The following is a guest post by Susan Reyburn, writer-editor in the Library’s Publishing Office.
Seventy-five years ago this week, the Lincoln Cathedral Magna Carta (1215) made its first visit to the Library of Congress, something that had not been on its itinerary when it arrived in New York in April 1939 for the World’s Fair. Several months later, the outbreak of World War II and the end of the fair’s first season left the document stranded in the United States. This happened as Lord Lothian, the British ambassador, put it, because “His Majesty’s Government feel[s] that it would not be proper for them to attempt to send Magna Carta back to England under existing conditions on the high seas.”
German U-boats, after all, were prowling those high seas.
In researching the Library’s unexpected custody of the document for the new book Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor (Thomson Reuters, 2014) and the exhibition of the same name, I came across lively correspondence in the Library’s central archives of British and American