Notes On The Cathedral Libraries Of England - Softcover

Beriah Botfield

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0461599198 ISBN 13: 9780461599190

Publisher: HardPress, 2021

Synopsis

Notes On The Cathedral Libraries Of England by Beriah Botfield presents a nineteenth-century bibliographic survey of England’s cathedral libraries, framing them as private, largely restricted collections that safeguard ecclesiastical, classical, and national history rather than public museums. Botfield records site visits to six libraries—Bristol, Canterbury, Carlisle, Chester, Chichester, and Durham—describing their rooms, governance (Dean and Chapter), catalogues, and representative holdings, and noting gaps in documentation that invite corrections. Across Part I, he emphasizes rich medieval and early-modern holdings, with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac materials, and notable manuscripts alongside codices and early printed books; important figures such as Somner in Canterbury and Durham’s Fathers collections recur. The volume foregrounds bibliographic infrastructure: local catalogues, manuscript registers, citations, and bindings, and discusses effects of events such as the Bristol riot of 1831 on holdings. The work functions as a scholarly dossier for cataloguing cathedral libraries by type, content, provenance, and history, with extensive later material on Peterborough, Rochester, Wells, Westminster, Hereford, Lambeth, Lincoln, York Minster, and Worcester, illustrating donors, cataloguing, and preservation.

Edition details

• Publisher: HardPress
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0461599198
• ISBN 13: 9780461599190
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 552