Sixteenth-Century Private Book Inventories and Some Problems Related to their Analysis

Abstract

The first part of this paper sketches the interest that has been growing since the nineteenth century in private book inventories. It also examines the two primary ways in which book inventory studies have been undertaken: with the examination of a relevant single private book inventory or of a wide range of them. The second part of the paper examines some of the relevant obstacles to the correct identification and interpretation of sixteenth-century inventoried books. Such obstacles often result from categorizing and analysing private book inventories on the basis of received criteria and ignoring the differences between book inventory and book possession, book possession and book reading, and reading and text. This paper examines the problems in the formation and study of sixteenth-century private book inventories by focusing on Spanish examples. Such examples illustrate obstacles to the correct identification and interpretation of sixteenth-century inventoried books. The paper's general considerations are, nevertheless, equally applicable to other European sixteenth-century book inventories.