The British Library once was part of the British Museum, having begun with the library of Sir Hans Soane. Several other valuable collections were added over the years, including the Royal Library begun by Edward IV in the 1470s, and George III’s extensive library. The great domed reading room was opened in 1857. (Among the nineteenth-century readers who spent much time there was Karl Marx.) In 1973 a separate British Library was created by act of Parliament, though the Reference Division with book displays was still physically part of the British Museum. In 1998 it moved to new quarters on Euston Road. Like the British Museum, the British Library has many exhibits of great interest to Christian visitors.
Some of the most important are:
- The Codex Sinaiticus, earliest Bible in existence (fourth-century), together with the fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus
- The Lindisfarne Gospels, one of the greatest masterpieces of medieval book illumination, produced in AD698
- The Harley Golden Gospels, produced around AD800 at the court of Charlemagne
- The Bedford Hours, a masterpiece of French book painting of the fifteenth century
- A copy of the 42-line Gutenberg Bible, the world’s first printed book
- A Wycliffe Bible (very few escaped the flames)
- A Tyndale Bible which belonged to Anne Boleyn
- A first edition of the King James Bible of 1611
- A manual of prayers carried to the scaffold by Lady Jane Grey
- Two of the four existing copies of the Magna Carta