OUR ANCESTORS ON BOOKS
Old comments on books and authors are quoted by a contributor to the "Bookseller." In 1592. it was written that "every gross-brained idiot is suffered to come into print . . . who, if he set forth a pamphlet, it is bought up thick and threefold, when better books lie dead."
In 1578 a writer said: —"It is not strange when as the greatest wonder lasteth but nine days, that a new book should not endure but three months." In the same volume this appeared: "We commonly see the book that at Christmas lieth bound on the stationer's stall, at Easter to be broken in the haberdasher's shop."
The collector of the,extracts assumes that this means that the books were sold by the haberdasher at a reduced price; but probably it implies only that large leaves such as those of folio volumes were used as wrapping-paper. That occurred very often in old times, when paper was not plentiful.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19360125.2.171.8
Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 21, 25 January 1936, Page 25
Word Count
159OUR ANCESTORS ON BOOKS Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 21, 25 January 1936, Page 25
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