Interior of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Rijksmuseum, public domain
Basic Books
The Library: A Fragile History
Why libraries are built, and why they are destroyed.
$35.00
Available · worldwide delivery
- Author
- Andrew Pettegree; Arthur der Weduwen
- Publisher
- Basic Books
- Published
- January 2021
- Pages
- 0
- Format
- Hardcover
- Size
- Standard
- Language
- English
The Library Essay
Neglect Kills More Books Than Fire
The burning library is history's favourite image of cultural loss, and Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen, historians of the book at St Andrews, spend this 2021 history quietly correcting it. Collections have died far more often of indifference, damp, changing taste, war requisitions and the deaths of their owners than of arson; even Alexandria declined over centuries rather than perishing in one blaze.
Their long story runs from clay tablets and monastic scriptoria through the confiscations of the Reformation, the private hoards of merchants and princes, and the great nineteenth-century invention of the public library, down to the digital present. Its running lesson is bracing for any collector: a library is not a monument but a living institution, and it survives exactly as long as someone keeps choosing to care for it.
In the Collections
