Literature Network » William Makepeace Thackeray

Round Reading Room retires

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From: Chicago Sun-Times
Date: 19971102
Author:DAN BALZ

LONDON It was home to Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin, W.B. Yeats and G.B. Shaw, a cathedral of scholarship that nurtured and inspired the infamous and the anonymous for 140 years. William Makepeace Thackeray, who had seen the great domes of St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London, said nothing in the world could compare with "that catholic dome in Bloomsbury."

The grand Round Reading Room in the British Museum, though, has closed its doors to scholars for the last time.

Antonio Panizzi created this temple. He fled his native Italy, came to London and joined the British Museum staff in ...

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