The antiquarian collector Francis Douce (1757–1834) left his collections to the Bodleian Library in Oxford and to his friend Samuel Rush Meyrick. His papers, kept in a sealed box in the British Museum to be opened in 1900 and later transferred to the Bodleian Library, are a crucial source of information on Douce’s collections and interests. They suggest that in addition to Douce’s antiquarian studies on everyday life in the past, his collections were aimed at understanding the transmission of images across geographical borders, cultures and historical periods. Douce’s work and collections are contextualised in relation to the historiography of Romantic antiquarianism, collecting, visual culture and the circulation of knowledge.