Poems, Sacred and Moral.

1798

De Beer Eb 1798 G

Printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies

Frances Mary Richardson Currer (1785–1861) has been called ‘England’s earliest female bibliophile’ (De Ricci). She had fortunate beginnings, inheriting the Richardson and Currer estates, which included extensive libraries. She added to them, amassing at Eshton Hall, North Yorkshire, a library of fine books numbering 15,000. To her, it was not a parlour past-time. She actually enjoyed the cut and thrust of book collecting. Currer had hoped that her library would remain intact, but the family sold most of it at Sotheby’s in 1862. Mathew Wilson (1772-1854) became Currer’s stepfather when he married her mother, Margaret Clive Richardson Currer, in 1800. Books from the collection with the Wilson-Currer bookplates are now found all over the world.