Project Gutenberg's Books Condemned to be Burnt, by James Anson Farrer

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Title: Books Condemned to be Burnt

Author: James Anson Farrer

Release Date: March 6, 2010 [EBook #31520]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note: Variations in spelling and hyphenation have
been left as in the original. A complete list of typographical
and punctuation corrections follows the text. Words italicized in
the original are surrounded by _underscores_. In quoted material,
a row of asterisks represents an ellipsis. Other ellipses match the
original. More notes follow the text.

The Book-Lover's Library.

Edited by

Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A.

BOOKS CONDEMNED
TO BE BURNT.

BY
JAMES ANSON FARRER,

LONDON
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW
1892

PREFACE.

_When did books first come to be burnt in England by the common
hangman, and what was the last book to be so treated? This is the
sort of question that occurs to a rational curiosity, but it is
just this sort of question to which it is often most difficult to
find an answer. Historians are generally too engrossed with the
details of battles, all as drearily similar to one another as
scenes of murder and rapine must of necessity be, to spare a
glance for the far brighter and more instructive field of the
mutations or of the progress of manners. The following work is an
attempt to supply the deficiency on this particular subject._

_I am indebted to chance for having directed me to the interest
of book-burning as an episode in the history of the world's
manners, the discursive allusions to it in the old numbers of
"Notes and Queries" hinting to me the desirability of a more
systematic mode of treatment. To bibliographers and literary
historians I conceived that such a work might prove of utility
and inter