The libraries say they were not consulted about the £1m sale of rare mathematical manuscripts by the University of Keele.

The north Staffordshire university decided in June to sell the collection, which includes the first three editions of Newton's Principia and other books owned by the great mathematician, some marked with his own annotations.

But libraries, including the one at Trinity College, Cambridge, where Newton was a fellow, reportedly only learned that the collection had been put into private hands when an academic tried to view a book last week.

A spokesman for Keele University, Chris Stone, said the collection was "little used" and was no longer relevant to courses on offer there.

Academia divided

Keele says it needs to look towards the future

Mathematicians, however, have reacted angrily to the 1,400 books going into private ownership.

They say that the collection was bequeathed to the university in order that it would be freely accessible to students and scholars.

The donation was made by Charles Turner, described as an eccentric civil servant, who went without many home comforts to finance his book collection, which lined the walls of his Wimbledon home.

He offered the collection to the university after his neighbour, Professor David Ingram, became head of physics at Keele in 1959.

Mr Stone said that Keele had to look forward to the future and that the £1m generated from the sale of the books would be reinvested in the library.

Trinity College Cambridge says it would have tried to find the cash

He added: "Other institutions were consulted about the possibility of keeping the collection in public hands."

He said that the books had finally been sold to a private collector, and said that they were still in the UK.

Oxbridge anger

Representatives of the Bodleian Library at Oxford and Cambridge University Library both told The Daily Telegraph newspaper that they had not been consulted about the sale.

The Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge, David McKitterick, told the newspaper: "The first solid news I heard of it was on Saturday night.

"Keele never consulted me. Some libraries would have worked extremely hard to pay. £1m would not have been impossible."

Newton's Principia volumes revolutionised mathematics and philosophy, providing universal laws of physics.

He wrote in Principia Mathematica: " ... from the same principles, I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the World."