Hutton’s books were at his home on Woolwich Common until his retirement in 1807. The exact date of his move into central London is not known, nor is it at all certain over what period his possessions or his books moved. By 1816 his new house in Bedford Row contained over 2500 printed works, ranging from multi-volume encyclopedias and series of journals down to slim pamphlets, many of which were bound together as volumes. Hutton retained a reputation for method which suggests his books in both their locations are not likely to have been in conspicuous disorder, but more than this it seems impossible to say about their location within either home or the principles of their shelving.
Yale University, Lewis Walpole Library LWL MSS vol. 54, vol. 1 (subsequently ‘Catalogue A’) lists approximately 2200 printed works on 110 leaves, in roughly alphabetical order by author’s surname (or sometimes by title). Only the rectos were used, and entries were quite widely spaced: presumably in anticipation of additions being made. The date of the catalogue is unknown, though it cannot be earlier than the latest imprint dates of items listed, namely 1810. The catalogue is mainly in a hand that appears to be that of Hutton’s daughter Isabella, his regular amanuensis in later life. There are a large number of single-character errors in dates which suggest transcription from a previous manuscript of poor legibility. Furthermore, it frequently appears that two or more consecutive entries have been made without either dipping or mending the pen. Thus a lost preceding manuscript catalogue is likely, though not certain. There are also many phonetic spellings, especially of names, which suggest dictation underlay at least some entries; the transcriber’s pattern of spelling errors suggests someone who knew some French but little Latin, and who was not particularly familiar with names of mathematical and scientific authors. This would be consistent with Isabella as scribe.
What appears to be the same hand later added some entries between lines, and occasionally on the previously blank versos. There are some other added entries in what seems to be a distinct but similar hand, possibly that of another member of Hutton’s family. The added entries are not easy to characterise; they range across the dates and genres represented in the catalogue as a whole. It is possible that some were books purchased after the catalogue was originally made; the latest has imprint date 1815. It is also possible – I think likely – that most were items that had been omitted from that original layer inadvertently, for instance because they were mis-shelved, in use or on loan.
Hutton, in the shaky hand distinctive of him from the 1800s onwards, made some corrections both to the original entries and to the additions, adding missing bibliographic data, noting that certain volumes were bound with certain others, and correcting some but not all of the errors of transcription. He also added some entries, both between the lines and sometimes on the versos of the sheets. Many of his additions seem to aim at reporting more fully the contents of bound-together volumes. There are occasional cases where the first hand has made an addition to an insertion whose main hand is Hutton’s, probably implying a period when both individuals were making occasional changes to the catalogue.
The number of added books (around 360, of which roughly 200 are in Hutton’s hand) is small compared with the total size of the catalgue. Unfortunately those making additions did not check for duplication at all carefully; indeed one entry per item may not have been intended, at least in the case of items that could be alphabetized in more than one way: such as Tristram Shandy, which appears alphabetized both under Sterne and under Tristram. This results in ambiguity about how many copies Hutton owned of certain items. Together with the frequent errors in imprint dates, it also makes it in a number of cases quite impossible to deduce which editions of a much-reprinted work Hutton owned.
Even with these two layers of additions, this catalogue lists conspicuously little fiction, poetry and music: Hutton’s and his family’s correspondence contains references to a number of contemporary novelists, and to music making by various individuals; the house contained two pianos. It is therefore all but certain that this was not a complete catalogue of every printed book in Huttons home. Omissions may have arisen from an intention to not sell certain items, or from their designation as belonging to Isabella.
The catalogue was subsequently annotated in pencil with counts of the works and volumes listed on each page, with totals given on a final blank verso. The pattern of duplication already noted means that the totals – respectively 2193 and 3315 – are slightly inflated. It seems natural to associate the activity of counting the books with the plan to sell the library which emerged during 1815.
Finally tick marks were added – most in ink, some in pencil – beside a selection of the entries. There are roughly 470 tick marks; just over 20% of items were ticked. It is not possible to identify the hand with certainty, but the shaky pen strokes suggest the elderly Hutton in many cases. A natural interpretation would read these as an attempt at identifying volumes that would not be sold. The counts of works and volumes were not adjusted to reflect the tick marks, however.
Yale University, Lewis Walpole Library LWL MSS vol. 54, vol. 2 (subsequently ‘Catalogue B’) is identified on its title leaf – in Hutton’s hand – as a ‘Catalogue of / Doctor Hutton’s / Mathematical Library / Novr. 1815.’ Once again only the rectos are used, and the catalogue uses 76 leaves. This appears to be a copy in Hutton’s hand based on Catalogue A, taking up its insertions and emendations, but also omitting just over a quarter of the entries; in total only 1610 works are listed. The selection of entries omitted overlaps with but does not exactly match the selection of works which receved tick marks in Catalogue A. Some of the more obvious errors in Catalogue A were corrected, but the hand is frequently poor, and some of the bibliographical details were abbreviated to the point of being little more than aides mémoires, possibly not wholly comprehensible even to their writer.
Subsequent revision of this catalogue was limited; there are about 20 insertions, showing no obvious pattern (none involves an imprint date later than 1804). About fifty items also received tick marks in ink, which may suggest ongoing work on the selection of items to be retained when the collection was sold.
Hutton’s plan to sell his books en bloc to the British Museum was abandoned late in 1815. According to his correspondence, this was a result of the continued animosity of Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society and a trustee of the museum; independent corroboration of this is not known. The collection was instead sold at auction by the firm of Sotheby’s on 11–17 June 1816, who issued a printed catalogue: A catalogue of the entire, extensive and very rare mathematical library of Charles Hutton, L.L.D.… (subsequently ‘Catalogue C’). This does not propagate errors from the manuscript catalogues and appears to have been made independently of them, directly from the books themselves. It was presumably made by agents of Sotheby’s, and quite likely at their premises in the Strand rather than at Hutton’s home. Here the books are grouped first in six ‘days of sale’, then into format (folio, quarto, octavo and smaller), then finally alphabetized. This suggests something about how they were handled within Sotheby’s and it leads to a catalogue that is somewhat laborious to correlate with its manuscript predecessors. The total number of ‘lots’ listed is 1854.
About 480 items appear in Catalogue C which cannot be identified with confidence in either of Catalogues A and B. Many of these are second and subsequent items in bound volumes, which on the whole are listed more completely in C than in A or B. Some are duplicate copies of a single work, which again are reported more scrupulously than before. There do, however, seem to be items in Catalogue C which fall into neither of those classes. It is not certain that Sotheby’s refrained from inserting into this sale books which had never been Hutton’s, although both the quality of the collection and the fact that Hutton was alive at the time possibly make that practice less likely. It is probable, then, though not certain, that Hutton placed in the hands of Sotheby’s some books that were not listed in either manuscript catalogue.
Conversely, however, 320 items appear in Catalogues A and/or B but not C. Some of these are accounted for as the contents of bound volumes not listed completely in C, but most appear to be items that Hutton owned in 1815 but were not sold in 1816. It is again not absolutely certain that Sotheby’s listed for sale every book they had received from Hutton at the June 1816 sale (despite the word ‘entire’ on the title page of their catalogue), but the presumption must surely be that any exceptions were rare. Thus, Hutton kept back a selection of his books from the sale: that selection differed from that indicated by the tick marks in Catalogue A, and from that indicated by omission from Catalogue B. It seems to have been at least slightly smaller than the selection contemplated at earlier stages. Notes in the diary and correspondence of Hutton’s grandson Charles Blacker Vignoles, furthermore, indicate that after his death 500 copies of his Tracts, an unspecified number of his treatise on bridges and at least a few copies of his mathematical dictionary remained to be disposed of, showing that the Sotheby’s sale excluded a possibly substantial number of copies of Hutton’s own works. The sale catalogue of Hutton’s friend and collaborator Olinthus Gregory in 1841 contained a collection of 60 pamphlets and papers from the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society, formerly belonging to Hutton and ‘presented to Dr. G. after his death’: a further indication of the retention of certain items in 1816.
It is emphasised in conclusion that absence from any one (or more) of the catalogues may be due to a variety of causes and does not prove that Hutton did not own (or did not sell) the book.
A final enigma concerns a set of mathematical instruments listed at the end of Catalogue C: nine items ‘formerly the Property of the celebrated Dr. Franklin’. It is not explicitly stated that they had ever been the property of Hutton, and I know of no evidence linking Hutton directly with Benjamin Franklin (although both men were members of the circle of John Pringle, the previous Presdent of the Royal Society).