Turner Collection

This collection of French Revolution pamphlets consists of about 2500 pamphlets in 275 volumes, plus newspaper cuttings, extracts, and manuscript notes and transcripts amounting to some 8000 items in all, concerning the events of mainly 1787-1806.

The collection was gathered by Father John Turner (1765-1844), a member of the Community of English Benedictines in France during the Revolution. He was personally involved in events in Paris, taking the Civic Oath, and suffering imprisonment in Sainte-Pélagie 1793-5.

The collection was preserved in the Community's monastery at Douai, despite efforts by Turner, who had returned to England, to have it sold, until the Community's removal to England in 1903, when it was transferred to Douai Abbey, Woolhampton. It was placed on permanent deposit in the University Library, by the Abbot and Community of Douai, in July 1966. 

More information

• An author card catalogue is available at the Special Collections Service
• Turner's manuscript catalogue (URL MS 1723) is available at the Special Collections Service
• Geoffrey Scott, 'English Benedictines and the Revolution: the case of Dom John Turner (1765-1844), guardsman and grammarian'. In: The Great Return : the English communities in Continental Europe and their repatriation, 1793-94 / edited by Dom Aidan Bellenger. English Benedictine History Commission and the South Western Catholic History Society, 1994