Produced by Sigal Alon, Christine D. and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) THE CARE OF BOOKS London: C. J. CLAY AND SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE, Glasgow: 50, WELLINGTON STREET. [Illustration] Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS. New York: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Bombay: E. SEYMOUR HALE. [_All Rights reserved._] THE CARE OF BOOKS An Essay on the Development of Libraries and their Fittings, from the earliest times to the end of the Eighteenth Century By JOHN WILLIS CLARK, M.A., F.S.A. Registrary of the University and formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge CAMBRIDGE at the University Press 1901 Cambridge: PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. FRANCISCO AIDANO GASQUET MONACHO BENEDICTINO D.D. MAGISTRO DISCIPULUS PREFACE. When engaged in editing and completing _The Architectural History of the University and Colleges of Cambridge_, I devoted much time and attention to the essay called _The Library_. The subject was entirely new; and the more I looked into it, the more convinced did I become that it would well repay fuller investigation than was then possible. For instance, I felt certain that the Customs affecting monastic libraries would, if one could only discover them, throw considerable light on collegiate statutes relating to the same subject. The _Architectural History_ having been published, I had leisure to study libraries from my new point of view; and, while thus engaged, I fortunately met with the admirable paper by Dom Gasquet which he modestly calls _Some Notes on Medieval Monastic Libraries_. This brief essay--it occupies only 20 pages--opened my eyes to the possibilities that lay before me, and I gladly place on record here the debt I owe to the historian to whom I have dedicated this book. When I had the honour of delivering the Rede Lecture before the University of Cambridge in June 1894, I attempted a reconstruction of the monastic library, shewing its relationship, through its fittings, to the collegiate libraries of Oxford and Cambridge; and I was also able, following the example set by Dom Gasquet in the above-mentioned essay, to indicate the value of illuminated manuscripts as illustrating the life of a medieval student or scribe. In my lectures as Sandars Reader in Bibliography, delivered before the University of Cambridge in 1900, I developed the subject still further, extending the scope of my enquiries so as to include the libraries of Greece and Rome.