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Cloth, 4to, 26 cm, xcv, 207 + [209]-568 pp, 2 plates. Vol 1 1715-1723 and Vol 2 1723-1726. "Humfrey Wanley's Diary or Journal,' here printed for the first time in its entirety, was kept by him while Library-Keeper in the service of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, and Edward, his son, the 2nd Earl, and runs from 2 March 1714/15 to 23 June 1726, . It records the visits of, or to, booksellers and dealers, and negotiations with them; lists of manuscripts and printed books offered for sale, purchased, or received by gift; conversations with various people about library business; the visits of scholars and others to the Library, either as students there or as sightseers, and so on. It is in fact a record of the day-by-day business of a working librarian." from the introduction. From a review by Nicolas Barker: "Why is it that this dry terse prose, the account of the day to day business of a great library, should be so completely fascinating, should indeed be worth the labour and expense of reprinting in full with an elaborate commentary? .First and foremost, there is the personality of the author. Humphrey Wanley was a great man and a person of great authority; this is best revealed not in the occasional brief and caustic comments on men and affairs in the Diary (these are more evidence of Wanley's high but justified valuation of himself) but over the whole text of the Diary. His assurance is equally marked in describing manuscripts and printed books, in dealing with other scholars, with dealers and occasional visitors, and in the pursuit of books, in which he displays a dignified tenacity which, as an instrument of acquisition, has no equal. Secondly, there is the importance of the Diary as a record of the collection of the greatest private library ever put together in this country. .third .this middle period of the library's growth is a critical one, not merely in its own history, but in the history of collecting books in England. One can almost put a date - 1720 - to the turning-point between the earlier epoch (of which Sir Simonds D'Ewes was an example) when the private library of the individual was a working library augmented by such books as might be acquired from other private individuals, and the later, in which books valuable in themselves were methodically sought on a worldwide basis. It is not too much to say that (in this country at least) the responsibility for this change of taste can be attributed almost entirely to the acquisitive policy of the first and second Earls of Oxford and their librarian. it seems hardly necessary to add that the edition is a model. " Near Very Good. Seller Inventory # ABE-20833
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