The world of old books ranged from the waste paper of the dung heap to the wariness and snobberies of private collectors. This chapter concerns with new books, their manufacture, sale, reception and use. The market in new books was affected by those that were available second-hand. The increase in numbers of books in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and the increase in sales from long-established private libraries, fuelled the book trade. Besides bookshops, there were innumerable less formal ways of selling books, and particularly on stalls of all sizes, from semi-permanent structures to street barrows. In 1830, the major London dealers in old books and manuscripts were headed by Thomas Thorpe in Bedford Street, Thomas Rodd in Great Newport Street at the foot of Long Acre, and the Quaker brothers John and Arthur Arch in the City. The major auction houses were concentrated in London, and the major second-hand and antiquarian booksellers were mostly there as well.

Of women as independent book-owners one have, as yet, little extensive evidence, notable exceptions being Frances Wolfreston and Elizabeth Puckering both, by coincidence, of the West Midlands. The libraries of John Donne and Ben Jonson, for example, have been recovered only by searching for surviving books bearing their marks of ownership. Buying here was in fits and starts, and donations, great or small, were erratic. Created and imbued with life in precise and defined circumstances, libraries may by the passage of time, or else by some change in their ownership or administration, wither away and die, or else develop shapes unimagined by their creators. In interleaved form it was taken up by libraries in Britain and overseas as the basis for describing their own collections. In all this Richard Bentley addressed needs and opportunities too oftenunheeded by subsequent generations. Had Evelyn considered the cathedral libraries, he could have found some encouragement.