Genus Fagelia

For Hendrik Fagel the Elder (1706–1790), Dutch greffier or official scribe to the Staten-Generaal (States-General of Parliament) from 1744–1790 and book collector. Together with his son Hendrik Fagel the Younger and other members of the family, they collected the largest and most important Dutch private library collection of books anywhere in the world. When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, the Fagel family took the collection over to London where it was acquired by the University of Dublin in 1802. This massive collection takes up a mile of shelfspace and comprises some 20 000 volumes of miscellany – maps, atlases, statistics, politics, religion, accounts of expeditions, etc.