Thomas Phillips Tracts

The Roderic Bowen Library and Archives Tract Collection includes 169 volumes of pamphlets from the donation of Thomas Phillips (1760-1851).

Although born in London, Phillips was a Radnorshire man who became a surgeon employed by the East India Company, accumulating a substantial fortune after many years'service in India. Retiring to London in 1817, he devoted the rest of his life to furthering education in Wales.

Phillips had already begun to establish small libraries in India with the aim of enhancing the minds and moral character of serving soldiers, and after retiring to Brunswick Square, he started to make substantial gifts of money, books and curiosities to many individuals and institutions, in London, the Welsh Borders and South Wales. St David's College, Lampeter was one of these beneficiaries,and during the years 1834 to 1851 he despatched 22,500 volumes to the library in 59 consignments, as well as endowing scholarships and a Chair of Natural Science. Although it seems likely that some of these books had belonged to his own personal collection, most had been acquired in London sale-rooms and book shops for despatch to Lampeter, and many contain provenance evidence and annotations of former owners, including some notable collectors of the eighteenth century.

Bibliography/Furtherreading.

A Catalogue of the Tract Collection of Saint David's University College, Lampeter[compiled by B.Ll.James] (London: Mansell, 1975).

D. T. W.Price, 'Thomas Phillips of Brunswick Square' in The Founders' LibraryUniversity of Wales, Lampeter: Bibliographical and Contextual Studies. Essaysin Memory of Robin Rider, edited by William Marx. Trivium 29 and 30 (1997), pp.169-176.

Pamphlet volumes of Phillips' provenance

Tract volumes 93, 172, 179, 186, 188, 235, 277, 311, 315, 357, 376, 419-420,

451, 488,529-534, 536-537, 545, 552, 560-564, 566-575, 577, 581-582, 586-599, 601,604-616, 618, 620-621, 624-625, 680-681, 683-688, 692-703, 705-710, 715-718,722-728, 730, 732-737, 739, 741, 744-746, 748-751, 755-757, 764-766, 769, 771,773, 775-776, 778-781, 783-784, 790, 792, 784, 797, 799, 803, 807-813, 815,817, 819-820, 822-823, 825-828.