Cotton'S Library: The Many Perils Of Preserving History

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.

• | Author: Matt Kuhns
• | Publisher: Lyon Hall Press
• | Publication Date: Oct 26, 2014
• | Number of Pages: 284 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 0988250535
• | ISBN-13: 9780988250536