Stephen Gaselee

The project of interwar internationalism reflected and sustained new ideas on data gathering, storage and retrieval. This explains why librarians have played such a prominent though often neglected role in international affairs. Sir Stephen Gaselee (1882-1943), a British author and bibliophile, is an interesting example. Following a scholarly career as classicist, Copticist and Pepys Librarian at Magdalene College in Cambridge, Gaselee became Librarian and Keeper of Papers in the Foreign Office, succeeding Alwyn Parker, co-ordinator of the British delegation at the Paris peace conferences, in 1920. Under Gaselee’s direction, the Foreign Office library became one of the world’s most important centres of information and calculation on international relations.

Further information:

FCO Historians (1995) “FCO Library & Records 1782-1995”, History Notes 8 (June), see especially part II “The Parker and Gaselee Eras, 1918-1943” (pp.6-7): https://issuu.com/fcohistorians/docs/history_notes_cover_hphn_8

John Tilley & Stephen Gaselee (1933) The Foreign Office (London & New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons): https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.6566

Article on and (partial) catalogue for the historical library collection of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, produced by King’s College London, where this collection was transferred on permanent loan in 2007: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/archivespec/special-collections/individualcollections/fco.aspx