THE HOUSE AND ITS EQUIPMENT. 



and the next step in the evolution was the arrival of the stall system, devised to obviate waste oi space. 

 The earliest surviving seems to be at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The main idea was to separate 

 the two halves of the sloping desk by a broad shelf with one or more shelves fixed above it. The desk, 

 however, was still an important feature in the scheme, and the great innovation of omitting it came at 

 the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Library of St. John s College, Cambridge, finished in 

 1628, furnishes an admirable example, where the bookcases run out into the room from the wall spaces 

 between each pair of windows, and loose stools only were provided for the use of readers. 



Another interesting variant is to be seen in the Library of Peterhouse, Cambridge, illustrated in 

 Fig. 62. The carved wings once masked the ends of readers seats. We come now to the fourth type, 

 which is the most common to-day, the bookcase set against the wall, though, as far as the absence of the 

 reader s desk is concerned, it was practically contemporary with the stall system. It is, of course, 

 impossible to say when the wall case was first introduced, but a very interesting example is to be found in 

 the Library of the Escorial in Spam, built between 1563 and 1584. &quot; Though there is no doubt that small 

 shelves on the wails were often used in earlier times for the accommodation of a few books, the Escorial 

 example seems to be the first where the whole of the walls of a great room were covered with bookcases. 

 They seem to have been adopted in England at the Bodleian Library, completed in 1612, and from that 

 time on held their own either alone or in conjunction with bookcases running out from the wall toward 

 the middle of the room. In the housing of books, as in everything else architectural, Sir Christopher 



Wren s influence was 

 great. His first library 

 was built at Lincoln 

 Cathedral in 1674, and 

 other notable examples 

 by him were at Trinity 

 College, Cambridge, and 

 perhaps the best 

 known of all at St. 

 Paul s Cathedral. In the 

 latter case he relied 

 entirely upon wall book 

 cases, which run up to 

 the point from which the 

 stone arching springs, 

 and are divided halfway 

 by a gallery running 

 round the room. 



It may be well at 

 this point to make a 

 practical suggestion to 

 those who have a diffi 

 culty in providing book 

 room, nor are they few 



In several small houses which the writer has recently 

 A fine example of this is to be seen 



58. LORD HALDAXK S LIBRARY 



in these days when everyone is a book buyer. 



visited the architect has provided wall bookcases in hall or passage. 



on a large scale at Shirburn Castle, where the Earl of Macclesiield preserves the splendid library 



bequeathed to him by book-loving ancestors. The main library is far too small to house this historic 



collection, and the big corridor shown in Fig. 60, and now named &quot;The North Library,&quot; has been pressed 



into service, with what pleasing results may easily be seen. 



So far we have dealt entirely with general types governing the arrangement of libraries. Most 

 of these involve questions of architectural treatment, rather than the design of individual bookcases, to 

 which attention must now be drawn. It seems unlikely that much attention was given to bookcases, 

 considered as free standing pieces of furniture, until the latter part of the seventeenth century. Wren 

 was too busy a man to devote much time to furniture design, but it seems quite likely that the famous 

 bookcases made for Samuel Pepys, and bequeathed by him with his library to Magdalene College, 

 Cambridge, were actually designed by the great architect. Pepys was an intimate friend of Wren, for 

 whom he had the greatest admiration, as appears often enough in the Diary. He was, moreover, a most 

 discerning and enthusiastic collector of books, differing, however, from the modern bibliophile in one 

 marked characteristic, viz., that when a new edition of a book came out he made haste to discard the first 

 edition in its favour. Whether the Pepys bookcases, one of which is shown in Fig. 61, were designed 

 by Wren or not, they exhibit a very clear understanding of the problems involved. The lower parts of 

 the cases have a larger projection than the upper sections, and were so arranged to take the great folios 



