Edward Spencer Dodgson, the Basque language, and the British Museum Library

Abstract

Edward Spencer Dodgson (1857-1922) studied Classics at Oxford University, but there is no evidence that he sat his Finals. A visit to the Basque Country in 1886 began a life-long, passionate devotion to the Basque language and bibliography. He published new editions of important early texts and a series of concordances to the forms of the verb in the books of the Basque New Testament of 1571. In supplementing – and correcting – Jules Vinson’s bibliography of the Basque language (1891, 1898), Dodgson collected many books, some of which he kept, but many others he donated to libraries, notably the British Museum and libraries at Oxford. This study explores the pattern of his donations to the Museum and the mixture of motives of a man gripped by an obsession.