Transcriber's Note: Variations in spelling and hyphenation have beenleft as in the original. A complete list of typographical andpunctuation corrections follows the text. Ellipses match the original.More notes follow the text. Click on the page number to see an image ofthe page.
[i]
[ii]The Book-Lover's Library.
Edited by
Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A.
[iii]
BOOKS CONDEMNED
TO BE BURNT.
By
JAMES ANSON FARRER,
LONDON
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW
1892
[iv]
[v]
PREFACE.
WHEN did books first come to be burnt in England by the commonhangman, and what was the last book to be so treated? This is thesort of question that occurs to a rational curiosity, but it isjust this sort of question to which it is often most difficult tofind an answer. Historians are generally too engrossed with thedetails of battles, all as drearily similar to one another asscenes of murder and rapine must of necessity be, to spare aglance for the far brighter and more instructive field of themutations or of the progress of manners. The following work is anattempt to supply the deficiency on this particular subject.
[vi]I am indebted to chance for having directed me to the interestof book-burning as an episode in the history of the world'smanners, the discursive allusions to it in the old numbers of"Notes and Queries" hinting to me the desirability of a moresystematic mode of treatment. To bibliographers and literaryhistorians I conceived that such a work might prove of utilityand interest, and possibly serve to others as an introduction andincentive to a branch of our literary history that is not withoutits fascination. But I must also own to a less unselfish motive,for I imagined that not without its reward of delight would be atemporary sojourn among the books which, for their boldness ofutterance or unconventional opinions, were not only not receivedby the best literary society of their day, but were with ignominyexpelled from it. Nor was I wrong in my calculation.
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