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"Traces the fortunes and misfortunes of the collection of 17th-century courtier Sir Robert Cotton. The highlights of Cotton's library include some of the most important documents of Anglophone civilization: the sole manuscript sources of 'Beowulf' and 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,' two of four surviving 1215 copies of Magna Carta, and the masterfully illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels . . . If the Cotton library is a collector's dream, however, the history of the library often approaches a bibliophiles's horror story. Cotton served time as a prisoner, twice, on charges concealing royal discomfort with his library's ties to political critics. King Charles I locked up the library itself in 1629. Through the centuries that followed, war, intrigues, neglect, corrupt library-keepers and later collectors' poaching all threatened the collection's ruin repeatedly. With some tragic exceptions, though, the Cotton library has survived them all"--Back cover.… (més)
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It's a tale of love and loss, of passion and betrayal, of seeming abandonment and disaster ending in a dramatic rescue.
A romance? A folktale? No; it's the history of Robert Cotton's library and how it eventually became one of the most important collections in the modern British Library. Along the way, it was imprisoned, ignored, neglected so badly that it almost went to pieces; once, the building housing it caught fire, with obviously disastrous results. And that is truly a tragedy. Robert Cotton, by diligence, interest, and the occasional theft, managed to gather one of the great libraries of England, containing (for instance) a very large fraction of the surviving material from the Old English era. It is a scholarly resource with few peers and no possible substitutes; for the oldest material, the Cotton copy is almost always the only one. The only copy, for instance, of Beowulf (damaged but not destroyed by the fire), of Asser's Life of Alfred [the Great], the only real biography of anyone who lived before the Norman Conquest. The only copy of the works of the Gawain-Poet (happily, those at least were saved). A beautifully illustrated manuscript of Genesis. And much more.
That's my one complaint about this book, which covers the entire history of the collection from the time Robert Cotton started it in the Elizabethan era to the time it settled in its final home in the British Library: It doesn't really say enough about the collection. There are occasional sidebars, describing Beowulf and such -- but they represent only a tiny fraction of the Cotton collection. Not everything Cotton collected was deeply interesting, to be sure -- but there is a lot more than this book tells you about.
To be sure, it is a history, not a library catalog. The book is well-written and reasonably well researched. If you just want to read about an amazing adventure that really shouldn't have been so amazing, were it not for a bunch of dunderheaded noblemen and politicians, it should be all you need. ( )
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"The library of Sir Robert Cotton (1671-1631) is arguably the most important collection of manuscripts ever assembled in Britain by a private individual." -- C. J. Wright, former head of manuscripts, the British Library
"A large proportion of all the great documents that had survived from a thousand years of British history. [Cotton's library is] perhaps the most valuable single bequest ever made to the nation..." Justin Pollard, historian and author of Alfred The Great: The Man Who Made England
"Indeed it is a remarkable circumstance, that no collection, perhaps, was ever exposed to so many dangers and vicissitudes as the Cottonian Library..." -- The Morning Chronicle (London), Sept. 5, 1823
Dedicatòria
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès.Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
Dedicated to the British taxpayer
Primeres paraules
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Introduction In 1684 Sir John Cotton faced a dilemma.
Citacions
Darreres paraules
Nota de desambiguació
Editor de l'editorial
Creadors de notes promocionals a la coberta
Llengua original
CDD/SMD canònics
LCC canònic
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▾Descripcions del llibre
"Traces the fortunes and misfortunes of the collection of 17th-century courtier Sir Robert Cotton. The highlights of Cotton's library include some of the most important documents of Anglophone civilization: the sole manuscript sources of 'Beowulf' and 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,' two of four surviving 1215 copies of Magna Carta, and the masterfully illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels . . . If the Cotton library is a collector's dream, however, the history of the library often approaches a bibliophiles's horror story. Cotton served time as a prisoner, twice, on charges concealing royal discomfort with his library's ties to political critics. King Charles I locked up the library itself in 1629. Through the centuries that followed, war, intrigues, neglect, corrupt library-keepers and later collectors' poaching all threatened the collection's ruin repeatedly. With some tragic exceptions, though, the Cotton library has survived them all"--Back cover.
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(3.5)
1
A romance? A folktale? No; it's the history of Robert Cotton's library and how it eventually became one of the most important collections in the modern British Library. Along the way, it was imprisoned, ignored, neglected so badly that it almost went to pieces; once, the building housing it caught fire, with obviously disastrous results. And that is truly a tragedy. Robert Cotton, by diligence, interest, and the occasional theft, managed to gather one of the great libraries of England, containing (for instance) a very large fraction of the surviving material from the Old English era. It is a scholarly resource with few peers and no possible substitutes; for the oldest material, the Cotton copy is almost always the only one. The only copy, for instance, of Beowulf (damaged but not destroyed by the fire), of Asser's Life of Alfred [the Great], the only real biography of anyone who lived before the Norman Conquest. The only copy of the works of the Gawain-Poet (happily, those at least were saved). A beautifully illustrated manuscript of Genesis. And much more.
That's my one complaint about this book, which covers the entire history of the collection from the time Robert Cotton started it in the Elizabethan era to the time it settled in its final home in the British Library: It doesn't really say enough about the collection. There are occasional sidebars, describing Beowulf and such -- but they represent only a tiny fraction of the Cotton collection. Not everything Cotton collected was deeply interesting, to be sure -- but there is a lot more than this book tells you about.
To be sure, it is a history, not a library catalog. The book is well-written and reasonably well researched. If you just want to read about an amazing adventure that really shouldn't have been so amazing, were it not for a bunch of dunderheaded noblemen and politicians, it should be all you need. (