Anthony à Wood was well known to his contemporaries as an antiquary and historian and continues to be recognized in the twentieth century for his work in those fields. As an historian, Wood was particularly interested in collecting works about the city and University of Oxford, but as a reader his taste was more cosmopolitan. At his death in 1695 his collection of books and manuscripts totaled more than 6,000 printed items--including many pamphlets and news books--bound in 959 volumes. It included many books not found in any other contemporary Oxford library. Furthermore, Wood collected more than 500 ballads, some of which, as Nicolas Kiessling has shown, constitute the two renowned modern collections of seventeenth-century ballads, the Roxburghe Ballads and most of the ballads in the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Library.

The son of Thomas Wood and his second wife, Mary Petty, Anthony Wood was born in Oxford on St. Lazarus...