Handbook to the Stein Collections in the UK.

• Author: Rocher, Ludo
• Position: Brief Reviews of Books

Handbook to the Stein Collections in the UK. Edited by HELEN WANG. British Museum Occasional Paper, no. 129. London: THE BRITISH MUSEUM, 1999. Pp. iv + 61.

In 1994 the curators and librarians in charge of the Marc Aurel Stein collections in the United Kingdom agreed to hold yearly informal meetings, called Stein Days, to discuss their work and learn about Stein materials in other collections. Encouraged by the abundance of available materials and publications, at the 1997 Stein Day they decided to pool their information and compile a Handbook that was published two years later. Representatives of depositories were given the task of preparing separate but uniform reports on their collections: collection history, collection description, publications, accessibility of the materials to potential users, and contact details. The depositories represented in this volume are those 1) in London: the British Academy (of which Stein became a Fellow in 1921, and his legatee to form a fund for the promotion of research in Central and Further Asia), the British Library (three separate collections), the British Museum (four collections), the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Asiatic Society, the Royal Geographical Society, University College, and the Victoria & Albert Museum (two collections); 2) in Oxford: the Bodleian Library (two collections), Corpus Christi College, Oxford University Press, and the University of Oxford (two collections); and 3) in the Cambridge University Library. The collections comprise letters (Stein was an avid correspondent with a vast number...