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  • Recent Books

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A Bibliography of the Works of Ian Jackson. By Kenneth Haynes, with an Essay on the Clerihew by Ian Jackson, and a Note on Tennyson and the Limerick by Kenneth Haynes. Berkeley, CA: Ian Jackson Books. 2020. 63 pp. isbn 978 1 949643 61 9. Available from www.ianjacksonbooks.com.

Readers of The Library will also be familiar with The Book Collector, whose summer 2018 issue (volume 67 no. 2) carried a set of reminiscences of Ian Jackson. Jackson was a scholar-bookseller who became something of a legend in his own lifetime, which was cut short by cancer in 2018. From his house in Berkeley, which was filled by his reference collection of 70,000 books, he issued a long series of catalogues, many of whose entries contained learned and substantial descriptions and low prices. His 88 catalogues and the 86 shorter ‘cedules’ that followed them are listed in this memorial booklet assembled with piety and style by Kenneth Haynes. The booklet is nicely produced, and includes four colour illustrations, three of Ian Jackson and one of a cherry tree in his garden beneath which his ashes lie. The bibliography is followed by an appendix summarizing the complicated history of Jackson’s collaboration with Gavin Bridson on a catalogue of naturalists’ libraries. Jackson’s essay on the clerihew is a characteristic piece, bravura in style and with a wide range of comparative reference. (Jackson also wrote about haikus and that curious hybrid verse form, the clerihaiku.) Haynes’s own note on another verse form, the limerick, is a discussion of bawdy versions allegedly written by Tennyson. This is in effect a discussion of the way in which such allegations emerge, persist, and change. The additive structure of the booklet is reminiscent of my Mushri-English Pronouncing Dictionary (1996), whose publication was funded by Jackson. (Its Appendix B, on George Cornewall Lewis’s 1862 Inscriptio Antiqua, was contributed by Jackson; this and other anonymous writings are not listed by Haynes.) The bibliography itself demonstrates Jackson’s range, from English, French, and Italian literature to natural history, booksellers’ price-codes, and, of course, bibliography.

Intellectual Routes of the Greeks: Through the Manuscript and Printed Book. Vol. I: 13th to Mid-16th Centuries. By K. Sp. Staikos. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press. 2019. xxxi + 458 pp. $85. isbn 978 1 58546 384 6.

Konstantinos Staikos is an architect and book historian. In the former capacity he organized the rebuilding of two ancient libraries, in Patmos and Constantinople; in the latter he has produced more than twenty books on the history of books and libraries. His own library, which was focused on the history of Greek printing and publishing, was acquired by the Onassis Foundation in 2010. The present volume, the first of a new series, traces the history of printing and publishing in the Greek-speaking world of the eastern Mediterranean from the capture of Constantinople in 1204 to the middle of the sixteenth century. A second volume will continue the story into the era of Greek independence in the early nineteenth century. Staikos discusses the collection of Greek manuscripts by Byzantine and Italian scholars, debates between Platonists and Aristotelians, the establishment of the Greek chair at the University of Padua, and the role of the printed book in spreading classical Greek and Byzantine literature. He pays special attention to the role of the orthodox church, whose patriarchates and monasteries supported and protected scholars and copyists. The book is sumptously produced and extensively illustrated in colour. Staikos’s text has been translated from the original Greek; the English version is generally clear, though not error-free.

Swansea
Christopher A. Stray

Libraries in Leeds: A Historical Survey, 1152–c.1939. By P. S. Morrish. (Thoresby Society Publications, 2nd ser., 27–28.) Leeds: Thoresby Society. 2019. x + 226 pp. £18. isbn 978 0 900741 79 1.

P. S. Morrish was for many years in charge of Special Collections in Leeds University Library. He has published widely in the field of library history, and this book, the first comprehensive history of the development of libraries in Leeds, makes use of published accounts...

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