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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
The nucleus of the collection of books printed before 1701 which are now in the Library of the British School at Athens was left by the distinguished historian of Greece, George Finlay ( 1799–1875), whose name the library still bears. His father, John Finlay (1757–1802), a Major in the Royal Engineers and a Fellow of the Royal Society, who had seen service in the West Indies, was already a book-collector, and many of the books contain his printed label. He was in charge of the Government Powder Mills at Faversham in Kent when his second son, George, was born there on 21 December 1799. Three years later John Finlay died, and in 1806 or 1807 Mrs. Finlay married Alexander MacGregor, a Liverpool merchant. George was put into a boarding school for some years at Everton, Liverpool; and it was here, in 1815, when he was not yet sixteen, that we have the first evidence of his love of books, for he bought in that year at least one seventeenth-century edition. He was later moved to Glasgow to live with an uncle, and afterwards spent some time at the University of Göttingen.
1 Not in 1800, as stated in Hussey, J. M., ‘George Finlay in perspective—a centenary reappraisal’, Annual of BSA lxx (1975) 137.Google Scholar
2 For further biographical details see Wace, A. J. B., ‘Hastings and Finlay’, Annual of BSA xxii (1918) 110–32Google Scholar; Hussey, J. M., The Finlay Papers: a catalogue (BSA Supplementary volume no. 9, 1973)Google Scholar; J. M. Hussey, article quoted in n. 1, and the bibliography there cited. Incredible as it may seem, Miller, William's article, ‘The Finlay Library’, BSA xxvi (1923–1925) 46–66Google Scholar, mentions no book printed before the nineteenth century, and cannot therefore be considered an account of the library.