hidden in plain view
collectors of early-printed books, not only in England but in Europe’. 5 Responding to these changes, the library began to change from a site of private study and devotion into a more public realm. 6 By the 1720s the ‘architectural library’ was fast becoming ‘a normal feature of the great house’. 7 By c.1735, for example, William Kent’s glorious library at Holkham Hall served a dual purpose, being si- multaneously a library and a family living room, displaying both dynastic erudition and wealth, but also an awareness of the most contemporary trends in book collecting and interior design. This shift was from the outset viewed by many with a degree of sni Y ness; writing in 1739, the anonymous author of a collection of prim Essays and Letters on Various Subjects noted: When I came first into this family, I thought my master was a very learned man, and my lady much given to reading; for he had a large fine library, and she a closet of choice books, curiously bound, gilt, and lettered; but I soon found my master never went into the library but to shew it to company, and my lady’s books were rarely taken out of the case but to be dusted … I was informed that a study is as necessary in a nobleman’s or gentleman’s house, altho’ he does not read, as a chapel, tho’ he never hears prayers. 8 These changes in the function of the library coincided with the peak of the Anglo-Palladian movement. The publication of the first vol- ume of Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus in 1715 popularized neo-Palladianism. At the same time there was a boom in Whig country house construction. Symmetry was central to the formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, Palladio’s inspiration, and with the library’s transformation into a public space, symmetry in interior design became every bit as important as symmetry in the external façade. The unfortunate necessity for internal doors and windows, however, could really 5 . S. de Ricci, English Collectors of Books & Manuscripts 1530–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), p. 33. 6 . This oversimplifies a complex and multifaceted transition. See S. West, ‘An Architectural Typology for the Early Modern Country House Library, 1660–1720’, in The Library , 7th ser., 14 (2013), 441–64. 7 . J. Newman, ‘Library Buildings and Fittings’, p. 209. See, for example, Robert Walpole’s library at Houghton Hall, built c.1722–35, or the library designed by James Gibbs at Wimpole Hall to house the Harleian Library, completed in the early 1730s.
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