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Title: The Care of Books

Author: John Willis Clark

Release Date: August 20, 2008 [EBook #26378]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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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 m