When this work was completed, sixteen years ago, interest in library history was much smaller than it is today. Even so, by virtue of its theme and its scholarship, Dr Aitken's thesis deserved formal publication much sooner. As some readers of Library Review will know, since 1964 the text has been available on microfilm and in Xerox copies of the original typescript, but grateful as we should be to the Microfilm Association of Great Britain for venturing where the established publishers of books on librarianship feared to tread, it is a relief to have this invaluable history in orthodox form as a sturdy, portable, well‐printed volume.