本棚の歴史 [単行本]

書斎で、書店で、図書館で、人は本に目を向けはするが、それを収納する本棚には関心を払わない。書物の発達と共に進んできたこの道具の知られざる歴史を名著『鉛筆と人間』の著者が跡づける。

かつて本は鎖で本棚につながれていた!巻物から写本、そして印刷術の発明―そんな書物の発達とともに歩んだ収納法の進化の跡を名著『鉛筆と人間』の著者がたどる。読書人・書店・図書館関係者必読の好著。

名著「鉛筆と人間」の著者が、古代ギリシアから現在まで、書物の歴史と肩を並べて発展してきた本棚という道具の知られざる歴史をたどる興味深い読み物。

Consider the book. Though Goodnight Moon and Finnegans Wake differ considerably in content and intended audience, they do share some basic characteristics. They have pages, they're roughly the same shape, and whether in a bookstore, library, or private home, they are generally stored vertically on shelves. Indeed, this is so much the norm that in these days of high-tech printing presses and chain bookstores, it's easy to believe that the book, like the cockroach, remains much the same as it ever was. But as Henry Petroski makes abundantly clear in Book on the Bookshelf, books as we know them have had a long and complex evolution. Indeed, he takes us from the scroll to the codex to the hand-lettered illuminated texts that were so rare and valuable they were chained to lecterns to prevent theft. Along the way he provides plenty of amusing anecdotes about libraries (according to one possibly apocryphal account, the library at Alexandria borrowed the works of the great Greek authors from Athens, had them copied, and then sent the copies back, keeping the originals), book collectors, and the care of books.

Book-lover though he may be, however, Henry Petroski is, first and foremost, an engineer and so, in the end, it is the evolution of bookshelves even more than of books that fascinates him. Pigeonholes for scrolls, book presses containing thousands of chained volumes, rotating lecterns that allowed scholars to peruse more than one book at a time--these are just a few of the ingenious methods readers have devised over the centuries for storing their books: "in cabinets beneath the desks, on shelves in front of them, in triangular attic-like spaces formed under the back-to-back sloped surfaces of desktops or small tabletop lecterns that rested upon a horizontal surface." Placing books vertically on shelves, spines facing outward, is a fairly recent invention, it would seem. Well written as it is, if Book on the Bookshelf were only about books-as-furniture, it would have little appeal to the general reader. Petroski, however, uses this treatise on design to examine the very human motivations that lie behind it. From the example of Samuel Pepys, who refused to have more titles than his library could hold (about 3,000), to an appendix detailing all the ways people organize their collections (by sentimental value, by size, by color, and by price, to name a few of the more unconventional methods), Petroski peppers his account with enough human interest to keep his audience reading from cover to cover. --Alix Wilber
--このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

That bookshelves might harbor secret and enchanting lives is a thrilling prospect for any serious reader. What laws of human nature govern our sturdy cases of books? What damning quirks of character glare from a few casually stowed volumes? In this disappointing study, however, Petroski's effort to reveal the "evolution of the bookshelf as we know it" yields few rewards. Pondering the physics of the bookend and the genealogy of the library carrel, this Duke University scholar observes the bookshelf as a piece of the infrastructure undergirding our civilization. We learn that medieval books were chained to their shelves to prevent theft, and that beverage stains have plagued bibliophiles almost since the dawn of the printed word. Admirers of Petroski's earlier works (The Evolution of Useful Things, Remaking the World, etc.) will not be surprised by his exquisite research, or by the gusto with which he plunges into the dustiest of library bins. But the bookshelf proves a more oblique topic than bridges or even pencils, two of Petroski's other interests. The practical construction principles of bookshelves make for rather dull reading, and conjecture about lectern usage in the Middle Ages wears thin. This book is most successful when delving into the gritty aspects of engineering, whether it be the cantilevered forces of library book stacks or the architecture of the British Museum Reading Room. After lingering among such fusty stacks, readers will welcome the whimsical appendix, which proposes arranging one's books alphabetically by the author's first name, or even by the first word of the antepenultimate sentence. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

From the author of the highly praised The Pencil and The Evolution of Useful Things comes another captivating history of the seemingly mundane: the book and its storage.

Most of us take for granted that our books are vertical on our shelves with the spines facing out, but Henry Petroski, inveterately curious engineer, didn't. As a result, readers are guided along the astonishing evolution from papyrus scrolls boxed at Alexandria to upright books shelved at the Library of Congress. Unimpeachably researched, enviably written, and charmed with anecdotes from Seneca to Samuel Pepys to a nineteenth-century bibliophile who had to climb over his books to get into bed, The Book on the Bookshelf is indispensable for anyone who loves books.
--このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

　書斎で、書店で、図書館で、人は本に目を向けはするが、それを収めている本棚にはさほど関心を払わない。著者ペトロスキーは鉛筆の進化の歴史をたどった名著『鉛筆と人間』で知られる「有用な身の回り品についての文化史家」だが、これはその彼が、見過ごされてきた書物の収納の歴史を探るユニークな書である。

　本棚の歴史は言うまでもなく本の発達の歴史と手を携えて進んできた。古代ローマの時代には文書は主にパピルスで作られた巻き物の形をしており、読まないときは紐でくくられて帽子入れのような箱に縦置きされたり、棚に寝かせられた。西暦紀元の初めの数世紀には綴じた手写本（コデックス本）が増加し、巻き物と共に扉付きの戸棚にしまわれたが、この戸棚はラテン語でアルマリウムという名で知られた。中世になると修道院で聖職者が本を読む姿が写本などに描かれるが、貴重な本はアルマリウムや小型トランクに似たチェスト（保管箱）に入れて鍵をかけられ、貸し出しには高位聖職者の許可が必要とされた。さらに時代が進むと、本は教会の信徒席のような斜めになった長い書見台に表紙を上にして並べて置かれ、盗難防止のため鎖で書見台につながれた。実は本が現在の書棚に近いものに縦置きにされる近代になっても、鎖につなぐ習慣は残っていた。その際、鎖を取り付けやすいように本は「背」ではなく、小口を前にして書棚に並べられていたのだ。

　著者はこうした書棚の歴史を、実に興味深い多数の図版を示しながらたどっていく。有名な大英図書館閲覧室やオクスフォードのボドリー図書館の構造や歴史もおりまぜて、本好きには必読の１冊となっている。

"For anyone interested in the craft of reading, [this book] is a compulsive necessity." --The New York Times Book Review

"A fascinating history of two related common objects, impeccably documented and beautifully illustrated." --Civilization

"After reading this book, you will not look at a book or a bookshelf in the same way." --Seattle Times

"If 'God is in the details,' then those seeking God should read Petroski's books." --Library Journal

--このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

Henry Petroski is the Alexander S.Vesic Professor of Engineering and Professor of History at Duke University, where he also serves as chairman of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He lives in Durham, North Carolina. --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

ペトロスキー,ヘンリー
デューク大学土木環境工学・建築土木史教授

池田 栄一
1951年生。九州大学大学院修士課程修了。英文学専攻。東京学芸大学教授(本データはこの書籍が刊行された当時に掲載されていたものです)