Neither books nor people have been static: more and more evidence seems to accumulate of how both have always travelled widely and constantly, throughout the known world and throughout history, and certainly throughout mediaeval history. Only in more recent times have famous travelling books come to rest – apparently – in great and permanent collections. Many of these travels are well documented in the history and provenance of famous manuscript and printed volumes; but they are the tip of an iceberg of less sumptuous or famous volumes which have in large part not survived, or which have only survived in memory through scholarly supposition. Surviving volumes and records of mediaeval libraries indicate the movement of ideas; the movement of ideas documented by other means implies the movement of books, and scholars, behind them.
Such matters are vital within the all‐embracing histoire du livre, so it is fitting that ENSSIB should have organised a wide‐ranging seminar on the them in 1997, whose papers are now elegantly printed and recorded for posterity. Fitting, too, to have been a Franco‐European collaboration with CERL, reflecting the intellectual circumstances that have had so much to do with the transmission of books. So much, but by no means all: there has also been (still is, of course) a commercial dimension, and among the most interesting papers here are those in Part 2 discussing the role of the book trade including, at a more local level, a delightful account of nomadic booksellers in Normandy in the late eighteenth century.
A total of 12 papers are printed within three sections, covering: the collection of books in Europe in the late Middle Ages; commercial practicalities and the circulation of books; and the dissemination and reconstruction of collections. There is a detailed and scholarly preface by the doyen of l’histoire du livre Henri‐Jean Martin, and a conclusion by Roger Chartier. The contributors are all academics or rare book librarians from France, England, Belgium, Italy and Spain. The papers deal with specific topics: for example, Lotte Hellinga on “La constitution des collections d’imprimés en Europe du Nord au XVè siècle”; María‐Luisa López‐Vidrieno on “Le rôle de l’Espagne dans le commerce du livre au XVIIIè siècle”; or Vladimir Somov on “Les aristocrates russes achêteurs de livres en France pendant la Révolution”. But the whole collection presents a wide‐ranging and even coherent overview of the subject of the wandering book in late mediaeval and post‐mediaeval Europe. In addition to the texts in French there are abstracts of the papers in both French and English, and indexes of libraries and museums, of names, and of places.
This is a very satisfying book both physically and intellectually. It records an important seminar on a significant and fascinating topic. The papers themselves are all scholarly but accessible, and fully referenced. The only thing lacking is a record of any of the discussions of, or arising from, the papers themselves. Any scholarly library which has contributed throughout history to the international circulation of books, whether as a source or as an eventual resting place, will benefit from this book, as will any major collection covering the history of the book in Europe from the late Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century.
