Isaac Casaubon 1559-1614
Isaac CASAUBON 1559-1614
Biographical Note
Prebendary of Canterbury, classical scholar.
Books
Casaubon was a keen acquirer of books, to support his scholarly work, throughout his life. An inventory made at the time of his move from Geneva to Montpellier in 1596 shows that he then had around 500 volumes. When he moved to London in 1610, he brought some, but not all, his books with him; by the time of his death, he had ca.1200 volumes in London, while ca.850 remained in Paris. They were gradually dispersed, from then onwards; many were retained by his widow and son Meric (who also brought some of the Paris books over to England), but the value of Casaubon's books, for both contents and annotations, was quickly recognised. Many books were bought for the Royal Library soon after Casaubon's death (and are therefore now in the British Library). 61 volumes of his adversaria were bequeathed to the Bodleian Library by Meric in 1671. Edward Bernard’s Catalogi manuscriptorum, 1697, lists 110 manuscripts which belonged to Casaubon. Around a fifth of his total library is thought to be traceable today.
Sources
- Birrell, T., The reconstruction of the library of Isaac Casaubon, Hellinga festschrift, Amsterdam, 1980, 59-68.
- Considine, John. '"Casaubon, Isaac (1559–1614), classical scholar and ecclesiastical historian."' Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- Craster, H., Casaubon's Greek manuscripts, Bodleian Library Quarterly 5 (1926), 97-100.
- Grafton, A. and Weinberg, J., Isaac Casaubon’s library of Hebrew books, in G. Mandelbrote and B. Taylor (eds), Libraries within the library, London, 2009, 24-42.
- Macray, W., Annals of the Bodleian Library, 2nd edn, Oxford, 1890, p.136.