Title:  The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650)

Author:  John Dury

Release Date:  February 28, 2005 [EBook #15199]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY

THE REFORMED LIBRARIE-KEEPER

(1650)

JOHN DURY

Introduction by

RICHARD H. POPKIN

and

THOMAS F. WRIGHT

Publication Number 220

WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY

University of California, Los Angeles

1983

General editor
  David Stuart Rodes, University of California, Los Angeles

Editors
  Charles L. Batten, University of California, Los Angeles
  George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles
  MAXIMILLIAN E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles
  Nancy M. Shea, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
  Thomas Wright, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

Advisory editors
  Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia
  William E. Conway, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
  Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
  Phillip Harth, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  LOUIS A. LANDA, Princeton University
  EARL MINER, Princeton University
  JAMES SUTHERLAND, University College, London
  NORMAN J.W.  THROWER, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
  ROBERT VOSPER, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
  JOHN M. WALLACE, University of Chicago

PUBLICATIONS MANAGER
  NANCY M. SHEA, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
  BEVERLY J. ONLEY, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
  FRANCES MIRIAM REED, University of California, Los Angeles

INTRODUCTION

This work, with its quaint sentiments and its grim picture of what librarians were like in the mid-seventeenth century, is more than a curiosity.  John Dury was a very important figure in the Puritan Revolution, offering proposal after proposal to prepare England for its role in the millennium. The Reformed Librarie-Keeper is an integral part of that preparation.  To appreciate it one must look at it in terms of the plans of Dury and his associates, Samuel Hartlib and Johann Amos Comenius, to reform the intellectual institutions of England so that the prophecies in the books of Daniel and Revelation could be fulfilled there.