The Great Libraries: From Antiquity to the Renaissance (3000 BC to AD 1600)

New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2000. Hardcover. VG/VG- (book and dust jacket both show minimal shelf wear at edges, all pages clear and intact). Red cloth boards with gold gilt lettering on cover and spine, illustrated flyleaves, gold and color illustrated dust jacket with gold and black lettering, xvi, 563 pp., color illustrations. "The Great Libraries: From Antiquity to the Renaissance (3000 BC to AD 1600). This is a study of the development of books and libraries, chiefly in the Mediterranean region, from the time when people first started collecting works of literature. It is divided into two parts. Book I traces the parallel development of written literature in the various Mediterranean countyies with the foundation of royal, public and private libraries. Extensive coverage is given to the first private and public libraries in ancient Greece and Rome and the factors that led to their formation. There are sections dealing with the type of script in use, the content of books and the way library architecture evolved in line with the political and cultural conditions prevailing in the Sumerian, Assyro-Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek (from the Pre-Socratic period to the end of the ancient Greek era) and Roman civilizations. The Middle Ages are covered in two long chapters, one on Byzantium and the other on the Western world. The Italian Renaissance is studied from the supranational viewpoint that engendered the Renaissance spirit, the central theme of this section being the revolutionary effects of the invention of printing on the dissemination of books and the foundation of libraries." - dust jacket description.