Holdings

The Society's collection of printed books cover the literature of biology from 1483 to date, with especially strong collections of eighteenth and nineteenth century titles in all languages. Special areas of interest include plant and animal classification, Darwinism and the evolutionary controversy, conchology, ornithology, early mycology, expedition reports, ecology, and wildlife conservation. There is a great number of annotated books by either the author or the owner of the book.

Please use our online catalogue to explore the full range of our library holdings.

The rare books held by the Society cover a spectrum of scientific publishing from the 15th to the 19th century, with particular strengths in 16th and 17th century herbals, botanical tracts, materia medica, economic botany (especially tea and the tea trade), and lavishly produced prestige works of botanical and zoological illustration. All told they form one of the most important collections of rare natural history publications outside of a major research library, and their well-documented provenance as the property of an 18th-century learned society make them an invaluable resource for scholars of the history of science.

All the Society's rare and early printed books have been catalogued and can be searched for via our online catalogue. Work to retrospectively improve the quality of our rare books cataloguing is ongoing.

A significant number of books from the private library of Carl Linnaeus have been digitised, and can be examined on our dedicated, open access platform, Linnean Online.

The private library of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) consists of the c.1,600 books Linnaeus used as reference material, many of them given to him by fellow naturalists and admirers all over the world.

The oldest book in Linnaeus’ Library is a beautifully restored Herbal dating from 1488.

Linnaeus's library also includes all the students' dissertations that he supervised. Most importantly, it contains Linnaeus’s own copies of his works, many of them copiously annotated in his own hand.

The James Insch Tea Library was formerly the property of Linnean Society Fellow and tea industry official James Insch, and was acquired by the Society at Insch's death in 1951. Comprising some 300 books and pamphlets, it is a rich resource for scholars of tea, including its botany, history, pharmacy, art, and trade. Insch Tea Library holdings can be identified by the word "Insch" in their classmark on the library catalogue.

The Society is privileged to possess rich holdings of Darwin-Wallace books and manuscripts. The bulk of these derive from a generous donation made by the Charles Darwin Trust in 2014. The gift comprises an exceptional collection of Darwin’s manuscripts and publications, together with various Wallace items, built up by the late Quentin Keynes, a great grandson of Charles Darwin, and subsequently amplified with items originally inherited by Darwin’s granddaughter, Margaret Keynes. Items from the Charles Darwin Trust gift can be identified by the letters "DWC" in their classmark on the library catalogue.

Complementing the Charles Darwin Trust gift, the Society is honoured to act as custodians to a portion of Alfred Russel Wallace's personal library. This was acquired by the Society from Thomas Henry Riches in 1915, who himself purchased the volumes from Wallace's family at his death in 1913. The collection consists of some 300 books on mainly scientific topics, many annotated by the man himself. The Wallace Library volumes are not separately classified, but can be identified from their provenance notes in the catalogue record.

J.L. Cloudsley Thompson FLS (1921-2013) was a noted zoologist with a particular interest in desert fauna. His small library of some 300 titles was bequeathed to the Society in 2017, and is housed in the meeting room which bears his name. The Cloudsley Thompson volumes are not separately classifed, but can be identified from their provenance notes in the catalogue record.