The trouble started with an ultimatum. emily casaubon, an english professor, was in line for a new office. but first, the kindly departmental administrator told her, she needed to purge some books. The administrator was right: Professor Casaubon's books were cresting and flooding like the spawn of the Philistine god Dagon—“sea monster, upward man and downward fish,” as John Milton pithily put it—in full run. She got right to work.