Richard De Bury - The Philobiblon

Copyright 2019 by Dover Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

This Dover edition, first published in 2019, is an unabridged republication of the work published by Philip C. Duschnes, New York, in 1945. The translation was done by Anthony Fleming West. The title page and the initial letters were designed by Valenti Angelo. A new Publisher's Note has been specially prepared for this Dover edition.

Names: Bury, Richard de, 12871345, author. | West, Andrew Fleming, 1853-1943, translator.

Title: The philobiblon / Richard De Bury.

Other titles: Philobiblon. English

Description: Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, Inc., 2019. | "This Dover edition, first published in 2019, is an unabridged republication of the work published by Philip C. Duschnes, New York, in 1945. The translation was done by Anthony Fleming West."

Identifiers: LCCN 2018054002| ISBN 9780486832463 | ISBN 0486832465

Subjects: LCSH: Book collecting.

Classification: LCC Z992 .B9813 2019 | DDC 002.075dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054002

Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

83246501 2019

www.doverpublications.com

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

R ichard De Bury (12871345), named after the town of Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk, England, where he was born, was descended from an English knight who fought with William the Conqueror in the eleventh century. De Bury studied at Oxford, became a priestultimately rising to be Bishop of Durhamand tutored the future English king Edward III. After Edward III became king in the 1320s, De Bury served Edward's government in various high administrative and diplomatic posts. On a diplomatic mission to the papal court while in exile at Avignon in 1330, De Bury met the Italian scholar and poet Petrarch, with whom he shared his devotion to and enthusiasm for books, and who left a brief account of meeting his English counterpart. Wherever he went, De Bury assiduously collected manuscripts and bound books, and in time composed this short collection of Latin essays about his passion for books, The Philobiblonthe title was created by De Bury from the Greek words meaning "the love of books." His intent was, no doubt, to encourage his fellow clerics to pursue the love of learning via the collecting and reading of books, as he himself had done. De Bury completed the text in 1345, and it circulated in manuscript form throughout the late medieval world. Publication as a book would have to await the invention of printing with movable type in the following century.

The first printed edition of De Bury's Philobiblon appeared at Cologne in 1473, and several others soon followed as the invention of the printing press spread throughout the late medieval world. The first English translation was published early in the nineteenth century. The titles of some of the chapters give a good idea of the nature of the work, combining the author's love for and commitment to the importance of books and the knowledge they contain, with thoughts on collecting them, lending them, teaching with them, and simply enjoying them: "That the Treasure of Wisdom lieth especially in books," "What love is reasonably due to books," "Who ought to be the especial lovers of books," and "Of the manner of distributing our books to all students."

Bibliophiles, to the present day, consider this short text to be one of the first ever written that studied, defined, and, above all, praised their passion, the all-encompassing love of books. Some readers have valued it as one of the earliest written works to take up the concerns of libraries and librarians. Unfortunately, De Bury's remarkable and, in its time, unique library was dispersed after his death, and only two books now exist that are known to have belonged to himan edition of the works of John of Salisbury now in the British Library in London, and a collection of theological treatises in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

This Dover edition is a reprint of the edition published in New York in 1945 by Philip C. Duschnes. It was published on January 24, 1945, to commemorate the 600th anniversary of its completion on Richard de Bury's birthday, January 24, 1345. The translation by Anthony Fleming West was first published by the Grolier Club, New York, in 1889. The title page and initial letters were designed by Valenti Angelo.

THE PROLOGUE