Jiyeon Wood

Head of the Japanese & Korean section

at the Cambridge University Library

History of the Cambridge University Library

Established in 1209, the University of Cambridge is one of the world’s oldest universities. It has produced 125 Nobel laureates and is consistently placed in the top echelon in global university rankings1). The university consists of 31 colleges and is equipped with over 100 college and faculty libraries. At their centre is the Cambridge University Library (CUL). In 1416, the University of Cambridge owned and kept in chests in its treasury a small collection of books and manuscripts for Cambridge scholars. It was in the fifteenth century that the first University Library found its home on the newly built Old Schools site2). The current CUL building, which opened in 1934, was designed by the renowned British architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960), who also designed Liverpool Cathedral and the Tate Modern. He is also famous for designing the UK’s iconic red telephone box. The former telephone box located in front of the entrance to the CUL is now used as a book drop kiosk.

As one of the six legal deposit libraries in the UK, the CUL is entitled to receive every book published in the UK and Ireland, and is a home to around 10 million books, maps, manuscripts, photos, and other rare and precious items in more than 2,000 languages. The collections in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages are located in the Aoi Pavilion, which was established in 1998 from a generous donation by Honorary Chairman Tadao Aoi of the Marui Group.

The Korean Collection at the CUL

The Korean Collection at the CUL contains approximately 10,000 items. Although it is relatively small compared to the Chinese and Japanese Collections, the library is working on expansion.

Among over 100,000 items within the Japanese collection housed in the CUL, there are some 10,000 old and rare Japanese books and manuscripts collected by Westerners who visited Japan from the late 19th century. These materials, which were mainly donated to the library or purchased between 1911 and 1913, mostly came from the collections of William George Aston (1841-1911) and Sir Ernest Mason Satow (1843-1929), who were Japanese Studies researchers and diplomats in the early 20th century, and from Japanologist Heinrich von Siebold (1852-1908). Among them, there are books related to Chosŏn-era Korea published in Japan, including Samhan kiryak, Chingbirok and Haedong chegukki. William G. Aston, who served as the UK’s consul-general in Korea, also collected Korean books. The titles of these materials can be found in a catalogue stored in the CUL that Aston personally created. Most of the Korean books collected by Aston are currently housed at Saint Petersburg State University and the Institute of Oriental Studies in Russia. Aston’s catalogue and the notes that he left, which demonstrate how he studied the Korean language, are valuable materials for understanding both Korean books and the efforts of foreigners to learn Korean during the late Chosŏn Dynasty.

One of the most important Korean collections housed in the CUL is the world’s first Korean-language Bible. This Korean edition of the Gospel of Luke published in 1882 was the first part of the New Testament translated into Korean by John Ross (1842-1915), a Scottish missionary working in China, and his colleagues. The copy stored in the library was inscribed by Ross on March 24, 1882 and sent to the British and Foreign Bible Society (The Bible Society)3). Thanks to support from the Korean Embassy in the UK in 2019, both the Gospel of Luke and a combined edition of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of Apostles4 that was published in 1883 have been digitized and are currently available for viewing through the Cambridge Digital Library.

Most of the old Korean books in the CUL were collected by missionaries working in Korea during the late Chosŏn period and incorporated into the CUL collection in the early 20th century.

According to the CUL annual report published in 1902, the missionary Lucy Nevile procured books for the CUL with the help of other missionaries in Korea. A letter from Nevile written in April 1902 and stored in the CUL indicates that she acquired certain Korean books based on the list created by Rev. Mark Napier Trollope (who served in Korea for 11 years as a founding member of the Anglican Mission in Korea before he went back to the UK in 1901), as well as works published by American, English and French missionaries working in Korea at that time. For her acquisitions, Neville wrote that she sought advice from the Canadian missionary James Scarth Gale (1863–1937) and shipped the books on the enclosed list to the UK on April 23, 1902. Neville acquired 55 titles in 183 volumes, including publications by the Anglican Church of Korea and by other Christian organizations, such as the Korean Religious Tract Society, including Choman min'gwang, kusejinjŏn and Sŏnggyŏng chikhae. There are also Confucian books, including The Analects of Confucius, Mencius, The Book of Changes, The Great Learning, and The Five Moral Imperatives, a Chinese-Korean dictionary and novels, including Sim ch'ŏng chŏn, Chŏng su-jŏng chŏn, and Im Changgun chŏn. These books form the foundation of the collection of old and rare Korean books in the CUL5). The collection also includes versions of the same titles published in different years, allowing researchers to compare the types of paper used, book sizes, publishing styles, spacings between words, and so forth. The library also houses a woodblock print copy and a new metal type copy of the 1895 (first) edition of Ch'ŏllo yŏkchŏng, a Korean edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan that was translated into Korean by James S. Gale and his wife. The book includes illustrations in the form of woodblock prints by the then-renowned genre painter Kim Jun-Keun. This is very rare in Korean printing history and was published both as a woodblock edition and a new metal edition at the same time6). Only a few organizations in Korea have the complete collection of the 1895 woodblock print and metal edition versions of Ch'ŏllo yŏkchŏng7).

Koryŏsa (Kao li shih) is another important work found in the Chinese collection of the library. This book was donated to the CUL in 1886 by Sir Thomas Francis Wade (1818-1895), who served as vice-consul and ambassador to China in the late 19th century. The value of this book was made clear only in 2014 when the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation conducted a comprehensive survey of Korean books in the CUL. Transcribed by Weng Shukun (1786-1815), the son of the eminent Chinese scholar Weng Fanggang (1733-1818) of the Qing Dynasty, and once possessed by epigraphist Liu Xihai (1793-1852, also of the Qing Dynasty), this book is critical for understanding the interest taken by Chinese epigraphists of the Qing Dynasty in the epigraphy of the Koryŏ Dynasty8).

CUL’s archives section also held photographs and diaries created by British people who visited Korea between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. More recent documents stored at the library include correspondence between former President Kim Dae-jung (1924-2009) and Dr. Stephen W. Hawking (1942-2018), who were neighbours when President Kim was a visiting scholar at Cambridge in 1993.

Korean Studies is offered at Cambridge in master’s and doctoral courses under the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. The program hosts an annual Korean Studies lecture with the support of Dr. Ra Jong-yil, former South Korean Ambassador to the UK. In 2024, author Min Jin Lee of Pachinko was invited to give a talk and received a great response from the students. During her visit to the campus, Lee visited the CUL to browse the old and rare Korean books housed at the library and the books displayed on the Korean Diaspora in Japan that were held in the Aoi Pavilion. Currently, the Aoi Pavilion is displaying Korean and English copies of the works of 2024 Nobel laureate Han Kang, along with materials that aid understanding of the Cheju April 3 massacre and the Kwangju May 18 Uprising, which are important backgrounds for two of her novels (I Do Not Bid Farewell and Human Acts).

In keeping with the evolution of the digital environment, the CUL is working hard to expand its collection of electronic Korean resources. The library receives support for a portion of the subscription fees for academic databases related to Korean Studies through the Korea Foundation’s Support for Korean Studies e-Resources program. The CUL also acquires Korean e-books through BookRail and the Kyobo eBook site.

For more details on the CUL’s Korean Studies collection and related e-resources, please visit the Korean Studies page on the Cambridge LibGuides9).

1 https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/research-at-cambridge/nobel-prize

2 https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/about-library/history-cambridge-university-library

3 https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-BSS-00604-E-00082-00001/1

4 https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-BSS-00604-E-00083-00003/1

5 Roy, R (2020), Miss Lucy Nevile’s Letter of 1902: the acquisition of pre-modern Korean Christian texts in the University Library, Cambridge University Library Special Collections blog, 21 October. Available at https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=20824

6 https://www.heritage.go.kr/heri/cul/culSelectDetail.do?pageNo=1_1_1_1&sngl=Y&ccbaCpno=4411106850000

7 https://news.kbs.co.kr/news/pc/view/view.do?ncd=7992505

8 Huh Gyeong-jin (2015), The nature and significance of Liu Xihai’s Copy of the History of Goryeo, The Yeolsang Society of Classical Studies; and Huh Gyeong-jin et al. (2015) Korean books in Russia and the UK 2 (Research: The nature and value of those books), The Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation, pp. 105-133.

9 https://libguides.cam.ac.uk/koreanstudies