Three infamous conflagrations illuminate the pages of Richard Ovenden’s fascinating new history, Burning the Books. The first is the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria, which, according to Ovenden, did not go up in a single blaze but was gradually destroyed by repeated acts of arson and plunder, until there was nothing left but a metaphor. The second is the burning of the US Library of Congress by the British in 1814, when soldiers’ faces were ‘illumined’ by the flames. ‘I do not recollect to have witnessed, at any period in my life,’ a British soldier said, ‘a scene more striking or sublime.’ The third burning is certainly the best known: the Nazi Bücherverbrennungen that followed Hitler’s rise to power. ‘The 10 May 1933 book-burning was merely the forerunner of arguably the most concerted and well-resourced eradication of books in history,’ Ovenden writes.
As a former keeper of special collections at the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford and now Bodley’s Librarian, Ovenden is well versed in the particulars of preserving books, both ancient and modern. ‘One of the problems with papyrus was how easily it could be set on fire,’ Ovenden writes in his chapter on the Great Library of Alexandria. ‘Being made from dried organic matter, wrapped tightly around a wooden rod, it is inherently flammable.’ Bound books, printed on paper, burn at 451 degrees Fahrenheit, Ovenden reminds us, invoking Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel that takes its name from this.
For all the ephemera on the preservation and destruction of books he provides, Ovenden’s real interest, as stated in his book’s subtitle, is the relationship between knowledge and power. He succeeds convincingly in illustrating the connection between the two. He offers King Henry VIII as an example. The king dispatched John Leland, a court bibliophile, to scour the monastery libraries of England for books and documents to legitimise his divorce from his first wife. ‘Through this commission, Leland took an active role in the king’s “great matter”,’ Ovenden writes, producing ‘the arguments in support of annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and the legitimacy of his new wife, Anne Boleyn’. Later, Leland’s meticulous records, now in Ovenden’s care at the Bodleian, were used to plunder and burn many of England’s great monastic book collections. Leland went mad with grief. ‘He collapsed into a frenzied state,’ Ovenden writes, in large part because of his inadvertent role in the destruction of the books he loved.
Read Full Article »