Introduction: The Domestic Library -- Ancient and Classical Architectures -- The Ur-Libraries : Sumer and Babylon -- Type One Libraries : Egypt and Classical Greece -- Type Two Libraries : Hellenistic Greece and the Roman Republic -- Type Three Libraries : The Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages -- The Middle Ages and the Middle Kingdom -- High and Late Medieval Libraries : Private Reading in Monastery and Palace -- The Renaissance : Experiments Rich and Strange -- Private Libraries in the East -- The English Country House and Its Library -- The Seventeenth-Century Scholar's Library -- The Eighteenth-Century Family Library -- The Nineteenth-Century Social Library -- Parallel Developments -- The Twentieth Century, and the Twenty-First -- Contemporary Private Libraries -- The Future of the Private Library -- Appendix A: The Time Line of the Private Library -- Appendix B: The Library Room Itself -- Appendix C: The Architectural Details of the Library -- Appendix D: Traditional Amenities and Charming Anachronisms

"The Private Library is the domestic bookroom: that quiet, book-wrapt space that guarantees its owner that there is at least one place in the world where it is possible to be happy. The story of its architecture extends back almost to the beginning of history and forward toward a future that is in equal parts amazing and alarming. In this book, Mr. Byers examines with a sardonic eye the historical influences that have shaped the architecture of the private library, and the furnishings, amenities, and delightful anachronisms that make the mortal room into what Borges so famously called Paradise"--Publisher's website, viewed May 3, 2022

"A history of the architecture and furnishings of the domestic library, from around 2,400 BCE to the present"--