David McKitterick, FBA, was for many years Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Honorary Professor of Historical Bibliography at Cambridge. His previous publications include the three volume A History of Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 1992-2004), Cambridge University Library: A History, Volume 2: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1986), Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order, 1450-1830 (Cambridge, 2003), and most recently Old books, New Technologies (Cambridge, 2013). Professor McKitterick is one of the general editors of the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain.

• 1. Inventio; 2. Books as objects; 3. Survival and selection; 4. Choosing books in Baroque Europe; 5. External appearances (1); 6. External appearances (2); 7. Printers and readers; 8. A seventeenth-century revolution; 9. Concepts of rarity; 10. Developing measures of rarity; 11. Judging appearances by modern standards; 12. The Harleian sales; 13. Authority and rarity; 14. Rarity established; 15. The French bibliographical revolution; 16. Books in turmoil; 17. Bibliophile traditions; 18. Fresh foundations; 19. Public faces, public responsibilities; 20. Conclusion.

'McKitterick's impeccable scholarship and the insights and experiences of the contributors to Collecting the Past are major contributions to our understanding both of book history and of the history of the institutions which are themselves a part of that history.' John Feather, Library and Information History