Perhaps no recent work on the history of early modern libraries and book collecting resonates better with John Milton's observation that “books … do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are” (Areopagitica, 1644). The three authors of A History and Catalogue of the Lindsay Library, 1570–1792 describe it as both a biography and a catalog of the library assembled by members of four generations of the Scottish Lindsay family from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Five collectors in particular focus this narrative: David Lindsay, Lord Edzell (1551–1610); his brother, John Lindsay, Lord Menmuir (1553–98); Menmuir's son, David Lindsay, 1st Lord Lindsay of Balcarres (1587–1641); Colin Lindsay, 3rd Earl of Balcarres (1652–1722), and his fourth wife, Margaret Campbell (d. 1747). Throughout this history of the family's early book collecting and the reconstruction of the library in part one, many of the 1,763 books listed individually in the catalog (part two) are woven, with their catalog numbers, into the stories of these people's rich, tumultuous lives. In this way, the library's biography and catalog cross-reference one another, allowing the reader to situate the books very specifically in a narrative of their acquisition, use, transport, loss, and, in rare cases, recovery. A History and Catalogue of the Lindsay Library, 1570–1792 thus breathes life into the often dry and unreadable genres of bibliography and library catalog and expands them into a new model for the sociology of texts.

No family library assembled over many generations and subject to the turbulence of early modern Europe, the authors of this unusual hybrid book suggest, can be represented in a spare list of titles. The books enumerated in the catalog passed in and out of Lindsay hands at different times and under varying circumstances; they were never all collocated on the shelves or in the chests in one of the several places where the library was housed over the years. For this reason, the catalog in part two represents what today we might call a virtual library, an “aggregate and organic record of acquisition and dispersal over multiple generations” (192). One component of the book highlights this complicated early modern reality above all the others: a sale catalog printed at the request of auctioneer Cornelius Elliot in 1792 and listing the contents of the Lindsay library to be auctioned in Edinburgh in that year, which is reproduced here in full facsimile as an appendix. The apparently unique copy of the sale catalog, recovered by one of the authors from Oxford, singularly enabled them to identify the books in the collection, the vast majority of which had been dispersed long before the modern project to catalog the library was undertaken. In this way, the sale catalog—created in order to disperse the early modern Lindsay library—ironically serves as an organizing principle for its reconstitution in this modern study.

The chapters in part one, “History and Context,” reconstruct the library through narrative histories based on the sale catalog and the Lindsay family papers, including letters and eight manuscript booklists (also reproduced in an appendix). Chapters 1 and 2 address the varying purposes and circumstances throughout which the library waxed and waned over the years. Chapter 1, “From Reformation to Restoration,” introduces readers to the origins of the library, first with brothers Edzell and Menmuir, and later with Menmuir's son, David, 1st Lord Lindsay of Balcarres, under whom the book collecting reached its height. The collection's humanist stamp was established with the education of brothers Edzell and Menmuir, who went to Paris (Sorbonne) and Cambridge in 1657, where they began a lifelong practice of forging relationships through the books they acquired. The notion of a life lived in collecting, reading, and exchanging books is epitomized in Menmuir's son, Balcarres, whose “engagement … with his books and the ideas of his day” (62) was unparalleled in the family. In fact, so rich is the record of Balcarres's collecting and uses of his books that the authors seek to model Scottish collecting and book history on him. They show how a Scottish bibliophile's distance from the centers of the early book trade, coupled with his limited resources, led to the cultivation of faraway contacts and the practice of copying friends’ books rather than purchasing them (a portion of Balcarres's books are scribal copies). Chapter 2, “From Restoration to Enlightenment,” focuses on the fate of the library under Colin Lindsay, 3rd Earl of Balcarres, and his second wife, Margaret Campbell. Colin, while an important collector, did not leave the same traces in his books as his forbears, so the authors reconstruct his contributions more speculatively from the misfortunes that befell the library, including its dissolution recorded in the sale catalog. The discussion of Margaret's role is one of the several narratives illuminating the importance of women at key moments in the library's formation and history. Collectively these two chapters serve as a gold mine for scholars interested in marrying the history of libraries with the sociology of texts.

Chapter 3, “Reconstructing the Lindsay Library,” provides book historians with a similar trove. The authors recount their efforts to reconstruct the library from various resources, including present-day contacts at libraries and universities. The description of William Zachs's work to uncover the sale catalog from uncatalogd collections at the Bodleian Library is a testament to the dogged, intrepid mindset necessary to conduct good book history. Here the physical aspects of the book—including bindings and owners’ signatures—are featured in photographs alongside the provenance developed from them. The sale catalog and the eight book lists—attempts to take stock of the library at different moments—provide the authors with tantalizing clues to the “physical space of the seventeenth-century library” (147) at Balcarres house, including its organization in bays containing shelves ordered by subject. Indeed, this willingness to conjecture, draw inferences, and construct plausible narratives is one of this book's methodological strengths, whereby its authors recover the lives of bibliophiles, in Milton's words, “preserv'd and stor'd up” in their books.