Library

How many London residences, even in Berkeley Square and Park Lane, have a library consisting of two hundred books written in their authors' own hands, and a collection of over seven hundred watercolours by living artists? I doubt even if you could find the counterpart of these in the real Buckingham Palace.

E.V. Lucas, The Book of the Queen's Dolls' House, 1924

In the 1920s, it was not unusual for the library within a household to manifest as a masculine combination of a gun room, study and smoking room. The Library in Queen Mary's Dolls' House reflects this contemporary trend. The room is paneled in walnut and provides the perfect environment for gaming, writing, reading or cigar-infused contemplation.

Princess Marie Louise and her friend, the author E.V. Lucas, acted as librarians. They took charge of cataloguing and organising the books. The collection was intended to provide a representative, rather than complete, library. In addition to containing printed reference books and standards of great literature, the princess commissioned books by living authors. She contacted around 200 renowned writers of the day. Most were delighted to contribute, but a few, including Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw, refused. Authors who donated included J.M. Barrie, John Buchan, G.K. Chesterton, Joseph Conrad, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, John Galsworthy, Robert Graves, Thomas Hardy, Aldous Huxley, Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, A.A. Milne and Vita Sackville-West.