An Oxford Bibliographical Society lecture.

Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730-1786) was educated at Eton and The Queen’s College, Oxford. He was a Fellow of Merton from 1755 to 1762. He held several subsequent posts in London, notably curator of the British Museum (appointed in 1784). He was a philologist and scholar of ancient and English literature. His edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1775) brought rigorous scholarly editing to this major text. On his death Tyrwhitt left a collection of some 900 rare books to the British Museum.