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Otago Witness, Issue 3672, 29 July 1924, Page 30

The wheel of Time is not always going forward; sometimes it rolls back. Despairing of ever getting their books published under the Soviet regime, a number of Russian authors are copying their works in manuscript, and have established a “Bookshop of Authors” in Moscow. This recalls the early days of the Renaissance, when the revival of the old learning led to a great demand for “scribes” to make copies of ihe poets and philosophers whose work, after centuries of neglect, had once more come into its own. These scribes for some time could command quite high prices for their work, and, even after the printingpress had been introduced, continued to put tip a brave fight against that “soulless machine.” In this they were encouraged by some of the great nobles of the time. The Duke of Urbino, for instance, who kept 40 scribes employed in copying parchments, was accustomed to say that he would bo “ashamed to have a printed book in his library.”