ROWLAND VAUGHAN’S WEIRD WATER-WORKES: A GUIDE TO SOLVING UNEMPLOYMENT

The other day I successfully bid at auction on this seemingly unwanted book, Rowland Vaughan’s Most Approved and Long Experienced Water-Workes (London: George Eld., 1610) not only because it has the distinction of being the first book in English about Crop Irrigation, but because when I turned to the last page of the work I found this:

It seemed odd to me that at the end of a practical treatise on a uniquely boring area of husbandry there would be a blank promissory note, that is, a note that in theory enables the reader to lend money to the author alone, without interest and to be paid back within five years. Not your average happily-ever-after or colophon – moreover as the note passes without explicit mention at the beginning or end of the book, and references to the book (STC 24603) lists that the note does not occur in every copy. Why would Vaughan take up the space to ask you to lend him money, confident that the space is worth taking up, and confident that he can pay you back?

In times like this it helps to start reading the book, I guess. The first 20 or so pages contain various poems about what an all-around great guy the author is. The first, by Vaughan’s cousin John Davies (“A Panegyricke”) didn’t answer my question about the promissory note, but did change my opinion on how entertaining water works could be, and how good Vaughan is in the “royall TRENCH”

This puts the Leaze in Sleaze.

The poem continues to compare Vaughan to King David, King Arthur, God himself, and a variety of pagan deities; in the next poem, Robert Corbet turns the trench into a hive, and Vaughan into that time-honored workaholic, the bee. Each poem paraphrases the story of Vaughan’s discovery of the new technology (told by the author himself later in the book). Once upon a time, he noticed the greener grass on the one section of his property that well-watered because of a molehill that let water flow freely into the small valley below which it created. He spent the next 20 years trying to copy from his observation. The book, these opening poems promise, will include a detailed description of this as well as instructions as to the the season and length of time to “drowne the Grounds”, the type of trenches to be dug depending on the terrain, and other handy tips, including how to keep moles out of the waterworks. And Vaughan delivers.

The exuberant praise for Vaughan and his irrigation system is no less exuberant than the author’s own introduction to the Earl of Pembroke, which takes up half of the volume, and here is where the promissory note is given the full force of its impact. It’s not just water works Vaughan needs to borrow money to fund, but instead he wants to build an entirely new society based upon his advances in crop irrigation, a new social order that will eliminate unemployment and rejuvenate his local economy: he wants to “raise a golden world…in the Golden-Vale of Herefordshire” (check out the side-note below “The richest Country breeds the idlest (therefore the poorest) people)”

In the Herefordshire of the early 17th century there are many in need, by Vaughan’s count there are five hundred out of a job within a mile and a half from his house in all directions. The poverty stems from unemployment, or an employment cycle that lasts three months and entails so much traveling that it results in a loss of income rather than a gain, the equivalent of paying cheap rent so far out of Central London that your travel fair in pounds per annum & hours lost to the commute leaves you exhausted, and what’s more, prevents you from saving any money at all. “There is not one amongst ten that hath five shillings to buy a Bale of Flaxe” to weave into linen, without several days worth of travel and wasted time.

In other words, if you give me money, I can make the system that worked for me work for everyone!

In controlling the flow of water, Vaughan controls his crop yield as well as the mill that grinds it into profitable corn, such that he can build offices and rooms to house all of his workers and “meckanicals”. Building from this model, “Two thousand imploide in the under-business of the Common-wealth” will be made possible when corn from the Mill is used both to feed laborers but also in trade for other goods to employ other tradesman: leather for tanners and shoemakers, flax and pelts for clothiers and glovers, etc. Each trade will have one master in charge of its administration, and as many apprentices as that master sees fit. “A famous preacher shall be maintained” to teach children and give sermons. There will be a Church but no seminaries or monasteries, an almshouse for the elderly and infirm.

The promissory note is all but mentioned explicitly, as Vaughan has no problem asking for money from his readers, particularly those from the upper tiers of society, the rich to pay for the poor (they are probably even more than the 99%). “I cannot see how mony can be wanting, I have so many honourable friends…yet I thank God they cannot say I want honorable friends, such as the Lord Bishops,  your Lordships with others, which may lend me money (if please you and them) I will not for a million anger any of you, to make a motion to borrow money: if lendings come in out of your honourable dispositions…its a better course (tenne to one)  then to take money to usury…”

As an added enticement, Vaughan will keep at his own expense “a dining-roome to entertaine a world of worthy benevolent Contributors: The Table perpetually furnished to intertaine forty of those Contributers dayly in expectancy”. The room will be “wainscoted, and fairly hang’d with Arras” and it will have venison pasties and as many other meats as possible whenever they are available. If only Kickstarter campaigns promised that!

The word Utopia is never mentioned, even though it might be coming to your mind as it does to mine. But the work is distinctly unscholarly and estranged from the genre: “I have not observed a precise scholler-like Decorum: for Mars his University…affoords no rules of speaking in Print”, Vaughan writes: he was formerly a soldier, and the University of Mars the god of war seems to me as something like getting a Ph.D at the School of Hard Knocks. The only references made are to the Bible and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. He doesn’t imagine a chance to start over on a far off island, but instead borders Wales and answers to Parliament, and he doesn’t engage with More, Campanella, or even Bacon, he just wants a job and lots of meat for him and his neighbors. It’s not a Utopia because of being a “nowhere”, as the etymology of that word leads us, it’s in his own back yard.

The way he accomplishes this vision through local poets, a vibrant letter to the equivalent of his local representatives (nobles who had a say in Parliament) , and serious innovation: it is a shame this list of accomplishments, as well as the material addition of the promissory note to make good on his ideas, falls far afield of the usual templates of Early English Literature. It is a grass-roots stab at social policy, more than political philosophy, with a very reasonable approach to jump-starting local growth with liquid assets: give jobs and salaries to those who will immediately put that money into their subsistence. Unlike the usual praise and flattery confined to the limits of dedicatory addresses, Vaughan gives his readers the chance to actually make good on their support for his new social order with a peculiar boldness that I have not found in other treatises on husbandry, Utopia, or any other book of the period. The ESTC (English Short Title Catalogue) lists a book published over a hundred years later in 1791 that includes a promissory note, only this note is to fund the publication itself, not a comprehensive view of society.

Has this entry become relevant to contemporary politics yet? Is cataloguing this book political? Is it possible that thinking critically about obscure texts from the distant past has something to say to us now? That history’s bidding is more than a return to more bookishness? I hope so, but I also thought it would be cool to write about this so something more substantial would come up when you google “Rowland Vaughan” or “Crop Irrigation”.

PROPAGANDA FIDE PRESS & THE FIRST GEORGIAN TYPE

Just a little 32-page curiosity for your Tuesday: the Alphabetum Ibericum sive Georgianium (Rome; Propaganda Fide, 1629. BM STC Georgian. CLC R673.), aka the first printed book in Georgian. The text begins with the thirty-six letters of the Iberian or Georgian alphabet, presented in four columns – formation, name (in both alphabets) and force.  Some letters have additional italic comments to the side, referring to and giving the same phoneme in other languages including Arabic, Hebrew and Greek, entailing the use of type in 5 completely different alphabets on a single page.  The second section explains the numerous ligatures when Georgian letters are combined.   Finally, the book practices what it preaches and vice versa with settings of The Lord’s Prayer, Hail  Mary, Nicene and Apostle’s Creeds, Corporal Works of Mercy, The Seven Sacraments, The Ten Commandments, concluding with the Canticle of the Virgin Mary.

It’s also the first work to be published by the Propaganda Fide Press, or Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, (an offshoot of Tipografia Vaticana) founded as a Counter-Reformatory tactic to aid the spread of Catholicism among missionaries. Incidentally, it was the first western press to cast and print in Middle and Far Eastern languages, making it also the first to work on a truly international scale.

Before it was an official department of Vatican in 1622 by Pope Gregory XIII, it was merely a collection of cardinals charged with fulfilling the practical needs of various missions in America, Africa, and the East. Printing was first and foremost among these needs – but you’ll notice on the title page above that this first work was not issued until 1629. That’s due to a good seven years of hiccups made possible by the deaths of Gregory XIII and after Gregory XV. Nevertheless, in 1626 King Teimuraz I of a depressed and cut-off Georgia sent Nicephorus Irbach as his ambassador to Rome to visit the Pope Urban VIII, and Irbach was enlisted to instruct monks in his native language. His arrival coincided with the foundation of the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome (1627), dedicated exclusively to the uses of the Propaganda Fide. The jurisdiction of “Propaganda” was at that time any non-Catholic country – so they had their work cut out for them – and Urbaniana was from the beginning a powerhouse of language instruction for the future missionaries of the 17th century (a purpose it fulfills to this day). Irbach oversaw the casting of the first Georgian type, and according to an essay on Georgian language and literature funded by NATO, this short grammar and prayer book was the first of three printed that year:

1. “Iberian or Georgian-Alphabet with Prayers”, Rome, 1629 (Alphabetum Ibericum, sive georgianum, cum Oratione Dominicali. Romae, Typis Sac. Congr. de Propag. Fide, MDCXXIX).

2. “Georgian and Italian Dictionary”, Rome, 1629 (Dittionario Georgiano e Italiano, composto da Stefano Paolini con l’aiuto del M.R.PD. Niceforo Irbachi Georgiano, Monaco di S. Basilio… In Roma, Nella Stampa della Sagra Congr. de Propag. Fide, (I)DCXXIX).

3. “Litaniae Beatae Mariae Virginis Lauretanae (Prayer of Virgin Mary of Laureto, translated from the Latin into Georgian by Nicephorus Irbach). Rome, 1629.

In a lapsed follow-up, the first Georgian grammar was not printed until ’43 by the same press. Books were not printed in Georgia until 1709, at Tbilisi, and there was scarcely a study of National history or literature in Europe until the 1790s. Wouldn’t it be neat and really difficult to draw a timeline mapping national languages, when they were typecast, in what print frequencies, and represented by what genres, from literature to scholarship?

SCHOLARSHIP AND THE BOOK TRADE: THE CATALOGUES OF E. P. GOLDSCHMIDT

If visions of the tweed-clad ranks of booksellers, one part drowsy and three parts out-of-touch, are your ideal, or if a view of bookselling as a neatly pressed 9 to 5 job gives you peace of mind, you may not have heard of Ernst Philip Goldschmidt.

Sure, Goldschmidt published works and lectures are still useful today: The First Cambridge Press in its European Setting,The Printed Book of the Renaissance, Gothic and Renaissance Bookbindings, and his favorite, Mediaeval Texts and their First Appearance in Print. But he accomplished this during rockstar hours, aka all night, never waking up before 11:30 save for auctions at Sotheby’s (he found it extremely difficult to be on time), & spending most of his late afternoons lunching at Brown’s Hotel (waiters put screens around his table if he was in a bad mood), and staying up all night with his friends and his research. He lived on black coffee. He smoked a minimum of 40 cigarettes while handling the incunabula, fine bindings, and other treasures among the early printed books and manuscripts he specialized in. Once, when trying to determine the provenance of a book up for auction, a colleague merely sniffed the pages. The scent of tobacco that saturated the book meant it had surely belonged to E.P. Goldschmidt, and he favored a peculiar Turkish blend.

Goldschmidt did whatever he wanted probably because he was raised to feel he could: the scion of a major Dutch banking family, connected with most of the major banking families throughout Europe, he was reputed to be the richest undergraduate at Cambridge while there from 1905-9. I write all this by way of saying: if you win the E. P. Goldschmidt fellowship at Rare Book School, you have a great responsibility to yourself and E. P. to infuse your study of books with some high class badassery.

Although his interest in old books dates from his time at Trinity College (upon graduation he privately issued a catalogue of his favorite books to his friends), his first major step into the book trade was in 1917. One day while passing the firm Gilhofer & Ranschburg in his native Vienna, he noticed in their window books on display he had specifically requested, for sale. He went inside to complain. If you are not satisfied with our level customer service, he was told, you are more than welcome to try and run the business yourself. As the story goes, he did, becoming co-owner that year.

In 1923 he moved to 45 Old Bond Street, London to set up E.P. Goldschmidt & Co. Ltd. Not forgetting his roots, the price-code he kept for his stock was the same as Gilhofer & Ranschburg: REPUTAZION. And his reputation remained intact: “There has been no shrewder dealer in the business in our time”, John Carter (of ABCs of Book Collecting fame) wrote in his personal note on the death of his friend. Not only that, but

There have been scholars before now who have dabbled in bookselling. There have been, and are, booksellers who are also scholars. But I do not recall, in the long and honourable history of the book trade, any man since Giovanni Aurispa…. who, being by nature, aptitude, and avocation a scholar, embraced the antiquarian trade as his means of livelihood and used it as a platform from which to deploy his scholarship. (John Carter ‘E.P. Goldschmidt: A Personal Note’, Antiquarian Bookman, 10 April 1954)

More important than the book-length publications put out by Cambridge University Press, however, what made Goldschmidt a great scholar-bookseller were the catalogues of stock he produced. In our reference collection, we happen to have a few, the earliest of which (9) I have decided post on .pdf form here to make my point as to its sheer readability and usefulness as a work of entertainment AND reference.

Some people chain-smoke in front of a typewriter long enough to write On the Road, and others produce scholarship on no less than thousands of books, paying attention (in many instances) for the first time to works of major historical significance. For instance in no. 86 Goldschmidt presents a 3 page description of “AN UNRECORDED AMERICANUM OF 1506″: Johannes Glogoviensis’s Introductorium compendiosum in Tractatum Spere Materialis (Cracow: Haller, 1506). The book is a wealth of information about 367 different books, ranging from incunabula to Americana, medicine, botany, and to books of art and reference. It includes fold-out plates of relevant images: maps of the New World, and an Anatomical fugitive sheet. It seems a shame that this kind of work slips from notice so easily in comparison to other books who entered this world in a similar form of many-typed slips, but there’s the politics of the canon for you. Although the large scale on which it remains unnoticed by scholars, librarians, and other booksellers, is a little harder for me to understand. Of course, there is the age-old dilemma of space. As A. N. L. Munby wrote:

Current booksellers’ catalogues present a grave problem. space forbids that they should all be retained, yet it is a sad wrench to part with them. No ephemeral literature approaches them in fascination. … Only when a mountainous accumulation of catalogues demands drastic action can I bring myself to throw a proportion of them away. Then, perhaps once in three years, there is a gigantic sorting; some are earmarked for permanent retention as works of reference; the rest are reluctantly destroyed after certain material such as plates of bindings and manuscripts has been cut out and transferred to a growing series of folio scrap books, ‘cutting up books to make other books’ as an unsympathetic friend once described it.

The excerpt is quoted in Henry Woodhuysen’s chapter on Catalogues in Out of Print and into Profit (pp 123 – 156). Woodhuysen goes on to give an appraisal, based on his own extensive collection and research, of what catalogues in the book trade have to offer (the only longer treatment of the subject I have found is David Pearson’s Provenance Research in Book History: A Handbook): “Catalogues add value to books, by placing them in context with books of a similar or related kind, their status is enhanced, new subjects for collection are suggested and a spirit of competiton between collectors is promoted.” He charts the ways in which catalogues have shaped interests and scholarship: collections offered of Alexander Pope and other minor poets and plays literally opened up the 18th century for scholars, and single-author catalogues that emphasized manuscript materials, for better and for worse, made the literary establishment’s obsession with the author (and consequently his/her ‘death’) possible. Maggs Bros. in particular issued once-unconventional catalogues that by this point will seem old hat: the first aeronautics catalogue in 1920, alchemy in 1921, Judaica and Hebraica in 1922, and association and presentation copies in 1923 among others. In a more clear-cut sales pitch, they issued in 1924 and again in 1941 a catalogue of incunabula of which “there was no copy in libraries of the United States”. Catalogues sometims included scholarly essays and introductions by famous scholars and writers, or were laid out by some of the major designers of the day: for instance Goldschmidt’s catalogue 106, the year before his death, was the work of Jan Tschichold – whose genius you otherwise may recognize from Penguin and Pelican books of the same era.

Almost as long as there has been a book trade there have been sales catalogues. Konrad Gesner drew from the sales catalogues of the major publishing houses – Aldus (reproduced in Renouard’s bibliography), Froben, etc. during the compilation of the first universal short title catalogue, his Bibliotheca Universalis (1545). And as Woodhuysen can add, “Printed catalogues containing second hand books, imported from the Continent, for sale in England have survived from the 1630s; by the beginning of the next century they were quite common and from about 1730 they started to list books with their prices.” Richard Sharpe has also written an essay on the relative uselessness of these catalogues as printed by the Sheldonian Theatre in the late 17th century under John Fell – he has scrupulously compiled a bibliography of these from the archives, including those of Anthony Wood and John Bagford. The modern catalogue is often meticulously researched (e.g. our Catalogue 59) and sometimes plays a role in determining those works of reference that are used beyond the trade: the secret-seeming language of ‘Adams’, ‘Renouard’, ‘ESTC’ required of a pre-1600 continental book, an Aldine, or an early English Book, are standards of reference that come from our practice of checking stock against documented complete copies – they are practices which scholars and institutions use as well.

Catalogues are hard to collect, and to catalogue: they’re issued inconsistently but in huge numbers by a fluctuating dramatis personae of firms, sometimes in varying formats and without very much information about the time of their publication, there is no standard of appearance, contents, or design. The few collections that exist are incomplete, the Munby Collection at Cambridge, the British Library and Oxford have selections on one side of the ocean, and the Groiler Club and the Folger have a few on the other. Most institutions don’t have the space or the time. The smartest and most exciting answer to this problem has come form Yale’s Lillian Goldman Law Library: we were very excited when the librarian there, Mike Widener, e-mailed us one day to ask if he could copy and paste our descriptions with their appropriate books on the library’s online catalogue. It would be nice to see other institutions follow suit. In the meantime, I’ll be practicing my very best impersonation of E. P. Goldschmidt and maybe one day will have my cataloguing work reviewed by the Times Literary Supplement, too.

As networks of catalogues of the book trade across the centuries are able to tell us all about the economics that propel what we value as cultural heritage, when we begin to value it that way, why, and when that changes, there is a sense that we have a lot to lose in overlooking this strange category of ephemeral scholarship. The main reason for neglect must relate to the bottom-line: as they are meant to sell books, they have been grouped with like categories of sales advertisements. Unfortunately, L.L. Bean catalogues, each object usually entails hours of synthesizing information from bibliographies, works of history and scholarship, books and essays, even personal accounts, past and present. But as it is through these catalogues that the secret history of many an intellectual trend can be traced, hopefully more attention will be paid to them in the future.

Anyone collect catalogues? Or have any neat stories about the books you’ve found in catalogues? Goldschmidt famously said that his favorite client would sent orders by postcard upon receipt of his catalogue in some faraway corner of the world. Agree or disagree?

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL LITERACY DAY, 1639: NIHIL COPIA, SED USUS.

This image is from Antonius Burgundia’s book of emblems, Mundi Lapis Lydius, sive Vanitas per Veritate falso accusata & convicta opera (Antwerp, Jaon. Cnobbari, 1639; with 50 emblems by by A. Pauli). Lapis Lydius is a precious gemstone – in other words, the book collects precious truth from the world, deriving it from the vanity it is often distorted by. Each emblem in the book contains a vain belief, and its reality: in this case, we marvel at the abundance of words, but abundance is nothing, use is what counts. Centuries later, it’s an appropriate observation in light of UNESCO’s International Literacy Day today, since despite our super-abundance of books, not to mention digital information,

[L]iteracy remains an elusive target: some 793 million adults lack minimum literacy skills which means that about one in six adults is still not literate; 67.4 million children are out-of-school and many more attend irregularly or drop out.

VISITING HAY-ON-WYE: “THE WORLD’S FIRST OFFICIAL BOOK TOWN”

via mike_smiths_flickr

This weekend in a stroke of sheer gift-giving genius I was taken to Hay-on-Wye for my birthday, a little village in Wales with forty-odd secondhand bookshops, roughly translating to a bookshop per 36 residents, hundreds of thousands of books and hours of intensive rummaging.

How does a town become a town of books? The case of Hay follows a distinct blueprint: in 1961 Richard Booth opened up a bookshop in his hometown, stocking it with the contents of entire libraries that had closed in the United States (unfortunately & terrifyingly I’ve not been successful in finding more about this – search results cover only current library shut-downs). There was enough stock to fill many bookshops over, and that’s just what happened, and Booth insisted on placing locals in charge of each. His idea for a “town of books” was, first and foremost, about rejuvenating the local economy by means other than a Tesco and a strip mall.

And the book town model caught on, because Booth traveled around to remake other little towns in Hay’s image, from the 1980s and most recently in Esquelbecq, France (2010). Although the success of the model is inconsistent (you’ll notice that many of the towns on the above wiki-list have fallen out of practice), the International Organization of Book Towns (I.O.B.) is still running strong, and has held meetings every other year since 1998 in order to

1. raise public awareness of book towns and stimulate interest by giving information via internet and by organising a International Book Town Festival every second year;
2. enhance the quality of book towns by exchanging knowledge, skills and know-how between the book towns and their individual book sellers and other businesses;
3. strengthen the rural economy by making propaganda for the existing book towns and by offering a medium (e-commerce) to the book sellers, by which they can offer their books to an universal public, also or specially in the quiet season (“winter economy”);
4. undertake other activities which can serve the interests of book towns and strengthen independent businesses in book towns, e.g. stimulating the use of information technology;
5. help in these ways maintaining regional and national cultural heritage and to stimulate the international public to get acquainted with it.

Booth's Autobiography

But Hay’s distinction as the “first” (in the west, saving Jinbocho, Japan) is not the only reason why it thrives as a book town, although if there is a branch of tourist psychology, it must have a lot to say on everyone’s obsession with things that are ‘first’ and/or ‘ largest’ and how they re-enforce success. The main factor here is the cult around the eccentric personality of Richard Booth himself. Folks who grew up in Hay will tell you, he’s a nice man who can throw a great, town-wide party, but beyond that he’s got precisely the flair for publicity that allows a venture like a ‘book town’ to thrive.

There is no better example than in 1977, when the town of books became a kingdom and Booth declared Hay on Wye’s independence. With Booth as King, April Ashley (the first transgender male to female in the UK) as Queen, what started out as a glorified tongue-in-cheek gained recognition on the BBC and the world over. It wasn’t legally a kingdom, but that technicality didn’t matter: there were still passports to be acquired and a web presence where you can buy your very own titles of nobility. To this day in the castle bookshop there are postcards with Booth’s face pasted onto Holbein’s Henry VIII. From the website:

In a world increasingly ruled by impenetrable bureaucracy, and self-interested big business organizations, the Kingdom of Hay was created as an alternative to embrace the good humoured common sense of ordinary intelligent people, which of course ought to be the basis of good government everywhere, always !

Today with government sleaze never far from the headlines, the issues raised in the King of Hay’s Declaration of Independence more than twenty years ago are probably more crucial than ever. But the spirit of the Kingdom of Hay has never been one of despondency. The original Declaration in 1977, presided over by the well-known figure of April Ashley, was celebrated with fireworks and a party for the whole town. And when the King, resplendent in his royal robes with crown, orb and scepter made from an old ball-cock and copper piping, was afterwards asked whether he was serious, his reply was:

“Of course not – but it’s more serious than real politics..!”

The next significant event to add to the fame of the Independent Kingdom of Books was the foundation in 1988 of its annual literary festival. Although Booth wasn’t very involved, the festival was clearly built on the reputation of the town of books – drawing writers and celebrities from all over. During this time the local population swells several times over, and while there we heard tell of hotels being booked up to seven years in advance during the festival time, and even camping areas charging more than what you’d expect. “A Woodstock of the mind”, as it is called, to the max.

PROVENANCE DISCOVERIES/OVERSIGHTS: THE CASE OF HARTMANN SCHEDEL

This week one of the books to cross my desk was a very lovely copy of Antonio de Roselli’s Monarchia, sive Tractatus de Potestate Imperatoris Ac Papae (Venice: Herman Liechtenstein, 23 June 1487). (ISTC No. ir00327000. BMC V 357 (IB 21984). Bod-inc R-140. Goff R-327. IGI 8441. Harvard/Walsh 2050. BSB-Ink R-268)

The phrase I hear a lot to describe books like this is that it “ticks all of the boxes”: Incunable, well margined, annotated, with contemporary binding (quarter leather over wooden boards, with an interesting/weird blind stamp of a dragon in a rhombus), a great big old bookplate from the Elector of Bavaria’s library, rubricated throughout, and a very pretty first spread with an illuminated initial and a strange but sweet drawing of a Moor’s head at the foot of the page (if anyone can tell me more about these I’d love to know).

VISITING INNERPEFFRAY: SCOTLAND’S OLDEST LENDING LIBRARY

A few weekends ago during a visit to Stirling, Scotland we went a few miles north to visit Innerpeffray, a little hamlet in Crieff that houses the oldest lending library in the country. In 1680, around 400 books from the lavish library of David Drummond, 3rd Lord Madertie were made available to the public, the oldest book being a 1502 imprint The Mirror of Final Retribution:  For Good Works and Evil Ones by Petrus Reginaldetus, and other highlights of the collection including a 1613 King James Bible, a hand-coloured Mercator atlas, and extensive holdings on Scottish history and Law. When Drummond died in 1692, his bequest was formalized and funded by his will. Originally the books were stored flat in the old Innerpeffray Chapel (click here for some amazing photographs – the chapel dates to 1365), but in 1762/3 the books were moved next door to a house specifically built for the purpose by Robert Hay Drummond, Archbishop of York. The 5,000 book collection has remained there until this day, and in the library’s long history books have only been out of circulation since 1968.

In the chapel, books were originally stored flat with paper tabs for easy identification.

The library’s foundation marks a crucial distinction in Scotland’s education and literacy compared to its British neighbors: as the library’s brochure points out, “By 1750 almost every Scottish town of any size had a lending library. They served a society in which 75 per cent of adults could read and write – compared to only 53 percent in England.” When the library was first founded, it was accompanied by a school (which only closed in 1947), and the earliest Rules & Regulations for the library reflect the dedication to local children and their education: