Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- RELIGION AND POLITICS
- ORAL TRADITIONS AND SCRIBAL CULTURE
- LITERATURE OF THE LEARNED
- 6 The Latin trade
- 7 Patronage and the printing of learned works for the author
- 8 University printing at Oxford and Cambridge
- 9 Editing the past: classical and historical scholarship
- 10 Maps and Atlases
- 11 The literature of travel
- 12 Science and the book
- 13 Samuel Hartlib and the commonwealth of learning
- 14 Ownership: private and public libraries
- 15 Monastic collections and their dispersal
- LITERARY CANONS
- VERNACULAR TRADITIONS
- THE BUSINESS OF PRINT AND THE SPACE OF READING
- BEYOND LONDON: PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION, RECEPTION
- DISRUPTION AND RESTRUCTURING: THE LATE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY BOOK TRADE
- STATISTICAL APPENDICES
- Abbreviations
- Bibliography
- Index
- Plate Section
- References
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core
15 - Monastic collections and their dispersal
from LITERATURE OF THE LEARNED
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- RELIGION AND POLITICS
- ORAL TRADITIONS AND SCRIBAL CULTURE
- LITERATURE OF THE LEARNED
- 6 The Latin trade
- 7 Patronage and the printing of learned works for the author
- 8 University printing at Oxford and Cambridge
- 9 Editing the past: classical and historical scholarship
- 10 Maps and Atlases
- 11 The literature of travel
- 12 Science and the book
- 13 Samuel Hartlib and the commonwealth of learning
- 14 Ownership: private and public libraries
- 15 Monastic collections and their dispersal
- LITERARY CANONS
- VERNACULAR TRADITIONS
- THE BUSINESS OF PRINT AND THE SPACE OF READING
- BEYOND LONDON: PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION, RECEPTION
- DISRUPTION AND RESTRUCTURING: THE LATE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY BOOK TRADE
- STATISTICAL APPENDICES
- Abbreviations
- Bibliography
- Index
- Plate Section
- References
Summary
In 1556, one year before the terminus a quo for this volume, John Dee (1527–1608), magus and book collector, composed ‘A Supplication to Q. Mary…for the recovery and preservation of ancient Writers and Monuments’. Appealing to Mary’s piety Dee first regretted the ‘spoile and destruction’ of the monastic libraries which, he pointed out, was still happening even in the time of Reconciliation, books ‘enclosed in walls, or buried in the ground’ and ‘burnt, or sufferd to rott and decay’. To combat this lamentable state of affairs he proposed the establishment of a Library Royal and commissioners who would go about the country retrieving ancient books. Copies would be made and the originals then restored to their present owners if they desired them. Dee shrewdly recommended haste in this endeavour since malicious persons might otherwise hide the books in their possession. Even though immensely sympathetic to a return to the old order Mary did not adopt Dee’s scheme and it foundered, as would all similar proposals over the next centuries.
Two years after our terminus ad quem Edward Bernard’s Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliae et Hiberniae was published, listing the contents of the large institutional libraries as well as those of private individuals. By this time most of the major collections had been assembled and a stability insured. Subsequently, of course, smaller libraries have been broken up, books moved around, and there have been new finds in England and on the Continent, but the great age of migration of English medieval manuscripts was effectively over.
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- The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain , pp. 339 - 348Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
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