The Care of Books

Fig. 15 Ezra writing the Law. Frontispiece to the Codex Amiatinus. In the background is a press with open doors. The picture was probably drawn in the middle of the sixth century A.D.
London: C. J. CLAY and SONS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE, Glasgow: 50, WELLINGTON STREET.
Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS. New York: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Bombay: E. SEYMOUR HALE.
An Essay on the Development of Libraries and their Fittings, from the earliest times to the end of the Eighteenth Century
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

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 my eyes to the possibilities that lay before me, and I gladly place on record here the debt I owe to the historian to whom I have dedicated this book.