The Sandler Collection: An annotated bibliography of books relating to the military history of the French Revolution and Empire in the library of John Sandler. Edited by Victor Sutchffe Published by Ken Trotman, 1996 410 pages, price £ 18.50

There have been other, and more exhaustive bibliographies of books on the Napoleonic Wars in recent decades than the Sandler Collection. In particular, there was Donald Horward's massive 690 page Napoleonic Military History published on 1986 which was a set of bibliographies arranged by campaign. This collection of 3,530 privately owned books (many multi-volumed} is an extremely valuable and up to date source of information.

Many entries include an outline of the contents of the book and some have a brief biographical sketch of the author. The indexes are especially good in that they are presented by campaign; by regiment (French and British armies only); by Army organisation, training, and personnel; by biographies and autobiographies, and by Atlases and Maps. So although the books are set out in alphabetical order by author, it is possible by use of the indexes to locate any individual book or subject very quickly. The only disappointing aspect of this is that the Peninsular War is presented as just one campaign and all 600 books on this subject are grouped together under this one heading.

Though unquestionably useful as a general bibliography the Collection is, by its very nature, a random selection of works purchased when available to Mr. Sandler. Herein lies both its strength and its weakness. An individual researching a specific subject will not necessarily find all he is looking for in the collection but he will, almost certainly, stumble upon obscure texts that he would not see elsewhere.

The collection is also very uneven in that Mr. Sandler appears to have bought every book on the Napoleonic Wars that he could lay his hands on, be it good, bad or indifferent. With almost a quarter of the books being published between 1790 and 1815 and around 1,000 dating from the 19th Century such a collection could never be assembled again. Many of the titles are not available to the general reader, nor to the dedicated researcher. Not even in public repositories such as the British Library are all these books held.

Such a library is of national, and even international importance and, l understand, is soon to be sold. It is unlikely that any individual or even any academic body will be able or prepared to buy the collection in its entirety, and it is presumed that the collection wili have to be split. So hurry and buy this book - you will need it at the auction!

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