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COTTON LIBRARY: One of the most important collections
of medieval manuscripts, the Cotton Library was severely damaged
by fire in 1731. Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631) was a Renaissance
collector of medieval books, which he assembled in the infamous
Cotton Library. In his day, there was no Dewey Decimal System
or Library of Congress numbering system, so he ordered his books
in a unique manner. He arranged them on a set of shelves; at
the top of each section of shelves was the stone bust or carving
of figures from classical antiquity, including twelve Roman
Emperors, Faustina, and Cleopatra. He then catalogued the books
by the bust above them, assigning them a letter to indicate
what shelf they were on, and then a roman numeral to indicate
the order of the manuscript from left to right. (For instance,
a manuscript labeled Cleopatra A. i would be found
the first book on the left on the top shelf under the bust of
Cleopatra.) Sir Robert's son Thomas enlarged the collection,
and later donated it to the British government in 1700. The
entire Cotton collection consisted of 958 medieval manuscripts.
The books were transferred to Ashburnham house. Unfortunately,
the Ashburnham house caught fire in 1731. 114 of the books were
utterly destroyed and an additional 98 severely damaged. The
remnant was moved to the British Museum in 1753. Both the Beowulf
manuscript (MS Cotton Vitellius A.xv) and the
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight manuscript (MS
Cotton Nero A.x. article 3) were housed in the Cotton
Library.