Vintage canada edition, 1998 Copyright 1996 by Alberto Manguel

Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century (London, 1993).
16. “I tell you brothers, no misfortune can touch us, no situation so galling or distressing can arise that
does not, as soon as Holy Writ seizes hold of us, either fade into nothingness or become bearable.” Aelred
of Rievaulx, “The Mirror of Charity”, in Matarasso, ibid.
17. Cedric E. Pickford, “Fiction and the Reading Public in the Fifteenth Century”, in the Bulletin of the
John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Vol. 45 II, Manchester, Mar. 1963.
18. Gaston Paris, La Littérature française au Moyen Age (Paris, 1890).
19. Quoted in Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr., Daily Living in the Twelfth Century (Madison, Wisc., 1952).
20. Pliny the Younger, Lettres I–IX, ed. A.M. Guillemin, 3 vols. (Paris, 1927–28), IX: 36.
21. J.M. Richard, Mahaut, comtesse d’Artois et de Bourgogne (Paris, 1887).
22. Iris Cutting Origo, The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini (New York, 1957).
23. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: Village occitan de 1294 à 1324 (Paris, 1978).
24. Madeleine Jeay, ed., Les Évangiles des quenouilles (Montreal, 1985). The distaff, the cleft stick that
holds wool or flax for spinning, symbolizes the female sex. In English, “the distaff side of the family”
means “the female branch”.
25. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (Madrid, 1605), I: 34.

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26. Fourteen chapters earlier, Don Quixote himself has reproved Sancho for telling a story “full of
interruptions and digressions”, instead of the linear narration that the bookish knight expects. Sancho’s
defence is that “this is how they tell tales in my part of the country; I don’t know any other way and it
isn’t fair of Your Grace to ask me to undertake new manners.” Ibid., I: 20.
27. William Chambers, Memoir of Robert Chambers with Autobiographic Reminiscences, 10th ed.
(Edinburgh, 1880). This wonderful anecdote was given to me by Larry Pfaff, reference librarian at the Art
Gallery of Ontario.
28. Ibid.
29. Jean Pierre Pinies, “Du choc culturel á l’ethnocide: La Pénétration du livre dans les campagnes
languedociennes du XVII au XIX siècles”, in Folklore 44/3 (1981), quoted in Martyn Lyons, Le Triomphe
du livre (Paris, 1987).
30. Quoted in Amy Cruse, The Englishman and His Books in the Early Nineteenth Century (London,
1930).
31. Denis Diderot, “Lettre à sa fille Angélique”, July 28, 1781, in Correspondance littéraire, philosophique
et critique, ed. Maurice Tourneux; trans. P.N. Furbank (Paris, 1877–82), XV: 253–54.
32. Benito Pérez Galdós, “O’Donnell”, in Episodios Nacionales, Obras Completas (Madrid, 1952).
33. Jane Austen, Letters, ed. R.W. Chapman (London, 1952).
34. Denis Diderot, Essais sur la peinture, ed. Gita May (Paris, 1984).
THE SHAPE OF THE BOOK
1. David Diringer, The Hand-Produced Book (London, 1953).
2. Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, ed. W.H.S. Jones (Cambridge, Mass., & London, 1968), XIII, 11.
3. The earliest extant Greek codex on vellum is an Iliad from the third century AD (Biblioteca Ambrosiana,
Milan).
4. Martial, Epigrammata, XIV: 184, in Works, 2 vols., ed. W.C.A. Ker (Cambridge, Mass., & London, 1919–
20).
5. François I, Lettres de François I au Pape (Paris, 1527).
6. John Power, A Handy-Book about Books (London, 1870).
7. Quoted in Geo. Haven Putnam, Books and Their Makers during the Middle Ages, Vol. I (New York,
1896–97).
8. Janet Backhouse, Books of Hours (London, 1985).
9. John Harthan, Books of Hours and Their Owners (London, 1977).
10. Now in the Municipal Library of Sémur-en-Auxois, France.
11. Johannes Duft, Stiftsbibliothek Sankt Gallen: Geschichte, Barocksaal, Manuskripte (St. Gall, 1990).
The antiphonary is catalogued as Codex 541, Antiphonarium officii (parchment, 618 pp.), Abbey Library,
St. Gall, Switzerland.
12. D.J. Gillies, “Engineering Manuals of Coffee-Table Books: The Machine Books of the Renaissance”, in