This is the beginning of a lecture given by Deirdre Serjeantson called:

THAT PRIVATE LABYRINTH: THE BOOKS THAT MADE LYMOND

 

It is not often in my lecturing career that I stand on the podium entirely confident that
everyone in the room has read the set texts. But this time, I think I can be certain that we
are all familiar with the scene in The Ringed Castle when Philippa, back in Midculter after her
adventures in the seraglio, finds at the top of a tower the room which in childhood had
belonged to Francis Crawford. You’ll remember the broken lute in the aumbry, and the
scars in the door where it had been – significantly – kicked by an angry man. The room is
also full of books. Here is Philippa’s perspective on it:
She scanned them: some works in English; others in Latin and Greek,
French, Italian and Spanish … Prose and verse. The classics, pressed
together with folios on the sciences, theology, history; bawdy epistles and
dramas; books on war and philosophy; the great legends. Sheets and volumes
and manuscripts of unprinted music. Erasmus and St Augustine, Cicero,
Terence and Ptolemy, Froissart and Barbour and Dunbar; Machiavelli and
Rabelais, Budé and Bellenden, Aristotle and Copernicus, Duns Scotus and
Seneca.
Gathered over the years; added to on infrequent visits; the evidence
of one man’s eclectic taste. And if one studied it, the private labyrinth, book
upon book, from which the child Francis Crawford had emerged, contained,
formidable, decorative … as the Master of Culter.
Ringed Castle, pp. 43-4
The list of authors is long, and one of the reasons it is there is to confirm us in what we
already knew – that Lymond had read everything there was to be read. In fact, as I will betalking about in a few minutes, he read considerably more even than that, but for the time
being, let’s stick with the packed shelves in Midculter. I am going to look at those shelves,
and some other libraries we encounter along the way, to explore what his reading did for
Lymond…..

 

 

The full pdf is Here. A nice read for DD fans :o)

That Private Labyrinth