The Giant and Pygmy of Bookland
The extremes of bookland which meet in the British Museum are each remarkable products of the art of book-making. Difficulties would seem to attend the perusal of either of them, though of a widely different sort. Here is to be seen the largest book in the world—an atlas of the fifteenth century. It is seven feet high. When a tall man consults it, his head is hidden as he stands between its generous leaves. Its stout binding and ponderous clasps make it seem as substantial as the walls of a room.
The smallest book in the world is a tiny “Bijou Almanac”—less than an inch square, bound in dainty red morocco, and easily to be concealed in the finger of a lady’s glove.
These two extremes of the printer’s art might well stand at the beginning and the end of the amazing thirty-seven miles of shelves filled with books which belong to the great English library.