hidden in plain view
If one can move beyond the awful puns, the use of false books in English libraries has a long history, much of which is unwritten. They o V er a rare insight into library history, the development of the private library conceptually and as an architectural space, and into tastes and fashions in book ownership and use. Through them we can explore the motivations of their commissioners, from the seventeenth-century scholar titivating his Hebraica to make it uniform with his other books, to the grand tourists of the mid-eigh- teenth-century seeking to recreate Palladio’s Villa Mocenigo just south of Wakefield. We are used to reading and interpreting the hidden meaning and iconography of paintings, decorative motifs and furniture in country houses, and occasionally relating this to real books on library shelves. We are less proficient at interpreting the messages and motivations which underlie the frequent obfuscation and double-meaning we find in library decoration. In a library jib door an owner had the opportunity to create a collection unbound- ed by the usual concerns of availability, a V ordability or even reality. False books deserve to be read alongside their real companions. A lengthier version of the account of the Mount Stewart shutters was previous- ly published under the title ‘“The Library Whereof the Librarian is Deceit”: Decoration and Double Meaning at Mount Stewart House’, in National Trust Historic Houses & Collections (London: National Trust, published in association with Apollo Magazine, 2017), 48–55. Some observations on the wider use of false books were published in Literary Review, April 2018 (463), 30–1. I am grateful to Rose and Peter Lauritzen at Mount Stewart for their hospitality and endurance during lengthy discussions of the use of false books.
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