Aspects of Book Culture in Early Modern England

Thomas Anthony Birrell (1924-2011) was a man of many parts but first and foremost he was a bibliographer and a book historian. The present collection contains fifteen of his book-historical articles, two reviews and one published version of a lecture for the illustrious ’Association Internationale de Bibliophilie’. The lecture - with a wealth of illustrations - about the British Library as the ’Custodian of the Unique’ gives one a sense of Birrell’s ability to present an audience with a complicated topic in comprehensible, but not simplified, terms. The reviews serve as a statement of principle of how to tackle the subject of ’English readers and books’ and the standards that ought to apply.