George John Spencer, 2nd Earl Spencer (1758-1834)

George Spencer was born in 1834, the son of John Spencer, 1st Earl Spencer and of Margaret Poyntz. He was educated at Harrow, 1770-1775, and then studied at Trinity College Cambridge.

He sat in the House of Commons 1780-1783 as MP, first for Northampton and then for Surrey. In 1783 he succeeded his father as Earl Spencer and took his seat in the House of Lords. He served as Lord Privy Seal in 1794, then as First Lord of the Admiralty 1794-1801. He later served as Home Secretary under Lord Grenville, 1806-1807.

Earl Spencer was one of the great bibliophiles of his generation and was particularly interested in early printing. He was one of the founder members of the Roxburghe Club (a club for bibliophiles) in 1812 and became its first president. He himself started collecting in 1790 with the purchase of the library of Count Reviczky and his library grew to over 40,000 volumes, most of which were housed at his house at Althorp. The collection was particularly rich in volumes from the 15th and 16th centuries and these were described in detail in the 7 volumes of “Bibliotheca Spenceriana”, compiled by Thomas Dibdin and published 1814-1823. The 7th volume of this work is a supplement cataloguing the library of Luigi Serra, duke of Cassano which the Earl purchased while on a tour of the Continent in 1819-1820.

Dibdin describes the Earl’s collection as “probably the finest private library in Europe”. On its sale in 1892, it was acquired by Mrs. Rylands and became one of the cornerstones of the John Rylands Library which she established in Manchester in memory of her husband.