Front Quad of Lincoln College, the walls covered in bright green ivy

The Senior Library

The Senior Library is a collection of over 14,000 printed books and manuscripts housed in the College Library, the Wesley Room, and the Weston Library (where Lincoln’s manuscripts are deposited). Ranging from Hebraica to Civil War pamphlets and Restoration drama, Lincoln’s historic collections are both rich and diverse.

Zoomed in image of a handwritten page in a book

The earliest donation to the College Library dates from the fifteenth century: a collection of Greek and Latin manuscripts given by the founder, Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) and his nephew, the English humanist Robert Fleming (d.1456), who bought his manuscripts from the celebrated Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci. This donation has been described as a princely gift and one that ensured that, by the end of the century, Lincoln had the finest college library in Oxford.

The Library continued to grow through donations and bequests. The earliest gift of printed books (now the core of our collection of incunabula) came from Edmund Audley, Bishop of Salisbury, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century the bequests of Richard Kilby and Thomas Marshall, both Rectors of Lincoln, established a fine collection of Judaica and Hebraica while Gilbert Watts left an extensive library of classical and philosophical texts. The libraries of James St Amand and William Vesey, which were left to Lincoln in the eighteenth century, would have more than filled the library shelves added in 1739. These bequests, along with more recent donations, mean that the Senior Library is rich in subject areas not widely found in Oxford college libraries: Hebraica and Judaica, English Civil War pamphlets, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century drama, and John Wesley and the early history of Methodism.

The history of the Library is well documented in the College archives, with inventories and catalogues that date back to the fifteenth century and a donors’ book from the seventeenth century. The books themselves also contain evidence, in bindings and inscriptions, of the rich history of the Senior Library. We are currently cataloguing the collection onto SOLO (the Oxford online catalogue) where details of the provenance of Lincoln’s early printed books can be found.

Explore the Collections

Hebraica and Judaica

Civil War pamphlets from the library of Thomas Marshall

The Wesley Collection

For research enquiries or to arrange an appointment to see books from our printed collection please contact Lincoln’s antiquarian cataloguer, Sarah Cusk.

Lincoln’s manuscripts are held in the Weston Library and Bodleian readers with manuscript permissions may consult them there in the usual way. Visiting researchers should click here for information on how to arrange to consult manuscripts held in the Weston Library.

The Senior Library is currently being catalogued onto SOLO, the Oxford University online catalogue, with full bibliographic and copy-specific records for the early printed books (pre-1830) in our collections. The Library also has a card catalogue that dates from the 1950s as well as shelflists with short-title entries for the whole collection; these are the main finding aids for books that have not yet been catalogued. If you cannot find what you are looking for on SOLO, please contact Lincoln’s antiquarian cataloguer, Sarah Cusk, who will be happy to help you.

The College’s manuscripts (housed in the Weston Library) are mostly listed in Coxe, H.O. Catalogus codicum mss. qui in collegiis aulisque Oxoniensibus hodie adservantur (Oxford, 1852). Manuscripts deposited after 1852 are listed in College Library Manuscripts Deposited in the Bodleian not in Coxe (held at the Issue Desk in the Mackerras Reading Room of the Weston Library).

Vivian H.H. Green’s Commonwealth of Lincoln College 1427-1977 (Oxford, 1979) includes an excellent short history of the Library. The footnotes to this section provide a useful introduction to earlier resources for the history of the Senior Library, including the inventories and catalogues held in the College Archive.

To request images of our manuscripts for personal scholarly use, please contact the Bodleian. To request images of our early printed books, please contact Sarah Cusk.

To publish images of Lincoln College’s manuscripts (obtained from the Bodleian) or printed books, please print out, complete, and submit both the Application form for Permission to Use Images and the Terms of Use forms. Costs can be seen in the Rate Card. Scans of the forms may be emailed but we also require signed hard copies to be sent for our records, which should be sent to the Librarian, Lincoln College, Turl Street, Oxford, OX1 3DR.

If your application is approved, you will be notified and the Terms of Use document will be returned signed by a representative of the College. Permission is dependent on payment of the appropriate fee.