From Princess to Public University: The Augusta Sophia Collection of English Drama

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article argues that a collection of English play-texts gathered by Princess Augusta Sophia of the United Kingdom (1768–1840), daughter of King George III (1738–1820) and Queen Charlotte (1744–1818), represents the royal family’s intergenerational tradition of women’s book collecting. Located today at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the collection comprises nearly eight hundred full texts of comedies, farces, and musical dramas, mostly from the long eighteenth century. Significantly, it reflects the royal family’s theatrical and book-collecting interests, particularly those of Queen Charlotte, who supervised the princess’s education and whose own books Augusta adopted after the monarch’s death. Tracing the library’s reorganization and movements toward a city named after the queen—Charlotte, North Carolina—this article additionally demonstrates how Augusta Sophia’s book-collecting legacy, and her mother’s, have been obscured by patrilineal libraries and academic research priorities, and also what steps might “reconstruct” her library for further inquiry.