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Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks KCB (20 March 1826 – 21 May 1897), was an English antiquary.

Funerary monument, Kensal Green Cemetery, London

He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge.^[1]

He early showed inclination for antiquarian pursuits, and in 1851 was appointed assistant in the Antiquities Department of the British Museum. Here, and as director of the Society of Antiquaries of London, an appointment he received in 1858, he made himself the first authority in England upon medieval antiquities of all descriptions, upon porcelain, glass, the manufactures of savage nations and in general upon all Oriental curiosities and works of art later than the Classical period.

In 1866, the British and medieval antiquities, with the ethnographical collections, were formed into a distinct department under his superintendence; and the Christy collection of ethnography in Victoria Street, London, prior to in amalgamation with the British Museum collections, was also under his care. He became vice-president and ultimately president of the Society of Antiquaries, and in 1878 declined the principal librarianship of the museum. He retired on his seventieth birthday, 1896.

His ample fortune was largely devoted to the collection of ceramics and precious objects of medieval art (although also including many items from the Oxus Treasure^[2] ) most of which became the property of the nation, either by donation in his lifetime or by bequest at his death. Although chiefly a medieval antiquary, Franks was also an authority on classical art, especially Roman remains in Britain: he was also greatly interested in bookplates and playing-cards, of both of which he formed important collections. He edited Kemble's Horae Ferales and wrote numerous memoirs on archaeological subjects Perhaps his most important work of this class is the catalogue of his own collection of porcelain.

Franks' great grandmother, Sarah Knight, was a cousin of Richard Payne Knight, another wealthy bachelor benefactor of the British Museum. Augustus blamed his obsessive collecting on his genes. "Collecting is a hereditary disease, and I fear incurable."

Franks died 21 May 1897, and is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, London.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

2. Caygill, M & Cherry, J: A W Franks - Nineteenth-century collecting and the British Museum, British Museum Press, 1997.

3. Gambier-Howe, E R J: Catalogue of the Franks Collection of British and American Book-Plates, British Museum, 1903-4.