WORLD'S SMALLEST BOOK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 162, 11 July 1934, Page 5

WORLD'S SMALLEST BOOK.

■ mm ■ As a companion to one of "the smallest manuscripts, which in Mr. Coxe's librarianship was attached by a silver chain to a rod, for fear it should be carried away by a mouse, the Bodleian Library (Oxford) authorities announce the gift of the world's smallest book. The manuscript, fin square, has been exhibited in the Bodleian for at least two centuries and a half. The book, which has been presented through the offices of the American poet, Mr. Henry Harmon Chamberlain. of Worcester, Mass., measures a quarter of nn inch by three- ' sixteenths of an inch. The box in which the book was presented contains three books, translations into English, in different sizes, of the chief parts of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, done by Eben Francis Thompson, finished in 1910, and given the title of "The Rose Garden of Omar Khayyam." _ The outside measurements arc 5 7-Sin by oin., l|in by liin (just readable), and iin by 3-10 in, all stitched and bound in crimson morocco. Until recently the world's smallest book was Galileo's Letter to Christina da Lorcna (Padua, 1896), measuring 5-Sin by 7-lCin.