Femininity at the Inner Temple
Oct 25, 2013 23:13:13 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2013 23:13:13 GMT -5
The Inner Temple Library is a private law library in Central London, England, serving barristers, judges, and students on the Bar Vocational Course. Its parent body is the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, one of the four Inns of Court.
Its law collections cover the legal systems of the British Isles (England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) and also Commonwealth countries. There are, in addition, extensive non-law collections covering such subjects as history, topography, biography and heraldry, and an important collection of legal and historical manuscripts.
The Library is first mentioned in 1440, then in the Inn’s records in 1506. The Library refused to accept John Selden's manuscripts in 1654, most likely because the size of the collection would have necessitated a new building, but it has been described as "the greatest loss which the Library of the Inner Temple ever sustained." One building burned down in the Great Fire of 1666, and in 1678 another was blown up to stop a fire from spreading in the Temple. In 1707 the Inner Temple was offered the Petyt Manuscripts (William Petyt had been Keeper of the Records in the Tower, and a well-known writer of constitutional law) and a sum of £150 to build a new Library, which was completed in 1709 and consisted of three rooms.
The library building before World War II was a Gothic building erected in 1827-8 by Sir Robert Smirke, which contained about 60,000 volumes. It was destroyed during the Second World War; several thousand volumes of printed books (but none of the manuscripts) were lost. The destroyed books were mostly replaced, either by gift or by purchase, over the next 30 years or so.
The present building was completed in 1958 to the design of T.W. Sutcliffe, and is in the style of the eighteenth century. It is on two floors above the private rooms of the benchers, and its natural, unstained English oak wood-panelled L-shape roughly matches that of the prior building. Do members tend to go for the natural or the artificial?
Anyway we mention the Inner Temple Library because it is from there that Mr. M. Frost has kindly written in to remind us that "the French for femininity is féminité and not fémininité." A useful item of information is it not, unlikely to be dislodged from one's mind once introduced.
Its law collections cover the legal systems of the British Isles (England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) and also Commonwealth countries. There are, in addition, extensive non-law collections covering such subjects as history, topography, biography and heraldry, and an important collection of legal and historical manuscripts.
The Library is first mentioned in 1440, then in the Inn’s records in 1506. The Library refused to accept John Selden's manuscripts in 1654, most likely because the size of the collection would have necessitated a new building, but it has been described as "the greatest loss which the Library of the Inner Temple ever sustained." One building burned down in the Great Fire of 1666, and in 1678 another was blown up to stop a fire from spreading in the Temple. In 1707 the Inner Temple was offered the Petyt Manuscripts (William Petyt had been Keeper of the Records in the Tower, and a well-known writer of constitutional law) and a sum of £150 to build a new Library, which was completed in 1709 and consisted of three rooms.
The library building before World War II was a Gothic building erected in 1827-8 by Sir Robert Smirke, which contained about 60,000 volumes. It was destroyed during the Second World War; several thousand volumes of printed books (but none of the manuscripts) were lost. The destroyed books were mostly replaced, either by gift or by purchase, over the next 30 years or so.
The present building was completed in 1958 to the design of T.W. Sutcliffe, and is in the style of the eighteenth century. It is on two floors above the private rooms of the benchers, and its natural, unstained English oak wood-panelled L-shape roughly matches that of the prior building. Do members tend to go for the natural or the artificial?
Anyway we mention the Inner Temple Library because it is from there that Mr. M. Frost has kindly written in to remind us that "the French for femininity is féminité and not fémininité." A useful item of information is it not, unlikely to be dislodged from one's mind once introduced.