The invention of rare books : private interest and public memory, 1600-1840
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The invention of rare books : private interest and public memory, 1600-1840
Cambridge University Press, 2018
Available at 4 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliography (p. 391-438) and index (p. 439-450)
Description and Table of Contents
Description
When does a book that is merely old become a rarity and an object of desire? David McKitterick examines, for the first time, the development of the idea of rare books, and why they matter. Studying examples from across Europe, he explores how this idea took shape in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and how collectors, the book trade and libraries gradually came together to identify canons that often remain the same today. In a world that many people found to be over-supplied with books, the invention of rare books was a process of selection. As books are one of the principal means of memory, this process also created particular kinds of remembering. Taking a European perspective, McKitterick looks at these interests as they developed from being matters of largely private concern and curiosity, to the larger public and national responsibilities of the first half of the nineteenth century.
Table of Contents
- 1. Inventio
- 2. Books as objects
- 3. Survival and selection
- 4. Choosing books in Baroque Europe
- 5. External appearances (1)
- 6. External appearances (2)
- 7. Printers and readers
- 8. A seventeenth-century revolution
- 9. Concepts of rarity
- 10. Developing measures of rarity
- 11. Judging appearances by modern standards
- 12. The Harleian sales
- 13. Authority and rarity
- 14. Rarity established
- 15. The French bibliographical revolution
- 16. Books in turmoil
- 17. Bibliophile traditions
- 18. Fresh foundations
- 19. Public faces, public responsibilities
- 20. Conclusion.
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