MULTITUDE OF BOOKS
ONE PROBLEM OF TODAY
Sir William Bragg's concern at the accumulation of books has brought out an anecdote of a well-known literabry man who made it a habit every time he took a railway journey to leave a superfluous book on the luggage-rack in his compartment, says the "Manchester Guardian." That was, of course, an inefficient and inconclusive method of disposal, and far better methods have been propounded in the past.
Not very long ago* Dr. A. D. Lindsay, Master of Balliol, when president of the Library Association, suggested that if we could be restricted "to something like the Bible, Shakespeare, Plato's 'Republic,' and Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason,' all the rest could be burnt." Sir Josiah Stamp, a couple of years back, advocated birth control in the lowest ranks of books, which he thought would raise the standard of literary life; but he did not attempt to settle the question who was to decide which were the lowest ranks. In any event, it is an old problem. As long ago as 1690 one Barnaby Rich was writing: "One of the diseases of this age is the multitude of books that doth so overcharge the world that it is" not able to digest the abundance of idle matter that is every day hatched and brought into the world, that are as divers in form as their authors are in faces." Yet we go on producing some 16,000 new books every year.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19390103.2.116
Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 1, 3 January 1939, Page 12
Word Count
244MULTITUDE OF BOOKS Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 1, 3 January 1939, Page 12
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