CARNEGIE, Andrew.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Collection of books from his library on Scottish family history. A highly appealing collection of scarce works on Scottish genealogy most attractively presented, from the library of the great industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), with his bookplate in each volume.Carnegie's interest in libraries "dated back to his early days as a messenger-boy in Pennsylvania, when each Saturday he borrowed a new book from a free library. He later declared that it was his own personal experience which led him to value a library beyond all other forms of beneficence... By 1900 his programme for founding libraries had become, from his house on East 91st Street in New York, as organized a business as that of churning out steel ingots" (ODNB). It seems likely that these books may originally have graced the shelves at Carnegie's magnificent Highland residence of Skibo Castle - which looks across the Dornoch Firth - and where, as ODNB points out, he "could play the Scottish laird... and guests were led into dinner by a piper".Five of the titles present here are the work of the genealogist and archivist Sir William Fraser (1816-1898), described by ODNB as possessing "in abundance the attention to factual detail which is essential for the scholar whose métier is to edit and produce source material. In terms of the sheer volume of family histories and editions of original charters and other documents, published over a period of more than half a century, he has had no rival amon

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