We recently received a request from a reader to consult our copy of Le franc discours. A discourse, presented of late to the French King … (1602). The work is an English translation of a political publication by the French lawyer Antoine Arnauld (1560-1619). Our 1872 Printed Catalogue recorded the shelfmark as DD.ll.47. We were puzzled, however, when we retrieved the book as it contained a different work printed in 1599, Apologia societatis Jesu in Gallia, ad … Henricum IV …
In such cases we usually turn to the annotated copy of the Printed Catalogue, held here in the Department of Early Printed Books, to look for any notes that might suggest a new location. In this instance, however, we couldn’t find any clues. Almost at a dead end, we decided to perform one more search in the Printed Catalogue, this time for the 1599 work that we were already holding in our hands. This led us to another shelfmark, G.n.51, and to our relief we found the title we had originally sought sitting in the other’s place on the Long Room shelves.
Holding the two books side by side it became apparent how the mix-up had occurred. Both volumes had been repaired by an external binder in late 1958. The binder had mixed up the two shelfmarks and incorrectly tooled the new rebacked spines. The books were then reshelved in each other’s spots on opposite sides of the Long Room, where they remained for the next 57 years. We will shortly send both volumes to our own Preservation and Conservation Department to have their spines retooled so that they can finally return to their rightful places after a gap of over half a century!