Henry Yates Thompson | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1838-12-15)15 December 1838 nearLiverpool, England |
| Died | 8 July 1928(1928-07-08) (aged 89) London, England |
| Education | Trinity College, Cambridge |
| Occupation | Newspaper proprietor |
| Known for | Illuminated manuscript collector |
| Political party | Liberal |
| Spouse | Elizabeth Smith (m. 1878–1928) |
Henry Yates Thompson (15 December 1838 – 8 July 1928) was a Britishnewspaper proprietor and collector ofilluminated manuscripts.
Yates Thompson was the eldest of five sons born to Samuel Henry Thompson, a banker from a leading family ofLiverpool, and Elizabeth Yates, the eldest of five daughters ofJoseph Brooks Yates, aWest India merchant andantiquary. He was educated atHarrow and atTrinity College, Cambridge, where he won thePorson Prize for Greek verse and was aCambridge Apostle.[1] After graduation, Yates Thompson was called to the bar byLincoln's Inn but never practised, choosing instead to travel extensively throughout Europe and the United States, during which time witnessed theSecond Battle of Chattanooga. He served as private secretary toEarl Spencer, theLord Lieutenant of Ireland, from 1868 until 1873, and stood unsuccessfully as aLiberal for election to theHouse of Commons fromSouth Lancashire in the1865 general election, as well as in the1868 general election and an 1881by-election.
Two years after his marriage to Elizabeth Smith, the eldest daughter of publisherGeorge Smith, in 1878, Yates Thompson's father-in-law gave him ownership of thePall Mall Gazette. Previously aConservative newspaper, Thompson transformed it into a Liberal publication, hiring firstJohn Morley, then Morley's assistant,W. T. Stead, to edit the paper.[2] He supported Stead through the controversy surrounding the editor's famousexposé ofchild prostitution, "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon" in 1885. Yet Yates Thompson had little interest in the publishing business, and he sold thePall Mall Gazette for £50,000 toWilliam Waldorf Astor in 1892.[3]
Yates Thompson's sale of theGazette allowed him to spend more time on what had become since the 1870s his primary interest, manuscript collecting. The inheritance of tenmedieval manuscripts from his grandfather, Joseph Brooks Yates, in 1855 started what became a lifelong interest in manuscript collection, one that from the 1890s established Yates Thompson as the leading British manuscript collector of his day. He benefited from the dispersal of a number of collections, including those from the libraries ofSir Thomas Phillipps,Firmin Didot,John Ruskin, and theEarl of Ashburnham. He had a prodigious memory, which aided him in combining long-separated volumes and manuscripts into complete sets. Endeavoring to keep his collection manageable, he sold off lesser volumes that he acquired, improving the overall quality of his collection as a consequence.[5] His collection was catalogued in 4 volumes between 1898 and 1912 byM.R. James and others.
He decided to refine his collection to include 100 manuscripts of the highest quality, and sold off the excess. When he was able to buy a better manuscript thereafter, he would sell one to make way for it. Many of the books that Yates Thompson collected were subsequently donated to museums, including theBritish Library,BnF and theFitzwilliam Museum. He died at his London home in 1928; upon his wife's death in 1941 a larger additional collection of illuminated manuscripts was donated to the British Museum and are now in the British Library, where the 52Yates Thompson Manuscripts from both donations are now one of the "closed collections".[6]
Thompson twice held the annualSandars Readership in Bibliography atCambridge University and lectured on English and French illustrated manuscripts of the 13th–15th centuries (1901) and illustrated manuscripts of the 11th century (1904).
The Yates Thompson Manuscripts in the British Library include:
A philanthropist, Yates Thompson also donated buildings to Harrow,Sefton Park in Liverpool andNewnham College, Cambridge, and hospitals toCrewe and theHorwich railway works.
He received theFreedom of Liverpool in October 1901, in recognition of benefits he had conferred on the city, including the palm houses in Sefton andStanley parks.[7]
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