The books all bore the bookplate of the lawyer-novelist Louis Auchincloss, who died in 2010, and whose library was known to have been sold.
Genesis Apocryphon, pseudepigraphal work (not accepted in any canon of scripture), one of the most important works of the Essene community of Jews, part of whose library was discovered in 1947 in caves at Qumrān, near the Dead Sea, in Palestine.
But Pearson, whose library was able to tap National Lottery money to fund the purchase, says the price is reasonable for such high-quality material.
August C. Krey thought William's Arabic sources may have come from the library of the Damascene diplomat Usama ibn Munqidh, whose library was looted by Baldwin III from a shipwreck in 1154.
It also rewards those whose libraries are stronger than their recent creations.
Abandoned by their owners, many films fell into the hands of collectors, whose libraries were eventually deposited with the national archive.
Paroled at the end of six months, he rode the rails back and forth across the continent, stopping off, as usual, in cities whose libraries were rich in Americana.
And your unwanted tomes will have a happy and useful afterlife: they'll either wind up at a weekly charity sale or be shipped to American troops overseas, recovering patients at Walter Reed Hospital, and schools in New Orleans whose libraries were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
Somewhere in Blackbird Leys, somewhere in Berinsfield, somewhere in Botley, somewhere in Benson or in Bampton, to name only the communities beginning with B whose libraries are going to be abolished, there are children who only need to make that discovery to learn that they too are citizens of the republic of reading.
