Library Love

So I headed out this morning to see the much talked about British Library. And for a book lover like me, I was planning on being impressed. Also, both the library and the British Museum (the other stop on my agenda) are free! yay.

When I got off the tube in--oh gee--I can't even remember (after a while all those stops blend together) I think it was King's Cross. I'm looking around and I'm thinking I should be looking for an old building, and after walking to the closest likely looking building and finding it a health and fitness club, I consult my map and head in the other direction to find this beautiful, though modern complex around a nice court yard. I'm excited now--the British library.

A working library with an amazing atmosphere--this Library of libraries has achieved what US libraries know they should do, but lack the funds to do---make the library into the new bookstore. The British Library has a restaurant and a cafe, and at least one gift shop--and then all the books are housed back in their reading rooms. Now there were two disappointments in my journey into literature history--that I couldn't go into the "Kings Library" that is shown behind glass in the center of the building, and that they wouldn't give me a reading pass just to gawk at their rare books room--seems I actually have to have a subject to research.

But oh there was this room of exhibits. Wow! They have a copy of the Guttenburg Bible and the Wycliffe Bible! They have pieces of music penned by Mozart and Handel! and a first edition copy of Shakespeare's Folios...oh, and a manuscript of Beowulf in old English (though the edges of the pages were singed in a really big fire in the 1700s) There were books that were 600 years old and older manuscripts and documents (including the Magna Carta)

Oh, but my favorite was the bound manuscript of Jane Eyre, opened to the last chapter that opens, "Reader, I married him." You can actually read the words in Charlotte Bronte's handwriting--it gave me goosebumps! (I am aware that this makes me a dork..I don't care) They also have the last few pages of Jane Austen's Persuasion opened on her very own writing desk...be still my heart.

Did these men and women know that they were penning words that would be treasured for generations to come? Or did they just have a story to tell and did their best to tell it? I wonder. If we held posterity in our minds whenever we wrote, I don't know if we'd ever start.