Full Description
This volume is a survey of libraries in Britain and Ireland up to the Civil War. It traces the transition from collections of books without a fixed local habitation to the library, chiefly of printed books, much as we know it today. It examines changing patterns in the formation of book collections in the earlier medieval period, traces the combined impact of the activities of the mendicant orders and the scholarship of the universities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the adoption of the library room and the growth of private book collections in the fourteenth and fifteenth. The volume then focuses upon the dispersal of the monastic libraries in the mid-sixteenth centuries, the creation of new types of library, and finally, the steps whereby the collections amassed by antiquaries came to form the bases of the national and institutional libraries of Britain and Ireland.
Contents
Introduction Elisabeth Leedham-Green and Teresa Webber; 1. The physical setting Richard Gameson and Claire Sargent; 2. Celtic Britain and Ireland in the early Middle Ages Padraig P. O Neill; 3. Anglo-Saxon England David Ganz; 4. Monastic and cathedral book collections in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries Teresa Webber; 5. The libraries of religious houses in the late Middle Ages David N. Bell; 6. College and university book collections and libraries Roger Lovatt; 7. Bishops and kings: private book collections in medieval England Jenny Stratford and Teresa Webber; 8. The medieval librarian Richard Sharpe; 9. Borrowing and reference: access to libraries in the late Middle Ages Peter J. Lucas; 10. The dispersal of the monastic libraries and the salvaging of the spoils James P. Carley; 11. Extending the frontiers: scholar collectors Julian Roberts; 12. Matthew Parker's manuscripts: an Elizabethan library and its use Timothy Graham; 13. Tools of the trade: universities and colleges Kristian Jensen; 14. Tools of the trade: major ecclesiastical libraries, from reformation to civil war C. B. L. Barr and David Selwyn; 15. Tools of the trade: clerical and parish libraries Arnold Hunt; 16. Tools of the trade: schools and schoolmasters (to c.1550) Nicholas Orme; 17. Tools of the trade: school libraries (c.1540 to 1640) William Barker; 18. Tools of the trade: common lawyers and the Inns of Court J. H. Baker; 19. Tools of the trade: medical libraries Peter Murray Jones; 20. Tools of the trade: heralds' libraries Pamela Selwyn; 21. 'The profession of a gentleman': books for the gentry and the nobility (c.1560 to 1640) Pamela Selwyn and David Selwyn; 22. Libraries of the 'common sort' Margaret Spufford; 23. The libraries of the antiquaries (c.1580 to 1640) and the idea of a national collection Richard Ovenden; 24. Library administration (c.1475 to 1640) C. Y. Ferdinand; 25. Libraries and the organization of knowledge David McKitterick; Bibliography; Index of manuscripts; General index.
