Thomas Hartwell Horne

Thomas Hartwell Horne (1780 – 1862) was an English theologian and librarian.

Life

He was born in London and educated at Christ's Hospital. He then became a clerk to a barrister, and used his spare time to write.

Horne was initially affiliated with the Wesleyans but later joined the Church of England. He was admitted to holy orders without the usual preliminaries, because of his published work. In 1833 he obtained a benefice in London and a prebend in St Paul's Cathedral.

Horne was a librarian in 1814 at the Surrey Institution, which was dissolved in 1823. In 1824 he joined the staff at the British Museum and was senior assistant in the printed books department there until 1860.

Works

Horne wrote more than forty works in bibliography, Bible commentaries, and Christian apologetics. One of his best known works is the three-volume Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures that was published in 1818. This work enjoyed widespread circulation in Britain and North America and went through at least eleven editions during the nineteenth century. It was reissued in North America in 1970. Horne also produced a "Tree Full of Bible Lore," a tree-shaped text of statistics on the Bible, in which he counted the number of books, chapters, verses, words, and even letters. He ended this tree with "It [the Bible] contains knowledge, wisdom, holiness and love." (This "tree" is repoduced in the third series of Ripley's paperbacks, originally published hardbound in 1949.)

He wrote an Introduction to the Study of Bibliography (1814), and various other works. Over a period of four years he catalogued the Harleian manuscripts then held at the British Museum.

Biographical source

• Clark, R. E. D., "Thomas Hartwell Horne," in The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, edited by J. D. Douglas. (Extere: Paternoster Press, 1978). ISBN 0-85364-221-4

Select bibliography

• A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols. (London: G. Eyre and J. Strahan, 1808-1812).
• The Campaign of Waterloo (London: T. Bensley, 1816).
• Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, reprint of the 8th edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1970). ISBN 0-8010-4003-5
• Introduction to the Critical Study of Bibliography, 5 Vol. (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1814).
• Introduction to the Critical Study of Bibliography, 2 Vols. (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1846).
• Manual of Biblical Bibliography, (Mansfield Center, Connecticut: Martino Publishers, 2005). ISBN 1578985625
• An Essay on the History of Liturgies, (London: W. Clowes, 1831).
• The Complete Grazier, (London: Baldwin and Cradock, 1833).

External links

• Introduction Critical Study Knowledge Holy Scripture. Horne. Davidson. Ayre. Tregelles.complete, 4vols, 2 extra vols, 14th,10th,11th,9th. 19thcent. at the Internet Archive

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & Sons; New York, E. P. Dutton.