George John, second Earl Spencer, was born on the 1st of September 1758. He was the only son of John Spencer, who was created Viscount Spencer of Althorp in 1761, and Earl Spencer in 1765, and grandson of John, the youngest son of Charles Spencer, third Earl of Sunderland. At seven years of age he was placed under the tutorship of William Jones, the famous Orientalist, who was afterwards knighted, with whom he made two Continental tours. Jones resigned his charge in 1770, when Lord Althorp was sent to Harrow, and, on leaving school, to Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1780 he entered Parliament as member for Northampton, and on the formation of the second Rockingham Ministry in March 1782 he became a Commissioner of the new Treasury Board. On the death of his father in 1783, Lord Althorp (who had married in 1781 Lavinia, eldest daughter of Charles, first Lord Lucan) succeeded to the title, and in 1784 was sent with Mr. Thomas Grenville on a special mission to the Court of Vienna. During his absence from England, on the 19th of July in that year, he was made Lord Privy Seal in Mr. Pitt's Ministry, which office he resigned in the following December for that of First Lord of the Admiralty, a post which he held with great credit for upwards of six years. After his retirement from the Admiralty in February 1801, Lord Spencer remained out of office until February 1806, when he accepted the Secretaryship of State for the Home Department in the Grenville-Fox Ministry. On the dissolution of that ministry in March 1807, he finally retired from office, but continued to take part in the debates in the House of Lords. He died on the 10th of November 1834, and was succeeded by his eldest son John Charles.

Lord Spencer was a most energetic and enlightened collector of books, and the magnificent library which, until the year 1892, was one of the glories of Althorp, testifies to the skill and liberality with which he collected them. A taste for literature and a love of books were developed in Lord Spencer at an early age, and he was but thirty-two when he acquired the choice collection of Count Reviczky, a Hungarian nobleman, which at once placed his library among the more important private collections of the time. He also bought largely at the Mason, Herbert, Roxburghe, Alchorne, and other sales, and after the dispersion of the famous library at White Knights in 1819 he was able to acquire, at a cost of seven hundred and fifty pounds, the copy of the Valdarfer Boccaccio for which he had vainly bid two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds seven years before at the Roxburghe sale. In the years 1819 and 1820 he made a bibliographical tour on the Continent, during which, among other purchases, he acquired the library of the Duke of Cassano-Serra, which contained some very rare fifteenth century books.

Lord Spencer was considerably assisted in the formation of his famous collection by his librarian, the well-known Dr. Thomas Frognall Dibdin, the author of Bibliomania, The Bibliographical Decameron, and other pleasant and gossiping, but somewhat verbose and not particularly accurate, works on books, their printers and owners. Dibdin's services were liberally rewarded; and Edwards, in his work Libraries and Founders of Libraries, states that in addition to his stipend as librarian, 'Lord Spencer insured his librarian's life for the advantage of his family. Lord Spencer also gave him the vicarage of Exning, in Suffolk, in 1823, and obtained for him, on Episcopal recommendation, the rectory of St. Mary, Bryanstone Square, at the end of the same year.' Dibdin was the first to suggest the establishment of the Roxburghe Club, of which he became vice-president. He died in 1847.

The collection at Althorp, which Renouard described as 'the most beautiful and richest private library in Europe,' amounted in 1892 to about forty-one thousand five hundred volumes. Other private libraries have possessed more books, but none could boast of choicer ones. It contained the earliest dated example of wood-engraving—the figure of St. Christopher, with the date 1423; and no less than fourteen block-books, comprising three editions of the Ars Moriendi, three of the Speculum HumanÆ Salvationis, two of the Apocalypsis S. Johannis, together with copies of the Biblia Pauperum, Ars Memorandi, Historia Virginis ex Cantico Canticorum, Wie die fÜnfzehen zaichen kimen vor dem hingsten tag, the Enndchrist, and Mirabilia RomÆ. It was particularly rich in Bibles, among which were the Gutenberg and Bamberg Bibles, the Coverdale Bible of 1535, and a magnificent copy of the Antwerp Polyglot, once the property of De Thou. It also contained the first and second Mentz Psalters. The Classics, too, were splendidly represented. The editions of works by Cicero numbered upwards of seventy, about fifty of which were printed before 1473; while fifteen of those of Virgil were prior to the year 1476. Among these were the second edition by Sweynheym and Pannartz, most probably printed in 1471, which is not less rare than the first, and the famous 'Adam' edition, which issued from the press in that year. These two volumes were obtained from the library of the King of Wirtemberg, Dibdin making a special journey to Stuttgart to purchase them. The library also possessed a large number of the early editions of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and other Italian Classics; and no less than fifty-two Caxtons, three of them unique, were to be found on its shelves. A splendid descriptive catalogue of the library, entitled 'Bibliotheca Spenceriana,' was compiled by Dibdin in the years 1814-23.

Lord Spencer maintained his interest in his books to the end of his life, and in the year before that of his death he wrote to Dibdin, 'I am trying my hand at a Classed Catalogue.'

In August 1892 this noble collection was purchased by Mrs. Rylands, widow of the late Mr. John Rylands, of Longford Hall, near Manchester, for a sum which was said to be little less than a quarter of a million sterling; and on the 6th of October 1899 she presented it, together with a handsome building for its reception, to the city of Manchester, in memory of her husband. An excellent catalogue, both of the printed books and the manuscripts, in three handsome quarto volumes, compiled by Mr. Gordon Duff, the librarian, accompanied this munificent gift.