The Collections of the British Museum
This book takes the reader on a breathless tour of the museum's major departments and collections. The inventory of objects is interwoven with a basic art historical text. In fact, even the book's design reminds one of a cramped, small-scale version of a textbook. Rarely is more than a sentence or two devoted to an object, although the picture captions add further brief descriptions. The audience for whom the book is intended is a mystery: not enough information is provided for it to be of use to scholars, yet the language seems to assume a certain knowledge. On the other hand, fundamental terms are occasionally painstakingly defined. The illustrations are plentiful and of high quality, but many of the objects mentioned are, annoyingly, not illustrated. While a book on the British Museum could be a useful tool in many libraries, in comparison with other exquisite collection catalogs recently published, this one is disappointing.- Lynell A. Morr, John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art Lib., Sarasota, Fla.Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.