William Hunter’s World: the Art and Science of Eighteenth-Century Collecting, (London: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 283-303.
• Brock, Helen ‘Hunter, William (1718-1783), physician, anatomist and man-midwife’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• Ferguson, Mungo, The Printed Books in the Library of the Hunterian Museum in the University of Glasgow, a Catalogue, (Glasgow: Jackson, Wylie and Co., 1930).
• Pearce, Nick, ‘”At Last in Dr Hunter’s Library”, William Hunter’s Chinese Collections’, in E. Geoffrey Hancock, Nick Pearce and Mungo Campbell, eds., William Hunter’s World: the Art and Science of Eighteenth-Century Collecting, (London: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 263-281.
• Weston, David, ‘The “Hunterian Orchard”: William Hunter’s Library’, in E. Geoffrey Hancock, Nick Pearce and Mungo Campbell, eds., William Hunter’s World: the Art and Science of Eighteenth-Century Collecting, (London: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 305-316.
• Young, John, and Aitken, P. Henderson, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of the Hunterian Museum in the University of Glasgow, (Glasgow: Maclehose, 1908).
• Information from Murray Simpson.