Jennifer Summit
I must admit that my feeble attempts to properly "review" this book in any way are, in a sense, futile as this is a strictly academic work that presumes (and rightly so) an extensive knowledge of British history right around the Reformation. Knowledge of Middle English is a must and a working familiarity with Latin will benefit the reader, though long Latin citations are thankfully translated while titles stand unintelligibly in the original. My collegiate experience with the English of the period gave me a cursory knowledge on which to understand the book, but Memory's Library is certainly not a tome for the common, average reader, which is too bad because Summit raises some interesting ideas about libraries and their place in society. Summit traces several strands of library history in distinct chapters necessarily linked by their overlap but which each posits a main thesis; Summit never fails to remind the reader that she "is arguing" even though these "arguments" often read more like litanies of facts or obtuse histories, but no matter. Memory's Library employs a somewhat traditional case-study approach to the history of the major libraries of England during the transitional period between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance or, as it is recast here, the transition from monastic libraries to cultivated personal or university collections.
Summit does a good job keeping the overall picture in mind as she transitions from development to development in English library history within and between her chapters, but her account is free from most contextualizing information and the book would be greatly aided with a timeline and/or an appendix with the lifespans of the book's major players, many of whom seem to fade only to pop up in a later chapter, alive and well and corresponding with someone whose history is said to come well after theirs (the chapter about Bacon does this quite egregiously, and much to my confusion). Likewise, there is a lack of a dramatic narrative feeling in this book; Summit is talking about Big Ideas and Grand Developments in History and there is just story after story without attendant, interesting conversations about the meanings of religious censorship or the rise of literacy; it must be said, however, that the book has discussion of English religious development in spades. She is also somewhat repetitive with her quotes, employing large block quotes only to quote each and every line in later discussion, often multiple times. Memory's Library does trace interesting threads of library development in this particularly turbulent period of English history, but it is not meant for the general reader and is highly inaccessible to those not intimately familiar with the history at hand already. There are salient and relevant poitns about the changing function of libraries (such as an engaging discussion of Richard Cotton's library and the emergence of the idea of primary sources), but they are somewhat lost in the endless academic noise.
Grade: B-
Summit does a good job keeping the overall picture in mind as she transitions from development to development in English library history within and between her chapters, but her account is free from most contextualizing information and the book would be greatly aided with a timeline and/or an appendix with the lifespans of the book's major players, many of whom seem to fade only to pop up in a later chapter, alive and well and corresponding with someone whose history is said to come well after theirs (the chapter about Bacon does this quite egregiously, and much to my confusion). Likewise, there is a lack of a dramatic narrative feeling in this book; Summit is talking about Big Ideas and Grand Developments in History and there is just story after story without attendant, interesting conversations about the meanings of religious censorship or the rise of literacy; it must be said, however, that the book has discussion of English religious development in spades. She is also somewhat repetitive with her quotes, employing large block quotes only to quote each and every line in later discussion, often multiple times. Memory's Library does trace interesting threads of library development in this particularly turbulent period of English history, but it is not meant for the general reader and is highly inaccessible to those not intimately familiar with the history at hand already. There are salient and relevant poitns about the changing function of libraries (such as an engaging discussion of Richard Cotton's library and the emergence of the idea of primary sources), but they are somewhat lost in the endless academic noise.
Grade: B-
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