Alfred Newton Papers

Alfred Newton (1829-1907), ornithologist, was the fifth of six sons of William Newton, of Elveden Hall, Suffolk. His younger brother, Sir Edward Newton (1832-97), was a colonial administrator and ornithological collaborator. Newton entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1848, and after graduation in 1853, he was elected to the Drury travelling fellowship, which gave him ten years of ornithological study. He visited northern Scandinavia in 1855 and Iceland in 1858, both in the company of ornithologist John Wolley, and travelled to the West Indies and North America in 1857, Madeira in 1862, and Spitzbergen in 1864. Newton played a leading part in founding the British Ornithologists' Union in 1858, and its journal Ibis, of which he was editor from 1865 to 1870. In 1866 he was elected the first Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge, and held office until his death. He played a great part in building up his new department, expanded its zoological collections by presenting many of his own acquisitions, and its library by bequeathing his own library and papers, and was active in University affairs. Newton was a prolific but painstaking writer and editor. He wrote the article on ornithology in the 9th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a 4-volume Dictionary of birds (1893-96). His catalogue of the collection of eggs which John Wolley bequeathed to him in 1859, Ootheca Wolleyana, was published in four volumes in 1864, 1902, 1905 and 1907, and his meticulous revision of William Yarrell's British birds extended only to the first two volumes (1871, 1882), after which he handed over completion of the work to Howard Saunders. Newton made extensive researches into the great auk (recently extinct) and great bustard (recently extinct in England), and the dodo, in which he was greatly assisted by Sir Edward Newton while Edward was Governor of Mauritius. He studied the infrequent irruptions into Britain of Pallas's sand grouse, and was a great and early champion of wild birds preservation, being actively involved in the preparation of several protection Acts of Parliament.

Newton was a collector of the papers of other ornithologists and naturalists, and there are several groups of manuscripts in the present collection which certainly or probably belonged to him, and were bequeathed by him to the Department of Zoology in 1907. The provenance of some of these groups is uncertain, but where there is a likelihood that Newton once possessed them, they have been included in MS Add. 9839, rather than with many other collections from the Zoology Department, which were transferred to the University Library with Newton's papers in 1989, and which have been given the classmarks MSS Add. 9880-9925 and catalogued separately. MS Add.9839/30, a collection of Newton's ornithological pamphlets and printed papers, was presented to the Newton Library in 1942, but has been included here as a useful run of Newton's diverse writings.

Please cite as Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Alfred Newton Papers, MS Add.9839