A collection of around 25,000 bookplates, Scottish, English and colonial, mounted in 40 volumes, with another 40 volumes of books about heraldic bookplates. The collection was formed by by Dr John Henderson Smith (1875-1952) of Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England. Henderson Smith was born in Edinburgh but spent most of his life south of the border. After graduating in classics from Balliol College, Oxford in 1898, he read medicine at Edinburgh University, before returning to do research at Oxford. He subsequently spent time at medical laboratories in Copenhagen, Dresden, and Freiberg. In 1907 he was appointed to the Lister Institute for Medical Research, where he continued his work on bacteriology and immunology. He later accepted an appointment in the newly formed department of mycology at the Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden, where he was acknowledged as a leading authority on plant pathology and virus diseases of plants. In his spare time he was keen collector of bookplates, being a member of the Ex Libris Society which lasted from 1891-1908, and serving as the secretary of the Bookplate Exchange Club for 47 years (1901-1948), which gave him the ideal opportunity to collect and swap individual bookplates with other club members. He had planned to write a book on bookplates, using his collection, but never managed to do so before his death. (For other smaller collections of bookplates which have been acquired by the library see Bookplate Collections).

Organisation

Each volume in the collection has been catalogued at volume-level only and has the shelfmark 'J.H.S.'. The Henderson Smith and Bookplate Collections also have a slip catalogue of the individual bookplates arranged alphabetically under the names of owners, with brief descriptions of the bookplates, which is available for consultation on request.

Acquisition

The collection was bequeathed by Dr Henderson Smith and received by the Library in 1953.

References

An obituary of Henderson Smith is in the British Medical Journal, 10 January 1953.