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The Private Library THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE Two and three-quarter million copies of thc 1961 Automobile Association PRIVATE LIBRARIES ASSOCIATION Handbook arc now distributed to Members- breaking all previous records. -- A With their usual thoroughness the A.A. tested -- -.-a - - --- -- maw materials for the cover before finalIv sclec~inFyellow 'seal' Kinline from the depcni- aRlc Li~lsonrang. Nearly a quarter of a million yards of Kinline were reqnircd hy Kizell, S. ILobert of Lincoln and the Oxford Greyfriars this enormous run. Linson is proud to asqist the Raymond Irwin A.A. in serviug the hlotorists of Britain. Crvrrcfgrlr* lGlir*r. I.r*irvMrlrw Classification for Private Libraries V Linson, Fabroleen. Exrrlin?Milskin, Qrternlitc D. J. Foskett The Herity Press Association Affairs Ben Lieberman Book Trade Changes Recent Private Press Books Vol. 3 : No. 8 October I 9 6 I @ Copyright 1961 by the Private Libraries Association 65 Hillway, London, N.6 Printed by The John Roberts Press Limited Joropress House Clerkenwell Green London ECI The Private Libraries Association The Private Library 65 Hillway, h on don N.6 Quarterly Journal of the Private ~ibrariesAssociation President: D. J. FOSKETT, M.A., F.L.A. Hon. Editor: Philip Ward, 28 Parkfield Crescent, North Harrow, Middlesex Hon. Secretary: Antony Wilson Vol. 3 No. 8 October 1961 D. J. Chambers Peter Reid G. E. Hamilton C. E. Sheppard J. K. Power Philip Ward Associa tion Afiirs The Private Libraries Association is a socieey of people interested in books from the amateur or professional point of view. Membership is ope11 to all who pay Membership in 1962 one guinea on January 1st each year regadless of the date of enrolment. For the seventh successivc year the Council of the P.L.A. announces an annual subscription of one guinea, to include four issues of The Private Library, six j?xckange Lists, and at least one free pamphlet on some aspect of the book. A new edition of the Members' Handbook is planned for January, but, unlike its predecessors, it will be sent to all members frce of charge. The directory of members thus brought up to date is of course confidential to members, as are the occasional supplements. The new editor is Pcter Reid, to whom changes of address and subject interests should be submitted for free inclusion. The Private Library HEFFER'S- THE BOOK In response to various letters asking for more information on the lustory of The Story of Printing and Bookmaking libraries on the lines of our July contribution entitled "Thc chained library in Hereford Cathedral", it is hoped to initiate a series of similar articles. Professor DOUGLAS C. MCMURTRIE Irwin, in the present issue, evaluates the importance of Robert Grosseteste in This discussion of books and their medieval scholarship, and in a forthcoming number E. A. Parsons, whose makers is written from the viewpoint of private library in New Orleans consists of some fifty thousand books and MSS, the designer and printer. It deals with gives a conspectus of current scholarship on the Alexandrian library. the origins of writing and of our D. J. Foskett, the Association's President and Chairman of Council, has put alphabet, and outlines the making of readers of this jo~~rnalin his debt by expo~mding"Classification for private A CAMBRIDGE books from the earlicst times, mrntioning libraries", a series of five articles begun in 1959 and concluded in this issue. olltstanding individual printers and Private press co-operation is a recent phenomenon: examples that spring to BOOKSHOP their contributions to the art of book design. The author discusses the various mind are John Rydcr's "Miniature folio of private presses" and the P.L.A. THAT IS KNOWN features of bookmaking which enter into Society of Privatc Printers run by David Chambers. Ben Lieberman's "Check- the planning and production of various logs of private press names" furnish another such example: the Herity Press, IN ALL PARTS kinds of book, and the printer's ideals. which publishes these check-lists, is described in this issue by its owner. There are bibliographies for most of the OF THE WORLD Foreign Classics Committee 0 '~tsformat and presentation are well The Coininittee would draw the attention of members to translations of foreign W. HEFFER & SONS LTD worthy of its fascinating contents.' classics recently published by Penguin Books: Maupassant's Bel-Ami (H. N. P. Petty Cury, Cambridge ~flEGIJARDIAN Illustrated 77s net Sloman), a selection from Lucian (Paul Turner), Also sprach Zaratkustra (R. J. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Hollingdale's version), and R. S. Pine-Coffin's new translation of Saint AugustineYsConfessions. Nelson have now issued the late A. E. Taylor's version October 1961 109 of Plato's Politicus and Sovhistes in a single0 volume. while the lone-awaitedD France, the English students in Paris migrated to Oxford, and a later migration Anderson translation of Beethoven's letters is announced for the near future from Oxford brought Cambridge into being. by Macmillan. The two great mendicant orders founded by S. Dominic and S. Francis in the early years of the thirteenth century reached Oxford in 1221 and 1224 re- Book Trade Changes spectively, and they soon spread through England. They drew their inspiration Under this heading we shall issue from time to time additions and amendments from two very different sources. S. Thomas Aquinas the Dominican was prim- to A directory ofdealers in secondhand and antiquarian books in the British Isles, pub- arily the scholar, logician and champion of reason. S. Bonaventura the Fran- lished by the Sheppard Press of s Caledonian Road, London, N.I. Entries ciscan, who was his friend, and fellow-student in Paris, leant towards neo- consist of name, address, telephone number and telegraphic address, details of Platonism and mysticism and was the champion of faith and the contemplative stock, catalogues issued, and membership of trade organisations. life. On the one side, reason and truth: on the other, faith and love and a cer- This important reference tool appeared first in 1951, and then in 1953, 1955, tain independence of spirit. The Dominican Order was founded on the ideal 1957 and January 1961. Quarterly supplements in The Private Library will of teaching and preaching, and for S. Thomas the contemplative life meant a obviously enhance the value of the du-ectory as a current tool, and at the same life of disciplined study. The Franciscans on the other hand were primarily time make available to members the latest information on British booksellers. engaged in pastoral and missionary work, though they soon found that this needed a background of academic training. This was indeed their first break with their founder's ideal of absolute poverty, which forbade any brother to own anything but his habit and girdle and hose. Imitating the Dominicans, they S. ROBERT OF LINCOLN AND THE became inevitably a learned order. "Paris, Paris", cried Brother Giles, "Thou hast destroyed Assisi"; and he might well havc said the same of Oxford. For the OXFORD GREYFRIARS next century or so, all the great scholars belonged to one or other of these orders, and a quite surprising number of them were connected with Oxford. by Raymond Irwin S. Thomas had two precursors: Alexander of Hales in Gloucestershire, and Albertus Magnus, whose pulpil S. Thomas was. Of those that came after, many N THE long period that separates the climax of the Benedictine Age in the were Oxford men: Duns Scotus, a much wiser man than his later nickname twelfth century from the Tudor Reformation in the sixteenth, the history suggests; Roger Bacon, the solitary scientist of the middle ages, struggling gal- Iof English libraries must take special account of the influence of Robert lantly against ecclesiastical ccnsure; Adam Marsh, the first teacher at the Oxford Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, who was born c. 1175 and died 1259. His story Franciscan School; Archbishop Peckham; Thomas Bungay; and Wdiam of illustrates very clearly the changes that were talung place in religion and educa- Ockham, the last of the great schoolmen, who, being an individualist and con- tion (and consequently in libraries) at thls time. The great days of the monastic tent to separate faith and science by an impassable gulf (as perhaps many do schools were drawing to a close; the new universities were rising in their place, today), had his influence on the thmking of both Wyclif and Martin Luther. and the coming of the friars had introduced not only a new n~issionaryzeal Of all the people who were associated with the work of the early Franciscans into the Church, but quite new scholarly disciplines concerned with the neces- in England, the greatest and in some ways the most interesting was Robert sary, but almost impossible, task of reconchg the teaching of Aristotle (whose Grosseteste, the effective founder (along perhaps with S. Edmund Rich, Arch- works were now being studied for the first time in Western Europe) with the bishop of Canterbury) of the University of Oxford, and its first Chancellor. He orthodox doctrines of the Church. New textbooks on new subjects were sud- was born about I 175 of humble parents in Suffolk, and was sent by his friends denly in great demand. They had to be light and portablc and easy to copy; and to study both at Oxford and Paris, returning afterwards to become rector schol- new methods of book production emerged, with a great new army of profes- arum at Oxford. After various preferments he was elected in 1235 to succeed sional scribes (in Paris, said Roger Bacon, their number was legion) to replace Hugh de Wells as bishop of Lincoln, in which diocese Oxford then lay.