The circulation of books was the motor of classical civilization. However, books were both expensive and rare, and so libraries - private and public, royal and civic - played key roles in articulating intellectual life. This collection, written by an international team of scholars, presents a fundamental reassessment of how ancient libraries came into being, how they were organized and how they were used. Drawing on papyrology and archaeology, and on accounts written by those who read and wrote in them, it presents new research on reading cultures, on book collecting and on the origins of monumental library buildings. Many of the traditional stories told about ancient libraries are challenged. Few were really enormous, none were designed as research centres, and occasional conflagrations do not explain the loss of most ancient texts. But the central place of libraries in Greco-Roman culture emerges more clearly than ever.

The libraries of the ancient world were completely unlike those we know today. This book explores and explains those differences.

James Westfall Thompson was an American historian specializing in the history of medieval and early modern Europe, particularly of the Holy Roman Empire and France. Thompson's work on ancient libraries gives an in depth look in to how the Libraries of the ancient East, ancient Greece and ancient Rome were established and managed. It also contains technical information such as the format of books, library architecture, cataloguing and classification, administration, book production, and bookselling.

The De Bibliothecis of Justus Lipsius was the first monograph on library history. In Ancient Libraries and Renaissance Humanism, Hendrickson presents a critical edition with introductory studies, a Latin text, English translation, and a substantial historical commentary.

M. R. James' monumental study of three important monastic libraries and the fate of their manuscripts after the English Reformation.