STIMULI AND SANCTIONS: Some Notes on Father Ronald Knox

THE PARLOUR OF ROTA'S OLD BOOKSHOP, Bodley House, in Vigo Street just around the corner from the more commodious present location in Saville Row, London, is where Knox first began to wend its way towards us here in Connecticut. I was sitting there taking something against the cold, buying books for our new institution—this was in the summer of ‘63—when the Knox collection first came up and, as usual, only because I was there at the right and lucky time.’ Leg work is the only way to acquire collections. Bookstores, booksellers are to be visited, not left out in the cold of catalogues. The Rotas, father and son, Bertram and Antony, are the agents who had brought the great Tolkien collection to Marquette University, and almost the Joyce Cary manuscripts, but that's another story. There are libraries all through this North America that have been enriched by a Rota and now it was the turn of Sacred Heart.