The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland

This volume is a detailed survey of libraries in Britain and Ireland before 1640.

Elisabeth Leedham-Green (Edited by), Teresa Webber (Edited by)

9781107650183, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 February 2014

710 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.6 cm, 0.94 kg

'… massive work of scholarship by a team of distinguished scholars and scholar-librarians … hugely impressive …' Library and Information History

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Bibliographies, catalogues [GBCR]