Book collecting has been around for as long as books, but it is really in the late 17th century that the pursuit of antique books started to become popular in England.

The fashion seems to have come from France, and one of the earliest collectors was the 1st Duke of Lauderdale (1616-82), who was advised by the non-juring bishop George Hicks (1642-1715). Lauderdale's Library Room of 1672 survives at Ham House in London, but the books were sold not long after his death.

In the 18th century he was followed by heroic collectors like Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford (1689-1741), Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) and Sir Richard Ellys of Nocton (1682-1742), whose great library survives at Blickling Hall in Norfolk.

Ellys was assisted in his pursuit of the curious and the rare by his librarian John Mitchell, one of a new species of book experts, who not only produced a catalogue of the library, but scoured Europe for new additions.

The next great era was the 19th century, when under the leadership of the biblomaniac TF Dibin book collecting again became the height of fashion, with rich English collectors buying up the spoils of continental libraries which had been broken up in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Again, there are plenty of examples in Trust libraries, though many of the grandest biblomaniac collections, like Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire, were themselves broken up later in the 19th and 20th centuries, with many such books now in North America.