In this small handbook Sir Frederic Kenyon covers the whole subject, and tells the general reader exactly whats he wants to hear. A large part of the book is devoted to the development from the roll to the codex - the beginning of the book form that we know to-day, the change from papyrus to vellum as the material for making books, and the important part which Christianity played in this change. It is odd to think that vellum, now so valuable, once stood in relation to papyrus very much as newsprint stands to hand-made paper to-day. After dealing with the form of ancient books, generally and in particular, the author turns to ancient readers. An analysis of the papyri found among the rubbish heaps of Oxyrhynchus during excavations show what authors were read in a provincial Egyptian town, and that the habit of reading was widely disseminated during the second and third centuries of the Christian era. Another most important discovery - a group of twelve papyri from Egypt, acquired by Mr. Chester Beatty as recently as 1931 - has also thrown new light on the papyrus codex and its use by the early Christians. From this group of MS., with the facts already known, it is possible to reconstruct the evolution of the codex, and, together with that, the development of the text of the New Testament.