By using our site, you agree to our collection of information through the use of cookies. To learn more, view our Privacy Policy. To browse Academia. I have been up to London to get the book I am writing, out of the British Museum.
I have got a lot of it out, and I shall go again presently to get some more; and when I have got it all, there will be another book So many people were there, getting out their books. It doesn't seem to matter everything's being in books already: I don't mind it at all.
There are attendants there on purpose to bring it to you. That is how books are made, and it is difficult to think of any other way. I mean the kind called serious. No doubt the author of any reference book such as the present one could echo the sentiments of Miss Charity Marcon, in Ivy Compton-Burnett's Daughters and Sons.
A great deal of my book is indeed got out of others, as the bibliography and references in the text make clear. What justification is there for this, and what is the purpose of the book? In the first place I wished to provide a book of reference both for those coming new to plainchant and for those needing guidance in the specialist literature.
The book starts with the assumption, reasonable in this secular age, that many things about the liturgy and its plainchant, even quite basic matters, are unfamiliar to the reader. At every stage in the encounter with plainchant one comes up against specialist terminology and concepts which constitute a real obstacle. That is in the nature of the subject, for ecclesiastical ritual is essentially exclusive, remote from everyday experience, reserved for specially trained personnel.
