Francis Douce

He became a prominent member of the Society of Antiquaries, and from 1799 to 1811 served as Keeper of Manuscripts in the British Museum, but was compelled to resign owing to a quarrel with one of the trustees.

[1] Francis attended a school in Richmond, where he became proficient in Latin and made some progress with Greek, before suddenly relocating to a French academy.

An unfavourable notice of the work in The Edinburgh Review[3] greatly irritated the author, and made him unwilling to venture any further publications.

In 1823 he received a bequest of £50,000 from the estate of the sculptor Joseph Nollekens, which enabled him to buy the finest printed books and manuscripts that came on to the market.

[7] Although his collection spans a number of different languages, it has particular strengths in English literature, especially Shakespeare, illuminated Books of Hours, and French romances.

[8][9] Douce bequeathed over 19,000 volumes of printed books to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, including 479 incunabula (15 of which are items printed by Caxton); Bibles; Books of Common Prayer; Psalters; early-printed editions of medieval romances; editions of novels and tales, including 17th and 18th century French fiction; original and early editions of 17th and 18th century English drama; a collection of poems, songs, and ballads; almanacs and prognostications from the 17th and 18th centuries; sale catalogues; books in fine bindings; and a Chinese collection which although small, contains several rarities.

In 1839, the library's board of curators commissioned a retired London engraver, Thomas Dodd, to catalogue the prints and drawings.

Nicholson also demanded the creation of a separate catalogue of the library's incunabula, conducted by E. Gordon Duff, which later led to the discovery of the Schoeffer-Fust Canon Missæ of 1457.

The digitised collection also spans 15 languages, including Latin, Middle French, English, Dutch, Chinese, Persian, and Malay, and ranges in period from the 8th to the 20th century.