Your Library, Your Legacy
If you are thinking about leaving a gift to The London Library in your will, thank you. Gifts in wills play a vital role in securing the Library’s future and are a very special way of ensuring that the Library remains a haven of creativity and community for readers, writers and thinkers for generations to come.
The London Library is the largest independent lending library in the world, home to over a million books and manuscripts, from bestselling fiction and cutting-edge research to thousands of rare volumes that are many centuries old. Our collection and beautiful building have inspired and served as a creative and intellectual resource for some of the world’s most important and best loved writers and thinkers, from Charles Darwin, Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot to Christabel Pankhurst, Bram Stoker and Angela Carter. Membership of the Library continues to attract and support the work of the brightest lights in fields as diverse as medicine, music, science, law, literature and art. A gift in your will is a wonderful opportunity to safeguard the Library’s unique collection and ensure that it can continue to inspire the curiosity and creativity of future generations.
Leaving a gift to the Library
Your will might contain some of the most important words you ever write. After making provision for family, friends and loved ones, your will gives you the chance to support the causes that are most important to you. Leaving a gift to The London Library is a way for you to build an incredible and lasting legacy for the writers, readers and thinkers of the future. As a charitable bequest, a gift to the Library will also reduce or eliminate the inheritance tax liability on your estate.
There a number of different ways to leave a gift to the Library in your will.
Residuary bequest - a gift of a percentage share, or the whole, of your estate after debts, expenses and other gifts have been distributed
Pecuniary bequest - a donation of a fixed sum of money or shares
Specific bequest- a gift of a particular item, such as a painting, royalties or a historical document
We have provided suggested wordings for pecuniary, residuary and specific gifts, as well as a wealth of information about how gifts in wills make a difference to the Library, in our free legacies leaflet.
If you considering leaving a specific item to the Library, please telephone 020 7766 4795 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to ensure that the Library will be able to accept and provide a suitable home for your gift.
Writing a will need not be complicated, but we strongly recommend you seek professional legal advice to ensure your will reflects your wishes and is valid.
Thank you
Gifts in wills make a huge difference to the Library’s future, its collection and, most importantly, its readers. Your support is truly appreciated.
If you have already left a gift to The London Library in your will, thank you. We are immensely grateful for your support. It is very helpful for us to know when someone is planning to leave a legacy to the Library, so please do consider letting us know your intentions. We would be delighted to have the opportunity to thank you for your generosity, invite you to special supporters’ events and send you advance updates on important developments at the Library.
If you would like to get in touch with our fundraising team to discuss your gift, let us know your intentions or find out more about leaving a gift in your will, please call 020 7766 4795 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Your Legacy in Six Words
Gifts in wills play a vital role in securing The London Library’s future and ensuring that the Library remains a haven of creativity and community for readers, writers and thinkers for generations to come. To encourage members to think about how they might like to be remembered and whether a gift to the Library could form part of their legacy, Library trustee Daisy Goodwin is sponsoring and judging a prize for the best piece of flash fiction on the theme of ‘How you want to be remembered’. The winning entry will receive a prize of £500.
Flash fiction is an extremely brief form of fiction — telling a story in no more than six words. A famous example is attributed to Ernest Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” The six words include prepositions and conjunctions.
All current members of The London Library are invited to enter for the prize. Please read the eligibility criteria and submission guidelines before submitting your entry. To be considered, you must send your entry, along with your name, in the body of an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., making sure to follow the submission guidelines. The deadline for submissions is 11am on Friday 12 November 2021. The winner and runners up will be announced in the Library newsletter and on social media in December.
If you have any questions about the prize, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. If you would like to find out more about leaving a gift in your will to The London Library, please call 020 7766 4795, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit our gifts in wills webpage.
We will look forward to receiving your entry.
An enduring way of commemorating the life of a relation, friend or colleague for whom The London Library was a special place is to consider making a gift in their memory. Your gift will be a lasting tribute that plays a valuable role in helping to secure the future of The London Library.
You can make a donation to The Library Fund and support our annual campaign focused on improving the Library in ways that directly impact its users. Find more information about the current Library Fund campaign here.
If you would like any further information about donating to The London Library in memory of a loved one please do not hesitate to contact Emily Lloyd at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or on 020 7766 4719.
Help us Refresh and Restore the Collection
The London Library’s collection is truly unique. Developed through 180 years of careful thought from generations of Library staff, trustees and members, today the collection holds around 1 million volumes. The depth and range of the collection along with the liberal access members enjoy are what make the Library such a special and treasured resource.
We take pride in the strength of the collection and its accessibility and know that everyone involved with the Library cherishes the books on our shelves. With that in mind, we are eager to do more and have identified some key projects to Refresh and Restore the collection. We hope to raise £80,000 to kick-start these projects over a period of years – any donation you can make to The Library Fund will help us reach this goal.
January 2024 Update
Thanks to the generous support for this year’s Library Fund appeal, we have raised nearly £55,000 towards our £80,000 goal.
These funds have already enabled us to begin work on Refreshing and Restoring our magnificent collection, starting with one of the oldest – and most exciting – items on our shelves. Defence of the Seven Sacraments, written by Henry VIII in 1521, is a scathing response to the critique of the church published by Martin Luther in 1520. In it, the monarch defends the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church and refers to Luther as ‘a wolf of hell’ and ‘a poisonous viper.’
Henry VIII’s reply prompted Pope Leo X to confer the title ‘Defender of the Faith’ on the monarch. Although the title was later retracted by Rome, an Act of Parliament confirmed and made it hereditary. Bound in the original calf and stamped with the royal arms, this volume is particularly notable for bearing one of the few existing marks of Katherine of Aragon’s cleft pomegranate emblem.
Due to its extremely tight binding and old age, this pamphlet’s joints are split and need to be carefully pulled apart and re-sewn back together. At present it is extremely difficult to open. Additional repairs include restoring damaged varnished surfaces, shoring up structural weaknesses, and replacing the poor-quality leather which was used in historic restorations.
Thanks to funding from The Library Fund, we have been able to start the four-month long process of specialist conservation work to make this volume accessible for members and to preserve it for future generations.
Refresh
We want to develop new areas of the collection and strengthen others in line with feedback from members. Our primary focus is on maintaining the core strengths of the collection, so we need help to develop our reach beyond this:
- Broadening cultural representation in art, history and literature and increasing the contemporary and diverse voices in fiction, literature, drama and poetry
- Replacing key books identified as missing during a book tagging project to get them back on the shelves for member use
- Spending funds raised over a period of years, gauging interest in different subjects and approaches
Restore
A major challenge for the Library is caring for the collection while maintaining open access and borrowing for members. We need help with two distinct projects to support this:
Rebinding
• The Library’s book tagging project revealed many books in urgent need of rebinding
• These books are on open access shelves and need new bindings to make sure they remain useable and accessible
• A donation of £100 could help give three volumes new bindings Conservation
Conservation
• Our collection care team have identified a small number of books in need of specialist conservation work which can’t be carried out in-house
• Most volumes are special collections items published before 1750 and are available for use by Library members
• A donation of £500 could help us restore one of these volumes
What is the Library Fund?
The Library Fund is an annual fundraising appeal focused on improving the Library in ways that directly impact its users. How people use the Library is at the heart of what makes it a special institution. Supporters of The Library Fund help improve the Library’s collections, services and spaces to enhance enjoyment of the Library.
Find out more about past Library Fund projects.
International Friends
For many years the support of the Library's International Friends has been vital to its continued good-health. Administered from New York under a volunteer board of directors, the International Friends of The London Library is a registered 501(c) 3 charitable corporation.
Donations made to it by U.S. taxpayers are fully deductible under the United States Internal Revenue Code (view our IRS form). Gifts may be directed towards particular areas of the Library's work, such as preservation, acquisitions or building renovation, and there are a variety of options for the recognition of benefactors within the Library.
US Founders' Circle
You can support the Library by becoming a member of the US Founders’ Circle. The Founders' Circle is a group of dedicated individuals who recognise the important role the Library plays in our nation's literary culture and is committed to underpinning the significant resources required to keep the collection available to all. US Founders’ Circle benefits include annual membership to The London Library and access to a programme of exclusive events in both the US and the UK with writers and literary experts, plus visits to private collections and other cultural institutions.
There are three levels of membership: Dickens at $10,000, Thackeray at $5,000 and Martineau at $2,500.
To find out more about the US Founders’ Circle, please see ifll.org, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call +4420 7766 4731.
Gifts from Europe
The Library is also able to receive donations through Transnational Giving Europe (TGE). TGE is a partnership of leading European foundations and associations that facilitates tax-efficient cross-border giving within Europe. TGE is operative in most European Union states and donations can easily be made via the link below.
In addition, you may wish to consider joining the long list of readers and writers who have enjoyed membership of this unrivalled literary organization. For around 600EUR/$850 a year you too could then take advantage of the intimate seclusion of this treasure-house in the heart of the West End, and savour the extraordinary privilege of browsing among 17 miles of books.
