Cecil Roth Collection
Contains records with digital mediaDetails
Type of record: Archive
Title: Cecil Roth Collection
Classmark: MS Roth
Date(s): 1200-1999
Persistent link: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/114260
Description
Throughout his life Cecil Roth (1899-1970) collected books, manuscripts, and art objects. The books and manuscripts of scholarly interest, and modern books, were acquired by Leeds University Library through the benefaction of Stanley Burton, largely in 1961, while the art collection and certain illuminated or highly-decorated Ketubot and Megillot manuscripts passed to the Beth Tzedec Synagogue Museum in Toronto, Canada and are now held in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Other selected items that Cecil Roth had kept in his possession came to the Brotherton Library after his death in 1970.
Summary of Contents:
Manuscripts
A cataloguing project begun in 2019 and completed in 2021 enhanced the extant records of more than 350 manuscript items collected by Cecil Roth. The manuscripts include communal prayer books and prayer pamphlets, memorial books, circumcision and accounting ledgers, wedding poems (broadsides), notebooks of preachers, and letters (including some of Roth’s correspondence). More than two thirds of the items date from the years 1500 to 1800; the earliest manuscript dates from 400 CE and the latest from the nineteenth century.
Alongside Hebrew manuscripts are texts in Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Greek, Judeo-Apulian, Judeo-Provençal, Judeo-Ladino and a number of other extremely rare Jewish vernaculars. There are bilingual texts, texts in English, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, and a small but significant collection of documents in the Samaritan language and alphabet. Roth’s principal collecting interest, Renaissance and post-Renaissance Jewish Life in Italy, represents the heart of the manuscript collection.
Printed Books
The 918 pre-1850 printed items in the Roth Collection, several of which are bound together, are primarily a supporting reference library for Cecil Roth’s main field of interest, the life and reception of Jewish people in Europe in the early modern period. There are extremely rare examples of sixteenth-century Hebrew printing on Jewish law, liturgy, ethics and poetry; many are unique. The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century books range from Hebrew grammars and dictionaries, prayer books, and liturgies from major and lesser-known Jewish printing centres in Europe, such as Pisa and Mantua, to Spanish works on the Inquisition, and texts for Jewish communities in England. The records of these books were enhanced with copy-specific information in 2021; the sixteenth-century works are particularly heavily annotated.
Pamphlets
There are 4028 pamphlets in the Roth Collection, 1220 of which are Hebrew pamphlets. The pamphlets are primarily nineteenth century, ephemeral, often printed provincially and in small print-runs, and many of the items within the collection are unique in the UK. Between 2021-2023 new catalogue records were created for 2616 pamphlets and 1411 catalogue records were updated.
Catalogues and handlists
‘Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Roth Collection’, contributed by Cecil Roth, Alexander Marx Jubilee Volume (New York, 1950), pp. 503-35. Alexander Marx : jubilee volume on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. - University of Leeds (exlibrisgroup.com) Semitic H-0.03 MAR and Store Roth Collection R-1.4 MAR
https://leeds.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/44LEE_INST/13rlbcs/alma991009751869705181
Roth published an Addendum to his 1950 catalogue in his 1972 bibliographical work, Studies in Books and Booklore: Essays in Jewish Bibliography and Allied Subjects. Studies in Books and Booklore: Essays in Jewish Bibliography and Allied Subjects. Semitic H-0.03 ROT
https://leeds.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/44LEE_INST/13rlbcs/alma991011875659705181
Roth Collection Pre-1850 books, compiled by Malcom D. Davis, 1994.
Hebraica and Judaica from the Cecil Roth Collection, Eva Frojmovic and Frank Felsenstein, 1997.
Copies of the two catalogues listed above (Davis; Frojmovic and Felsenstein) are available for consultation from the Brotherton Research Centre, Curatorial Library.
Liebgott, Dorion. Art and Tradition : Treasures of Jewish Life. Beth Tzedec Congregation, 2000. Art A-0.08 TOR/B https://leeds.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/44LEE_INST/13rlbcs/alma991002998689705181
MS 164 Roth Provisional Handlist of Manuscripts – this is a pdf and available for download via the Roth Collection webpage.
Downloads
Biography or history
Cecil Bezelal Roth (1899-1970) was an outstanding British historian of Jewish history. A scholar-collector, he often researched and wrote about manuscripts in his own collection, especially about the early modern period in Jewish cultural history, relatively neglected by collectors before him. His interests focused on Jewish Italy and on the Sephardi world from East (Iraq, India and China) to West (France, Netherlands and England). As much an activist as a scholar, he co-founded the Jewish Museum London and worked for the restitution of Jewish cultural heritage in the wake of the Holocaust. The Encyclopaedia Judaica, of which he was editor in chief from 1965 until his death, and Jewish Art: An Illustrated History (1961) are two of the greatest resources for anyone interested in Jewish history and culture.
Access and usage
Access
This collection is subject to various access conditions. Please see individual catalogue descriptions for further details on access.