incomplete Garrick Collection. This was in part to allow for a new subject arrangement of the Museum's rooms. Twenty items were removed from the Thomason Collection and at least three from the Sloane Collection. The sources of other transferred items cannot be identified. In 1840 Anthony Panizzi, the Museum's Keeper of Printed Books, recommended that the Garrick Collection, still largely bound in tract volumes, be broken up and the items bound individually. Although there was opposition to this plan from within and without the Museum, in 1841 the Trustees gave their approval, and by the beginning of 1846 the rebinding programme was completed. During the process of breaking up the tract volumes Museum staff had taken the opportunity to more closely examine the individual printed items with the view to making copies more perfect. Approximately twenty Garrick items were improved in various ways: some by the addition of facsimile leaves, others through the exchange of leaves between duplicates. In some instances leaves were removed from Garrick items to improve plays in the King's Library. The last recorded disturbance of the Garrick Collection was announced in October 1956. A significant number of leaves stolen from British Museum items were identified as being bound in volumes in Thomas J. Wise's Ashley Library, a collection acquired by the Museum in 1937. Further investigations proved that stolen leaves were also present in the collection that Wise had assisted John Henry Wrenn in amassing (the Wrenn Library is held at the University of Texas's Harry Ransom Center). In total 206 leaves were identified as being stolen, the majority of these from the Garrick Collection. The worst example of theft occurred in the Garrick copy of James Shirley's play of 1640, The opportunitie, which lost seventeen leaves. Major studies A comprehensive study of the Garrick Collection by George Kahrl and Dorothy Anderson was published in 1982 under the title The Garrick Collection of old English plays: a catalogue with an historical introduction. References British Library collections English drama David Garrick