Hollis biography and donation

Sir Thomas Hollis was born in 1720 and was the only child of a wealthy London merchant; he inherited the family fortune at a young age. After finishing school and college, he studied law for eight years, without getting a degree however. Until he died in early 1774 Hollis lived on family money instead of pursuing a career. He remained single and had no children. He went on educational trips, as was suitable for his social status. From 1748 to 1753 he visited Europe, including Switzerland. After returning to London, Hollis, a convinced Republican, looked for an opportunity to influence politics and sought out public libraries for this purpose. In 1754, he began to send books systematically to selected European libraries. Hollis donated these books for the sake of his political ideas and hoped that they would be distributed by libraries across the continent. He was an advocate of a secular state and a supporter of the English Enlightenment, which rejected despotic regimes and criticized the Catholic church. After Jean-Jacques Rousseau was deported from the Canton of Bern in 1765, Hollis lost his enthusiasm for Bern and, in his outrage, wrote anonymous articles against the Bernese Administration for English newspapers.

Hollis's largest donation of books went to Harvard College (approximately 1,200 volumes), his second largest donation went to the Bernese Civic Library. With the help of Jean-Rodolphe Vautravers Bern received more than 400 volumes between 1758 and 1765 (1st  donation 1758: 18 books, 2nd donation 1765: 379 books). Hollis remained anonymous during his lifetime. The collection mirrors its donor's interests, one third being devoted to politics, one third to theology and one third to other educational fields of his time. The vast majority of texts date from the 18th century.

The entire bibliophilic collection is bound in leather. Quite a few volumes contain handwritten dedications and notes by Hollis.