The Additional manuscripts are a collection of

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...

s stored at the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

.Additional manuscripts at the British Library
/ref> The collection was started at the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

in 1756, and passed to the British Library on its establishment in 1973. They form by far the largest collection of manuscripts at the library, and comprise all the manuscripts acquired by gift, purchase or bequest since 1756 that are not part of the "closed" collections or other named "open" collections. Because the collection was originally thought of as a continuation of the

Sloane manuscripts Sir Hans Sloane, 1st Baronet (16 April 1660 – 11 January 1753), was an Irish physician, naturalist, and collector, with a collection of 71,000 items which he bequeathed to the British nation, thus providing the foundation of the British Mu ...

collection (numbers 1–4100), the "Additional manuscripts" collections start with number 4101. The library maintains a series of catalogues and indexes to the Additional series. These catalogues have been published in 5-year volumes which also include catalogues for the other open collections of the library. Manuscripts in this collection have been used extensively as references in later works. In the nineteenth century, British scholars (e.g., in the ''

Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...

'') assumed that the collection was so well known that a reference to "Addit. MS." was sufficient to name the collection without further reference.

Subsets

Some subsets of the "Additional" series have been indexed separately. These include: *The Gladstone Papers (Add MS 44086-44835) *The Cecil of Chelwood Papers (Add MS 51071-51204) *The Yelverton Manuscripts (Add MS 48000-48196) *The Lord Chamberlain's Plays and Day-Books, 1824-1903 (Add MS 52929-53708) *The Blenheim Papers (Add MS 61101-61701) *The Petty Papers (Add MS 72850-72908) *The Bernard Shaw Papers (Add MS 50508-50743)

References

British Library additional manuscripts {{British-Library-stub