‘There can be few educational institutions named after a man with the force of character, powers of leadership, business acumen, and variety of intellectual and spiritual interests of Elihu Yale'

His career, which spans Puritan New England, Mughal India, and the London of the English Enlightenment, throws light on the religious, political, social, commercial, scientific, and cultural circumstances of the world of the later Stuarts and early Hanoverians.

Elihu Yale (1649–1721) is famous for the name of Yale University, of which he was an early benefactor. He made his fortune in India, trading in diamonds. Arriving there in 1672, he rose through the East India Company from clerk to governor. When he returned to London in 1699 he brought with him gems, furniture and textiles. In the milieu of portrait painter Sir Godfrey Kneller and physician Sir Hans Sloane he established a fashionable household where he had assembled some ten thousand items.

Yale’s collection was dispersed after his death and the catalogues of the sales survive, providing information about the 18th-century London art market. The Yale sales prove to be a landmark in the history both of collecting and of auctioneering. Analyses of the categories throw light on Yale’s personality and interests: he is revealed as a Fellow of the Royal Society, churchman and a philanthropist, totally in tune with the English Enlightenment.

The authors explore Yale’s life in Madras and London and his interests, including musical and scientific instruments and books, and then turn to Yale as a dealer and a collector of diamonds and jewelry and works of art. The story is one with many appeals: the East India Company and early 18th-century London; furniture, both Indian and English; the fashion for things Oriental in the West; gemstones and jewelry; and collecting works of art.