Title: Memory's library : medieval books in early modern England /
Authors: Summit, Jennifer.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press,
Year: 2008
Subjects: Libraries England History; Libraries England History; Books and reading England History; Books and reading England History; Reformation England; Book collecting England History.; England Intellectual life; England Intellectual life
Abstract: In Jennifer Summit's account, libraries are more than inert storehouses of written tradition, they are volatile spaces that actively shaped the meanings and uses of books, reading and the past. Considering the period between 1431 and 1631, she revises the history of the modern library by focusing on its origins in medieval England.
Contents: Introduction : libraries of memory -- Lydgate's libraries : Duke Humfrey, Bury St. Edmunds, and The fall of princes -- The lost libraries of English humanism : More, Starkey, Elyot -- Reading Reformation : the libraries of Matthew Parker and Edmund Spenser -- A library of evidence : Robert Cotton's medieval manuscripts and the generation of seventeenth-century prose -- "Cogitation against libraries" : Bacon, the Bodleian, and the weight of the medieval past -- Coda : memories of libraries.