The Design of the English Domestic Library in the Seventeenth Century: Readers and Their Book Rooms

Abstract

The seventeenth century saw the increase in size of book collections in private hands. Domestic library collections were becoming more visible as important adjuncts to the lives of their socially and culturally engaged owners. This article explores the ways in which the practical and intellectual problems of storing books were addressed in the English home, through inventories and buildings accounts as well as contemporary literature. The changes in library furniture design over the course of the century are traced, together with the emergence of formal organizing systems such as catalogues and subject classification. Finally, the adoption of a different stylistic approach is examined.

Book-Buying and the Grand Tour: the Italian Books at Belton House in Lincolnshire

“…21 Before the eighteenth century, collections of books were rarely housed in large, purpose-built rooms, but more often kept in small spaces in or near the family's private quarters, which were designated the parlour, the closet or the study. 22 Book closets often functioned as the personal domain of certain members of the household, typically the master or mistress. Over time, new, purpose-built library spaces subsumed these smaller collections and unified them within a single referencing system.…”

Where to Do Things with Words

“… In turning to older periods, language may prove a boundary as well. As other reader historians have pointed out, terms that describe reading furniture – like ‘chests’ – or reading – such as ‘browsing’, ‘coming across’ or ‘looking over’ a book – can be misleading and ‘it may be unwise to assume we know exactly what those expressions meant’ (Jajdelska , 565; Gwynn , 44–45). …”