The Philobiblon

The Philobiblon is a collection of essays concerning the acquisition, preservation, and organization of books, written by the medieval English bibliophile Richard de Bury shortly before his death in 1345. The purposes of the Philobiblon were "to encourage the pursuit of learning contained in books; to justify the time and money [de Bury] spent on them; and to give practical advice for the formation of running of a library."^[1] Written in Latin, as was the custom of the day, it is separated into twenty chapters, each covering a different topic relating to book collecting.

Whether or not de Bury was the actual author of the Philobiblon has been disputed. The controversy began as a result of the bishop's own biographer, Chambres, neglecting to mention the book at all in de Bury's biography. It was once thought that de Bury's chaplain, Robert Holkot, was the author and a substantial body of evidence was gathered to argue that this was the case. Today, however, most experts agree that the work is indeed de Bury's, chiefly due to the revealing and autobiographical nature of the book.^[2]