A Transcript of Richard Baxter's Library Catalogue

No one can read Richard Baxter without perceiving that he was an intensely bookish man, widely read and living close to his books. In most of his writings he turns aside to comment or to animadvert on others' books. His unpublished correspondence shows similar characteristics: one correspondent, writing in 1652, mentions five of the latest books; to another, who writes, ‘Though I have the use of a library at Westminster, yet there is in it neither Du Plessis, Grotius or Camero,’ Baxter replies, ‘I ans:[wer] they are comon bookes as most in ye shops’.