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A good deal of material on the early history of libraries has been gathered by the author of this essay during the last twenty-five years. This material is not yet ripe for systematic publication and the rapidly growing body of results from recent excavation suggests that it will be long before it is. Essays, addresses, and encyclopedia articles have however been prepared out of this material from time to time for various occasions and audiences and it has seemed worth while, in default of something better, to shape these in such way as to form a general survey or first orientation of the matter, and to publish in this form, in spite of the fact that they are incomplete as to material and have been prepared for very different audiences and in very different