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The Private Library
Description
New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2021 258x173 mm. xii, 540 pp. Ill. Cloth with dust jacket.
language
English
The Private Library

The Private Library

The History of the Architecture and Furnishing of the Domestic Bookroom

Reid Byers

The Private Library is the domestic bookroom: that quiet, book-wrapt space that guarantees its owner that there is at least one place in the world where it is possible to be happy. The story of its architecture extends back almost to the beginning of history and forward toward a future that is in equal parts amazing and alarming.

In this book, Mr. Byers examines with a sardonic eye the historical influences that have shaped the architecture of the private library, and the furnishings, amenities, and delightful anachronisms that make the mortal room into what Borges so famously called Paradise.