The Numismatic Library of Sarah Sophia Banks by Edward Besly

Hardback, jacketed, 180 pages, 290 x 220mm

Sarah Sophia Banks (1744-1818) was a distinguished collector and numismatist. With the help of her librarian, Jonas Dryander, she built an important library of numismatic books, both new and antiquarian, notable particularly for covering medieval and what were then modern coinages, rather than those of ancient Greece and Rome; Sarah Banks also took a keen interest in the provincial token coinages of the 1780s and1790s. After her death, her library passed intact to the Royal Mint and it is presented here as categorised at the time by Jonas Dryander, as a contribution to the history of collecting and numismatic scholarship, with an essay by Hugh Pagan explaining the way in which Sarah Sophia Banks’s library was assembled and the time span over which this was done. 

Edward Besly FSA was from 1986 to 2018 Numismatist at the National Museum of Wales (Amgueddfa Cymru) having previously worked at the British Museum, Department of Coins and Medals. He is best-known for his studies of Romano-British coin hoards and of the coinages of the time of Charles I (1625-49). In 2003 he was awarded the John Sanford Saltus Medal by the British Numismatic Society.