Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Bond, Edward Augustus
BOND, Edward Augustus, son of the Rev. Dr. Bond, of Hanwell, Middlesex, was born Dec. 31, 1815. He was educated in his father's house, and at Merchant Taylors' School, London. In 1832 he received an appointment under the Commissioners of Public Records. In 1838 he entered the British Museum as an assistant in the Department of Manuscripts. He was appointed Librarian of the Egerton MSS. in 1852, Assistant-Keeper of the MSS. in 1854, and Keeper of the Department in 1866. In Aug. 1878, he was appointed Principal Librarian of the British Museum, in succession to Mr. Winter Jones, resigned. As Keeper of the MSS., Mr. Bond designed and, with the help of his staff, completed, in 1870, a Class-Catalogue of the several collections of manuscripts in the British Museum, and subsequently he published a Catalogue of all the Manuscripts, Papyri, and Charters acquired during the years 1854–1875, in two 8vo volumes; also a series of Facsimiles of Anglo-Saxon and other Ancient Charters in the Museum, with exact Readings, in four parts. He has contributed papers to the Archæologia of the Society of Antiquaries, including an "Account of Money-lending Transactions of Italian Merchants in England, in the thirteenth and fourteenth Centuries," 1839. He passed through the press, for the Oxford Commissioners, the "Statutes of the University," in 3 vols. 8vo, 1853; edited for the Hakluyt Society, in 1856, Dr. Giles Fletcher's "Russe Common Wealth," and Sir Jerome Horsey's "Travels in Russia;" edited for Government, "The Speeches in the Trial of Warren Hastings," 4 vols. 8vo, 1859–1861; and for the Rolls Series of Chronicles, the "Chronicon Abbatiæ de Melsâ," in 3 vols. In 1870, conjointly with his colleague, Mr. E. M. Thompson, he founded the Palæographical Society, and, in collaboration with that gentleman, he has edited the series of "Facsimiles of Ancient Manuscripts and Inscriptions," produced by the Society. The University of Cambridge conferred on Mr. Bond the honorary degree of LL.D. in 1879.