The Library: An Illustrated History (review)

There are numerous general histories of libraries, both scholarly and popular; most of these include at least a few illustrations. But there is apparently no illustrated history of libraries in English aimed at the general reader. This book, by former journalist Stuart A. P. Murray, attempts to fill that void.

The first part of this volume comprises twelve chapters tracing the history of libraries from ancient times to the present day, including the development of books and the technologies used to produce them. The second part is devoted to brief descriptions of more than fifty "great, important and interesting libraries of the world" (235). The book includes more than 130 illustrations, most in color, and is printed on glossy paper in a slightly oversize seven-by-ten-inch format, with a sturdy binding.

The first part of the book fails to provide a coherent narrative. The chapters are divided into sections, each of which is little more than a vignette on a topic. These sections range from vapid to substantive, varying in length from two one-sentence paragraphs (e.g., 119) to several pages. The sections are disconnected and occasionally redundant: to give but one example, the library of Cardinal Mazarin is discussed twice, in the "Renaissance to Reformation" chapter (88) and again in the chapter "War and a Golden Age" (122). The information provided is sometimes superficial or misleading, and the discussion is often muddled. To cite one example: a "growing university" surrounded by scribes would not have been common in Europe in the tenth or eleventh century (38), since most universities were not founded until the twelfth century or later. Casual errors such as this undercut confidence in the text as a whole.

An "illustrated history" must of course include illustrations, the purpose of which is to complement the narrative, elaborate on themes, and explain concepts discussed in the text or depict individuals, institutions, or scenes described in the text. While the illustrations in this volume are attractive, they often seem disconnected from the text. Many of them will be familiar to readers of this journal; many others seem to be idiosyncratic, strange choices for the topic. Some lack authenticity, being simply modern drawings depicting a concept when a contemporary illustration would better serve.

Many illustrations are accompanied by vague captions that fail to identify the image or its source. The list of sources (305) is of little utility in supplanting the captions; the vast majority of the images are cited as coming from either the Library of Congress or from the Wikimedia Commons. For example, page 25 carries a beautiful example of Byzantine illumination. It is identified with the following caption: "An illumination from a late tenth-century Byzantine manuscript of the Christian Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." Would it not have been useful to include the information that it is the portrait of St. Matthew in Minuscule 585 in the Biblioteca Estense on Modena (information I was able to find with a brief Internet search)? A rather grainy reproduction on page 64 is captioned "Humanists and bibliophiles, scholars and clergy, are depicted in this imaginary scene set in a Renaissance-era Christian library." There is no identification of the artist or the source of the original artwork. The list of sources (305) merely indicates that it is from a "private collection." One questions the utility of including a bad reproduction of an imaginary scene in an unidentified library with no information about the source of the illustration.

This lack of documentation for the illustrations carries over to the text: there is not a single footnote or citation to sources. A very brief "For Further Reading" at the end (306–7) is not in any way connected to the text. One is left to speculate about the sources that the author used to compile the history presented.

The second half of the book, titled "Libraries of the World," comprises thumbnail sketches of some fifty libraries. The author...