William Barclay Squire, the "Smith Collection" of Handel Manuscript Copies in the King's Music Library, and Frederick, Prince of Wales.

MUSIC libraries; HANDEL, George Frideric, 1685-1759; NEWSPAPER advertising; PRINCES; MANUSCRIPT collections; BRITISH Museum; COLLECTIONS

William Barclay Squire (1855–1927), the long-serving assistant keeper specializing in music within the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum, dubbed one part of the King's (now Royal) Music Library's collection of Handel manuscripts the "Smith Collection." This understandable action taken a hundred years ago has served to confuse subsequent scholars, has inhibited the identification of the copies made for Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707–1751), and has obscured a complex history of collection management involving private sales and purchases, gifts, and dispersion across the Atlantic. Drawing on eighteenth-century newspaper advertisements, biographical inquiry, poetry, binding techniques and labels, the author tracks the fourteen volumes of a special set that originally belonged to Frederick, Prince of Wales, across two and a half centuries. The volumes are now to be found on two continents and in three libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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