The major collection relating to Joseph Blanco White, born Jose Maria Blanco Y Crespo (1775-1841), Spanish theologian, priest, poet, journalist and literary critic. Includes his correspondence, journals, manuscripts, and books.
Blanco White fled Spain for Britain during the War of Independence, and ran the periodical El Español (1810-1814) from London, where he worked as tutor in the household of Lord Holland. His Letters from Spain (1822) was an immediate success, and his articles for The New Monthly Magazine introduced his native Spanish literature to the English literary public. His Practical and Internal Evidence against Catholicism (1825) dismayed Catholic friends, but resulted in his move to Oxford, where he was well-received by the future leaders of the Oxford Movement, including Richard Whately, whom Blanco White accompanied to Dublin on his appointment as Archbishop in 1832. Blanco White's Second Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion (1833) was written in Dublin, but in 1835 his search brought him to Liverpool. He spent his last four months at Greenbank, the home of the Rathbone family, prominent Liverpool businessmen and Unitarians.
Much of the material was bequeathed to the University in 1894 by John Hamilton Thom, including Blanco White's heavily-annotated copies of his own works and Thom's Life of Joseph Blanco White (1845). The Spanish books from Blanco White's library are held by the Athenaeum Library in Liverpool.
