Henri Estienne was a French printer based in Geneva from 1551 following his family’s flight from Paris due to their Protestant faith. Assuming control of his father’s press in 1559, Estienne began to produce high-quality editions of classical texts, dictionaries and Bibles.

In 1572, Estienne published this, his most significant work, the Thesaurus graecae linguae, a Greek thesaurus. The work was a companion to his father’s Latin thesaurus and remained the most important lexicography of the Greek language for the next three centuries. Despite its importance, the five-volume set was very expensive and did not sell well, necessitating Estienne to publish a smaller abridged edition. The Royal Library’s set was formerly in the possession of the comtes de Brienne until the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. It was later acquired by Frederick North, 5^th Earl of Guilford, a prominent philhellene and founder of the Ionian Academy, the first university to be established in Greece since antiquity.