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The London Library is more than fortunate to boast some of the most helpful and courteous Issues Desk staff that one could hope for. For the first half of the twentieth century, however, members would have experienced a rather more ambiguous welcome as they entered the Library under the terrifying gaze of the legendary Frederick James Cox who manned the Issue Desk for several decades until his retirement in 1951.

Cox joined the Library as a messenger boy in 1882, at a time when a number of members, including the Duchess of Cleveland (Prime Minister Lord Rosebery’s mother), were still arriving on horseback. He continued working until the age of 86 – a career spanning nearly 70 years, during which he came into contact with an extraordinary range of public figures, from Gladstone to Somerset Maugham; Randolph Churchill to Evelyn Waugh; Thomas Huxley to Rose Macaulay.

Dressed in wing collar and studs and fronting the Issue Desk like an imperious bank manager, Cox became a London landmark, sketched by Punch and frequently remarked upon by members amazed by his encyclopaedic knowledge, intimidated by his overbearing manner, and all too frequently patronised by his sharp sense of humour.

JW Lambert, Editor of the New English Dramatists series, recalled how “the presiding genius of the Issue Desk always made me shake in my shoes, riven by the conviction that I should not be taking out whatever I was taking out, or that I was transgressing some unwritten law or another”.

Cox rounded on those he disapproved of. He refused to acknowledge JB Priestley’s success, asking Priestley to repeat his surname more loudly in front of everyone at the Issue Desk so that Cox could fill in the borrowing form properly. When an embarrassed Priestley obliged, Cox barked: “Initial?”

Lady Galway – daughter of Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, one of the leaders of the English liberal Catholic movement – found herself searching for an interpretation of a passage in the Book of Revelation. Cox instantly identified the appropriate authority: “Sir Rowland would have known” he said, frowning at her.

Edith Sitwell was snubbed altogether. JW Lambert recalled, “There appeared through the entrance doors a startling vision: a tall thin woman with an ivory profile and imperious carriage, followed at a respectable distance by a chauffeur with his cap tucked under his arm and carrying a pile of books. She addressed him (Mr Cox) with all the confidence of birth and fame. He broke off what he was saying to me, paused and without turning his head uttered … ‘One moment, Miss Sitwell, if you please’, before carrying on, for several minutes whatever it was that he was telling me”.

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Concerned at the treatment of books by some members, Cox remonstrated with Frank Pakenham (later Lord Longford) who was returning several books, one of which had a page turned down. Cox bellowed, “Right, you just wait there!” Moments later he returned, and slammed a pile of books onto the desk, all of them with pages turned down. He roared, “I’ve been lookin’ for the culprit for some time!”

Cox was no less able to hide his disdain for Virginia Woolf when a friend of hers asked for a copy of The Voyage Out. “By Virginia Woolf?” he asked. “Let me see; she was a Miss Stephen, daughter of Sir Leslie” (Leslie Stephen was a former Library President). “Her sister is Mrs Clive Bell I think. Ah, strange to see what’s become of those two girls. Brought up in such a nice home too. But then, they were never baptised”.

Yet for all his idiosyncracies and inverted snobbery, this man – who spent nearly three quarters of a century serving, sometimes insulting, and often intimidating some of the greatest names in literature – was revered for his vast knowledge of the Library and its collection. Nicholas Henderson, ambassador to Washington and Paris, commented: “He knew everything. You asked him anything you wanted to know and he knew where you would find it, he’d get you the book”. JW Lambert concurred: “I don’t know why this remarkable figure, portly, wheezing, wing-collared Mr Cox should have inspired such anxieties; I cannot remember any occasion when I received anything but benign, not to say patronizing, treatment at his hands – hands which had entered books for half the famous authors I had ever heard of.”

Cox died on 19th August 1952, and three days later the Times published a lengthy obituary. The newspaper described him as “a much loved and respected figure… a survivor of a bygone age of leisurely good manners…he needed little encouragement to draw on his memories of St James’s Square. It is not too much to say he became a sort of Remembrancer to all the members of the Library”.

Cox’s anecdotes – from fetching novels for Gladstone, gossiping about Thackeray’s mistress or dealing with the aftermath of Second World War bomb damage at the Library (“it wasn’t what we were used to”) – spanned a unique period in The Library’s growth and development. By his death he had established himself as one of London’s great characters, and if he had amassed a full store of memories, they were matched by those of countless Library members who had equally vivid memories of him!

In partnership with Jewish Book Week

Hampstead in the 1930s. Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson have embarked on a love affair which will go on to launch an era-defining art movement.

Circles and Squares chronicles the exhilarating rise and fall of British Modernism, capturing the inner circle drawn into Hepworth and Nicholson’s wake: among them Henry Moore, Herbert Read, Paul Nash and the famed European emigrés Walter Gropius, Piet Mondrian and László and Lucia Moholy-Nagy. This enthralling, finely researched account threads together the lives, loves, ambitions and rivalries of the artists at the heart of an international avant-garde, trailblazers united in their belief that art could change the world. Author Caroline Maclean is in conversation with Lara Feigel.

 

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Those of you who find yourselves passing by the Library's window in Mason's Yard will have seen that a new display has been installed featuring new books by members, many of which have been written and researched in the Library. 

The eclectic display showcases books from fiction, history, art and more - demonstrating the wide range of resources on offer to Library members.

It includes:

All of these books are now available to borrow from the Library, just log in to Catalyst to browse then choose to collect from the Library or have them posted to you at home.

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Originally published in February 2014

The Folklore collection at The London Library forms a substantial section in Science & Miscellaneous, with works from the 18th to the 21st century in English and many other languages. The universal subject of Folklore and its deeply rooted place in the cultural fabric of nationalities is reflected in the Library’s collections. The collection contains a wide range of works on different strands of folklore; traditional and popular beliefs, customs, legends, fairy tales and music.

Studies on King Arthur, the medieval and mythological figure can be found here, with works discussing the legend in its many guises; Merlin, the Holy Grail, King Arthur’s Knights and the Round Table.  Some interesting works are: Arthur of Britain by E.K. Chambers (1927); La légende arthurienne: études et documents. Première partie, Les plus anciens textes by Edmond Faral (1929) and The Holy Grail, its legends and symbolism: an explanatory survey of their embodiment in romance literature and a critical study of the interpretations placed thereon by Arthur Edward Waite (1933). Interest on the legend is still as popular as ever, as recent acquisitions such as Worlds of Arthur: facts and fictions of the dark ages by Guy Halsall (2013) and The true history of Merlin the Magician by Anne Lawrence-Mathers (2012) suggest.

The major role of folklore collected and transcribed through oral tradition is seen in titles such as Tales of the fairies and of the ghost world’ collected from the oral tradition in South-west Munster by Jeremiah Curtin (1895) and Old Deccan days, or, Hindoo fairy legends current in southern India collected from oral tradition by M. Frere (1868).

Popular beliefs, traditions and tales are also included in works from abroad in the recently catalogued Curiosità popolari tradizionali series of books from different parts of Italy, and volumes in the series Les littératures populaires de toutes les nations include works from France, Greece, Turkey and China. Religious folklore is seen in Folk-lore of the Holy Land: Moslem, Christian and Jewish by J.E. Hanauer (1907).

 

The handed-down tradition of Folk music by unknown composers is seen in the folk songs of India, Greece, Serbia and Canada housed in the Library’s collections; Greek folk-songs from the Turkish provinces of Greece … Albania, Thessaly, (not yet wholly free,) and Macedonia: literal and metrical translations by Lucy M.J. Garnett (1885) are particularly note-worthy.

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Fairy tales are a large part of the folklore section and probably the most well-known are Grimm’s fairy tales – Kinder- und Hausmärchen.  Both early and current editions of the tales, including criticism, can be found here and have now all been retrospectively catalogued.  In addition, some books on fairy tales from other parts of the world have also just been added such as: Welsh fairy-tales and other stories collected and edited by P.H. Emerson (1894); Chinese fairy tales told in English by Herbert A. Giles (1911) and Fairy folk tales of the Maori by James Cowan (1925).

The customs, superstitions and practices of subcultures are also explored. Sir James George Frazer’s famous work, The Golden Bough, a comparative study of mythology and religion (1890), includes such topics including a chapter on ‘Christmas and the mistletoe’, as does a more modern take on ‘superstition’, Old wives’ tales by Eric Maple (1981).

Other topics of interest found in the Library’s folklore collection retrospectively catalogued or soon to be, are books on moon mythology: Moon lore by Timothy Harley (1885); plant lore: La mythologie des plantes, ou, Les légendes du règne végétal by Angelo de Gubernatis (1878-1882) and The mystic mandrake by C.J.S. Thompson (1934); animal mythology: Un-natural history, or, Myths of ancient science: being a collection of curious tracts on the basilisk, unicorn, phoenix, behemoth or leviathan, dragon, giant spider, tarantula, chameleons, satyrs, homines caudati, &c. now first translated from the Latin, and edited, with notes and illustrations, by Edmund Goldsmid (1886); and werewolves: The werewolf by Montague Summers (1933).

The enduring popularity of Folklore influence is seen in the rise of contemporary fiction writing in this genre (notable in the Harry Potter series where mandrakes, unicorns, basilisks, dragons, phoenixes, giant spiders and werewolves feature), and is reflected in recent Library acquisitions Mythic thinking in twentieth-century Britain: meaning for modernity by Matthew Sterenberg (2013), The white devil: the werewolf in European culture by Matthew Beresford (2013) and The rise of the vampire by Erik Butler (2013).

 

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