to biographer William Prideaux Courtney, "Wanley was the embodiment of honesty and industry [and] was also a keen bargainer". He often secured for his patron many desirable blocks of books and manuscripts. His journal, from 2 March 1714–15 to 23 June 1726, is in Lansdowne MSS, 771–2, and contains many amusing entries. The diary has been published by C.E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright under the title, The diary of Humfrey Wanley, 1715-1726 (1966). Memoranda by him of the prices of books are in Lansdowne MS 677, but the opening leaves are wanting. He wrote the account of the Harleian Library in Nicolson's Historical Libraries (1736). Through Harley he became known to Alexander Pope, who used to imitate his ‘"tilted turns of phraseology and elaboration of manner," and addressed two letters to him in 1725. John Gay introduced him, "from thy shelves with dust besprent" into his poem of "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece." Wanley's minutes of the meetings of some antiquaries at a tavern in 1707 are in Harleian MS. 7055. This was the germ of the present Society of Antiquaries of London, and on its revival in July 1717 he became an FSA. A communication by him on judging the age of manuscripts is in the Philosophical Transactions (1705, pp. 1993–2008), and his account of Bagford's collections of printing is in the volume for 1707. His statement of the indentures between Henry VII and Westminster Abbey is in the "Will of King Henry VII" (1775). He transcribed from the Cottonian manuscripts for publication, with the patronage of Lord Weymouth, the "Chronicon Dunstapliæ," the "Benedicti Petroburgensis Chronicon," and the "Annales de Lanercost," but Weymouth's death in 1714 put an end to the design. The first two were afterwards published by Hearne, who inserted in the preface to the first work particulars of his life. Hearne at one time hated Wanley, and even accused him of theft. Wanley meditated an edition of the Bible in Saxon, a new edition of the Septuagint, a life of Cardinal Wolsey, and had proceeded some way in a work on handwriting. Masses of letters to and from Wanley are in the collections of the British Museum and the Bodleian Library. Many of them are in the Pepys' diary, Thomas Hearne's Collections, John Nichols' Literary Anecdotes, Ellis's Original Letters and Letters of Literary Men, Letters from Bodleian Library, and Notes and Queries. His collection of