Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections Since Antiquity

This pioneering volume of essays explores the destruction of great libraries since ancient times and examines the intellectual, political and cultural consequences of the loss of books. Fourteen original studies, introduced by a re-evaluative history of lost libraries, offer the first ever comparative discussion of the greatest catastrophes in book history from Mesopotamia and Alexandria to the dispersal of monastic and monarchical book collections, the Nazi destruction of Jewish libraries, and the recent pillage and burning in Tibet, Bosnia and Iraq. Leading international scholars ask what it means to lose the literary heritage and accumulated knowledge of a nation or people, why the devastation of library buildings and collections have stayed in the imagination, and why certain losses and the myths created about them are often not as simple or even as extensive as might at first seem. This collection represents a fresh appraisal of library history, offering both a highly topical and innovative cultural study in the history of books and knowledge.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; J.Raven Lost Libraries of Ancient Mesopotamia; J.Black Aristotle's 'Peripatetic' Library; T.K.Dix Text to Trophy: Shifting Representations of Regiomontanus's Library; R.L.Kremer The Corvina and the Lost Hungarian Archive; M.Rady Respect for the Dead: The Dispersals of the Library of Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester; D.Rundle 'The Manuscripts Flew About Like Butterflies': The Break-Up of English Libraries in the Sixteenth Century; N.Ramsay Secularization and Monastic Libraries in Austria; F.Buchmayr Lost Royal Libraries and Hanoverian Court Culture; C.Campbell Orr Revolutionary Seizures and their Consequences for French Library History; D.Varry A Plague of Books: The Disappearance of the Diocesan Libraries of the Church of Ireland; M.Connolly The Lost Jewish Libraries of Vilna and the Frankfurt Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage; S.C.Sutter China's Roosevelt Library; R.Wang & Y.Yang China's Destruction of the Libraries of Tibet; R.J.Knuth Burn the Books; R.J.Fyne Index

About the Author :
JAMES RAVEN MA PhD (Cambridge) is Professor of Modern British History in the University of Essex, Director of the Cambridge Project for the Book Trust, and formerly Reader in Social and Cultural History at the University of Oxford. He has written widely on the history of printing, publishing and reading practices in Britain, Europe and the colonies. He is a co-editor of The Practice and Representation of Reading in England (Cambridge University Press, 1996), and editor of Free Print and Non-Commercial Publishing Since 1700 (Ashgate Press, 2000). His most recent book is London Booksellers and American Customers (University of South Carolina Press, 2001).

Review :
'This important collection of essays...goes well beyond outrage to reflect on the complex role libraries have played over several millenia.' - The Times Literary Supplement 'Any interested reader in books and libraries will find a great deal here to facinate and inform, but there is more, for it also offers the reader a great deal of scope for reflection on the meaning of the loss and destruction of libraries...The Introducion 'Resonances of Loss' ranges even wider than the chapters and does so with scholarly assurance and stimulating identification of themes and connections...each chapter of the book has much to offer and the reviewer heartily reccommends it to students of all aspects of the culture of books and libraries' - Paul Sturges, Library History