Cambridge University Library: A History
From the Beginnings to the Copyright Act of Queen Anne

The first volume of the history of the Cambridge University Library examining its beginnings to the late seventeenth, early eighteenth century.

J. C. T. Oates (Author)

9780521118330, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 6 August 2009

532 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 3 cm, 0.77 kg

Of all the departments in the University of Cambridge, the University Library is by far the oldest. Oates traces its evolution in its first three and a half centuries, from its hesitant beginnings to its designation as a place of copyright deposit in the legislation of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He pays special attention to benefactors, on whom the Library was almost entirely dependent during the Reformation, but also to its subsequent recovery and dramatic expansion in the seventeenth century. The Anglo-Saxon manuscripts given by Archbishop Matthew Parker in 1574 and the sixth-century Codex Bezae, given in 1581, are among the university's most celebrated possessions; but the author devotes no less space to those who encouraged such gifts, to other collections (some exotic and some, such as Richard Holdsworth's library, enormous) and to the prolonged negotiations that frequently preceded their arrival at Cambridge. This is the first of a two-volume history of the Library. The second, by David McKitterick, deals with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

List of illustrations
Preface
Abbreviations
1. The beginnings
2. From Rotherham to Tunstal
3. The library during the English Reformation
4. The Restoration of the library in 1574
5. Perne's work continued: 1577–98
6. Futilities and frustrations, 1600–28
7. Abraham Whelock
8. Abraham Whelock continued
9. Orientalia
10. The Lambeth Library at Cambridge
11. Some memorials of benefactors, 1653–9
12. The work undone, 1659–64
13. The library of Richard Holdsworth
14. Henry Lucas and Tobias Rustat
15. Peachey succeeds Dobson: Hacket's request
16. Miscellaneous accessions, 1664–84
17. From Robert Peachey to John Laughton
18. Into the eighteenth century
Appendix
Index of manuscripts
General index.

Subject Areas: Universities [JNMN], Library & information sciences [GL]