Books used to be placed on the shelves the "wrong way round"
Linacre’s
Latin Grammar is possibly one of the oldest books in the library and
we found it purely by accident when searching for another book. Linacre’s
Grammar was the standard text used in Sixteenth Century Grammar schools
where the only two subjects taught were Latin and Maths. It is possible
this book was used by Thomas Lucy II or even Thomas Lucy I. A colleague
of mine says his maths teacher still remembered geometrical proofs
as numbered in the propositions of Euclid. It would seem there are
several books in the library where the title has been inked in on
the cut fore-edge of the pages. We have examples showing in the library
but most are of books that would have been stored vertically on shelves.
Originally we understand books were stored flat and Linacre's Grammar
would seem to be an example as the title is written horizontally.
We can
only conjecture why they chose to write on the books in this way.
It has been said that they were following the examples of libraries
that held chained books (University or Monastery libraries) or it
might simply have been that they were fed up of having to peer so
closely at the shelves to read the titles of the books. They also
stored books spine down in chests. In many cases of early books there
was no title on the spine anyway.
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