Author(s): David McKitterick

Books About Books | rare & collectable

This second volume, a companion to the first by J. C. T. Oates, takes the history of the Library from the time of the Copyright Act of Queen Anne and the gift by King George I of the celebrated book collection of John Moore, Bishop of Ely, to the end of the nineteenth century when the Library's place within the University and in the scholarly world as a whole was well established. David McKitterick examines how the Library responded to educational reforms, charts the way in which the collections grew in relation to the changing preoccupations of Librarians and dons and shows how the needs of undergraduates were answered in an international research library. The book sheds light on the background to the erection of three of Cambridge's most notable buildings: the Senate House, the East Front of the Old School, and C. R. Cockerell's uncompleted new library. Throughout, it is based not only on the author's intimate knowledge of the collections, but also on a thorough - and often pioneering - study of the surviving archives both in Cambridge and elsewhere.

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