How the Library got its books

This week on our 101 Treasures Page we take a look at two manuscripts of great significance. These are the Invoices Book and the Accessions Register, kept in the early years of the Library’s existence, and recording every book that was purchased by the Library trustees. Apart from being fascinating and absorbing documents in their own right, they provide an important primary source of evidence for scholars of the book trade in the Early Modern period. In recent years they have been studied in some depth by Matthew Yeo for his doctoral thesis, published as The Acquisition of Books by Chetham’s Library, 1655-1700.