Sarah Sophia Banks

Sarah Sophia Banks (28 October 1744 – 27 September 1818)^[2] was an English antiquarian collector and the sister and collaborator of botanist Joseph Banks. She collected coins and medals and ephemera which are now historically valuable like broadsheets, newspaper clippings, visiting cards, prints, advertisements and playbills.^{[3][4][5][6][7]}

Sarah Sophia Banks
Portrait by Angelica Kauffman
Born	(1744-10-28)October 28, 1744 Soho
Died	September 27, 1818(1818-09-27) (aged 73)
Nationality	English
Known for	Collections in the British Museum, British Library, and the Royal Mint Museum[1]
Scientific career
Fields	Natural history Botany Numismatics ephemera collector

Biography

Sarah Sophia Banks by Nathaniel Hone the Elder

Banks was born on 28 October 1744 at 30 Argyll Street in Soho, London^[8] the daughter of William Banks, the Member of Parliament for Grampound, and his wife Sarah.^[2][9]

She "discussed questions of plant biology with her brother..." and "...influenced him greatly."^[10] Many "of her ideas made their way into his writings [and she] also provided valuable support by recopying and editing the entire manuscript of Banks' Newfoundland voyage (published 1766)."^[10]

Sarah and Joseph Banks hosted many gatherings at their house on Soho Square, which with its "vast library" full of books and collections "became a place to meet, eat and talk for those with natural history interests".^[11]

Legacy

Banks' varied collections were left to her brother and sister-in-law who presented them to the British Museum and the Royal Mint Museum.^{[1][3][4][5][6][7]} Her coin collection is now divided between the British Museum and the Royal Mint, while her prints are housed between the British Museum and British Library. The rediscovery of her scrapbook on the London Monster, a man who attacked dozens of women 1788–90, led directly to Jan Bondeson's book on the subject in 2000.

Ancestry

Ancestors of Sarah Sophia Banks
Robert Banks[12] Joseph Banks (MP died 1727)[12] Margaret Frankland[12] Joseph Banks (MP) Rev. Rowland Hancock[12] Mary Hancock[12] William Banks (MP) William Hodgkinson Anne Hodgkinson Sarah Sophia Banks William Bate of Derbyshire Sarah Bate

Further reading

• Catherine Eagleton, "Collecting African money in Georgian London: Sarah Sophia Banks and her collection of coins", Museum History Journal, vol. 6, no. 1, 2013, pp. 23–38.
• Catherine Eagleton, "Collecting America: Sarah Sophia Banks and the 'Continental Dollar' of 1776", Numismatic Chronicle, vol. 174, 2014, pp. 293–301.
• Arlene Leis, "Displaying Art and Fashion: Ladies' Pocket-Book Imagery in the Paper Collections of Sarah Sophia Banks", Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, vol. 82, no. 3, 2013, pp. 252–71.
• Arlene Leis, "Ephemeral Histories: Social Commemoration of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in the paper Collections of Sarah Sophia Banks" in Satish Padiyar, Phillip Shaw and Philippa Simpson (eds.) Visual Culture and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Routledge, London and New York, 2017, pp. 183–199.
• Arlene Leis, "A Truly Interesting Collection of Visiting Cards and Co' in Toby Burrows and Cynthia Johnston (eds.) Collecting the Past:British Collectors and Their Collections 18th to the 20th Centuries (Routledge, 2019)
• Anthony Pincott, "The Book Tickets of Sarah Sophia Banks", The Bookplate Journal, vol. 2, no.1, March 2004, pp. 3–30.