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English Religious History Collection
The English Religious History Collection is a body of over 35,000 items that date from 1660 until 1920 and illuminates the various religious currents in England, Scotland, and Wales during this period. Holdings are particularly strong for Anglicanism, English Catholicism, and Methodism.
Among the materials in the collection are the following:
- Books and archival materials from the Cardinal Henry Edward Manning Collection
- Books of Common Prayer and their revisions, interpretations, and use
- Several hundred items by and about the Oxford Movement, the Cambridge Camden Society, John Henry Cardinal Newman, and Edward Bouverie Pusey
- Prime Minister William E. Gladstone's personal annotations in his Greek New Testament: User Guide (PDF)and Database of Notations (XLSX file)
- Catholic registers, popular devotional writings, and literature regarding the First Vatican Council(1869-1870)
- British Methodist items, including parts of the Wesleyana Collection
- English sermons, including items by Isaac Watts, William Paley, Joseph Butler, and John Wesley
- Controversial literature pertaining to the Church of England and the English Catholic Church
- The Rev. Gordon Taylor Collection of Church Histories includes about 5,900 pamphlets documenting congregational life in Great Britain
- English hymnody, which is a subset of the English and American Hymnody and Psalmnody Collection
For some relevant archival collections, see the guides to British Religious History and British Clergy
Pitts Theology Library has about 125,000 items in its special collections. These can be identified in the library catalog by the location codes SPECIALCOL, SPEC-OVRSZ, SPEC-OF, or SPEC-OFOS.
While these rare and special books do not circulate, they may be used in the special collections reading area, Monday through Friday, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. These materials may be obtained by placing a request at the special collections reference desk on the third level of the library.