For readers at all levels, the advent of new techniques of reproduction for print and manuscript transformed the study of old books, introducing them to audiences for whom they were unfamiliar. Many of the more elaborate facsimiles were produced in extremely limited editions, and some had a value more antiquarian than literary; but the principal stimulus was a new market among those curious yet unable to buy original editions.

The work of the Commission in addressing readers and books alike lies at the heart of the nineteenth-century response to what was generally recognised as a much wider crisis. It attracted comment from all kinds of readers, besides those who had never thought of reading there. The deepest investigation so far of what became the largest library in the world. How did the Museum’s activities affect other libraries elsewhere?

Leisure opportunities, new money and changing loyalties to local and national institutions brought different attitudes to how books should be preserved, and for whom.Changes in social structure, changes in patterns of wealth, changes in education, and changes in the environment all contributed to a social revolution reflected in care of the printed inheritance.

Booksellers were not necessarily concerned with describing physical properties, and sometimes gave no condition details at all; but in their catalogues can be traced something of the changing fortunes of some well-known early printed books, reflecting in turn the changing tastes and preoccupations of successive collectors. This serves as background to a very gradual change in understanding of old bindings, particularly by W.H.J.Weale.

What of the choice of books from past generations? How should one choose? How far was a classical education a help? What about those who had no such education? For the top of the bibliophilic range there was considerable guidance on the kinds of books that had become established as those most desirable in a major private library where sufficient money was available. From the 1860s onwards there appeared a new kind of guidance, for people with less money and with different interests, including modern literature.

How many books existed by the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1837? How many new titles and new editions were published each year? In Britain? In France? Elsewhere overseas? No-one knew the answers to such questions, and there was no way of discovering them.

What constituted the national book stock? Which parts were more important than others? In France, what was to be considered part of the Patrimoine? How were libraries to be organised? What was their relationship to each other? How did organisation within and among libraries help or impede readers and any national research endeavours? How did library provision reflect not just national pride, but also the effectiveness of countries’ knowledge economies?

Conclusion. How do we own the past? If reading, and thereby a measure of understanding, in some sense includes ownership, then how far does ownership encompass access? What are the means by which we understand the past? Such questions, often heard in other disciplines, arguing over repatriation and restitution, deserve to be asked much more insistently about how we read books and, now, about digital environments. We choose what to remember, what to preserve and how to see it; and therefore, by implication, what to discard, what to neglect, and thus eventually to forget.

national collections. The common word ‘access’ means many things, and it is employed in many contexts. How did people find out about what had been published previously? What did they think of the major national libraries, especially in Britain and France, and their catalogues? What efforts were made for improvement?

There was nothing new in book thefts. For centuries, booksellers, libraries and individuals have all suffered to a greater or lesser degree, and the purpose of the thefts has not necessarily been venal. In three notorious cases discussed here the motives were mixed. Consideration of Trinity College, Cambridge, Count Libri and French libraries, thefts from the Colombina library in Spain. The inadequacies of libraries in facing thefts.

Commemorations brought authors and their works to wide public attention, partly through reports in the newspaper and magazine press, and, when such occasions were marked by the erection of public statues, by a continuing visible presence. They were unavoidable reminders of a particular and selected past. There were, however, further remains and archival strata that invited investigation. In these archival survivals lay the explanation, rationale and often the justification for modern religious, political and other aspects of social organisation.