Support the Library during our 180th anniversary
To celebrate the Library’s 180th anniversary why not adopt a book printed in the year the Library was founded and help us protect our outstanding collection. From science and fiction to poetry, biography and folklore, the Library holds a fascinating collection of books printed in 1841. Highlights include Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop, a copy of George Sand’s feminist novel Léila and an 1841 edition of London Library founder member Harriet Martineau’s abolitionist novel The Hour and the Man.
You can adopt your favourite book from just £100. Your adoption will include a bookplate with your name in your chosen volume, ensuring your name is at the very heart of the Library’s collection. You can also adopt a book as a gift for £125. The gift package includes:
- The recipient’s name on a bookplate inside your chosen book
- A set of five London Library postcards
- A London Library notecard for your personal message
- A private tour of the Library for the recipient and a guest with the opportunity to see the bookplate in situ
You will find a full list of the books you can adopt below. Each adoption supports the development and preservation of the Library's unique and expanding collection.
Fiction
William Harrison Ainsworth, Guy Fawkes: Or, the Gunpowder Treason: An Historical Romance ADOPTED
William Harrison Ainsworth, Old Saint Paul's: A Tale of Plague and Fire ADOPTED
Fredrika Bremer, Nina
Charles Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer ADOPTED
Charles Dickens, Master Humphrey's Clock ADOPTED
Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop ADOPTED
John Galt, Sir Andrew Wylie of that Ilk
Catherine Gore, Cecil, a Peer: A Sequel to Cecil, or, The Adventures of a Coxcomb ADOPTED
Catherine Gore, The Soldier of Lyons: A Tale of the Tuileries
Victor Hugo, Les feuilles d'automne
Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris ADOPTED
G. P. R. James, The Ancient Regime: A Tale
G. P. R. James, Corse de Leon: Or, the Brigand
Edward William Lane, The Thousand and One Nights, Commonly Called in England, The Arabian Nights' Entertainments
Frederick Marryat, Poor Jack
Harriet Martineau, The Hour and the Man: A Historical Romance ADOPTED
George Sand, Léila ADOPTED
Eugène Sue, Le commandeur de Malte
History and Politics
British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Slavery and the Slave Trade in India ADOPTED
George L. Craik, Pictorial History of England ADOPTED
Sir John Gardner, The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians
Henry Hallam, View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages
John Holland, The History and Description of Fossil Fuel, the Collieries, and Coal Trade of Great Britain
W. H. Maxwell, Life of Field-Marshal His Grace the Duke of Wellington
John Gideon Millingen, The History of Duelling
Augustin Thierry, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans
Philosophy and Religion
John Abercrombie, The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings ADOPTED
Immanuel Kant, La religion dans les limites de la raison ADOPTED
George Long, An Essay on the Moral Nature of Man
Robert Southey, The Book of the Church ADOPTED
Poetry and Drama
Dante Alighieri, La divine comédie ADOPTED
Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ADOPTED
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: a Tragedy ADOPTED
Stephen Gosson, The School of Abuse: Containing a Pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, &c.
Lady Flora Hastings and Sophia, Marchioness of Bute, Poems
James Hogg, The Queen's Wake: A Legendary Poem
Victor Hugo, Odes et Ballades ADOPTED
James Macpherson, The Genuine Remains of Ossian, Literally Translated
Louisa Frances Poulter, Imagination: A Poem
Sophocles, Oedipus Coloneus
James Thomson, The Seasons, and the Castle of Indolence ADOPTED
Science and Folklore
J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, A Collection of Letters Illustrative of the Progress of Science in England, from the Reign of Queen Elizabeth to that of Charles the Second
Charles Henry Knox, Traditions of Western Germany: The Black Forest, the Neckar, the Odenwald, the Tanus, the Rhine and the Moselle
Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Legendary Tales of the Highlands: A Sequel to Highland Rambles ADOPTED
Humphrey Lloyd, Lectures on the Wave-theory of Light ADOPTED
Robert Patterson, The Natural History of the Insects Mentioned in Shakespeare's Plays ADOPTED
Sport
Frank Lewis Dowling, Fistiana, or, The Oracle of the Ring: Comprising a Defence of British Boxing ADOPTED
George Agar Hansard, The Book of Archery, Being the Complete Practice and History of the Art
Travel and Topography
Marguerite, Countess of Blessington, The Idler in France ADOPTED
Charles Knight, London ADOPTED
Alexandre, Comte de Laborde, Versailles, ancien et moderne
Jehangeer Nowrojee and Hirjeebhoy Merwanjee, Journal of a Residence of Two Years and a Half in Great Britain ADOPTED
Emma Roberts, Notes of an Overland Journey through France and Egypt to Bombay ADOPTED
Catherine Maria Sedgwick, Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home
In memoriam
Books can also be adopted in memoriam to remember those special to you. To find out more about this, or to ask about a particular book, please contact the Fundraising Team on 020 7766 4795 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
If you would like to adopt a new book or a favourite book that was not published in 1841, please click here. If you are interested in making a one-off donation towards book acquisitions or conservation cost, please click here. To set up a regular donation to the Library's Book Fund to support the purchase of books for the Library, or make a larger donation to support the development and care of the collection, please contact the Fundraising Team directly on 020 7766 4795 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Please note:
- Although we endeavour to fulfil your book of choice some books may already have existing bookplates. Where this occurs we will suggest a suitable alternative
- Please allow up to three months for your bookplate to be placed in the book
- Tours must be booked in advance and are dependent on Library staff availability.
