Kafka's executor refused to destroy his notebooks: his literary masterpieces were saved for posterity. Virgil asked for his unpublished epic, the Aeneid, to be burnt on his death. These and other examples of the written word under attack are brought together by the Bodley's Librarian in a fascinating tour d'horizon of the actions of librarians and archivists to collect, organise and preserve knowledge in libraries and archives as essential reference for ideas, facts and truths.
(Jeremy Miller - bwl 100 Spring 2021 ) |
