E. J. Brill has produced a handsome volume with Thomas Hendrickson’s work on De bibliothecis, which provides us with the text in Latin and an English translation of the Renaissance work on libraries of the scholar Justus Lipsius that should be of considerable interest to scholars working in earlier book cultures.

Hendrickson’s work is a scholarly and careful edition of Lipsius’ work, containing an introductory section, which declares Lipsius’ work as ‘the first monograph on library history, proving a seminal work’ (p. 10) and justifying the current edition as necessary since previous texts are full of errors and do not contain the Latin text. Hendrickson then treats the text of De bibliothecis, discussing its overall purpose in making the case for a public and secular research library, the author’s sources and the subsequent print history of the work. Hendrickson follows that standard format of a textual commentary. He treats the career of Lipsius, and then discusses the precedents for such a work on libraries, surveying the relevant texts from late antiquity to the Renaissance. Then, there is discussion of the purpose of De bibliothecis, and of Lipsius’ ancient and contemporary sources with further consideration of the author’s Latin before the text proper with accompanying translation.