The English Private Library in the Seventeenth Century

This paper gives an overview of our current state of knowledge around English private libraries of the seventeenth century, covering such aspects as size, contents, sources, storage, and owners’ attitudes to their books. It identifies areas where our information is poor, or based too much upon small numbers of well-known examples, and highlights the need for further research and better reference tools. The value of having a better understanding of this field, in the wider context of book history, is also considered. The author refers to his web-based listing of book owners of the period and suggests a model for its expansion into a fuller directory.