TY - JOUR AB - It is not difficult to fill a chapter, and it would perhaps not be impossible to fill a book, with quotations over three centuries deploring the state of library provision in London. They begin at the latest in the mid‐seventeenth century and die out — if they die out at all — no earlier than the late 1940s. Yet how valid were these complaints, and who were the complainants? VL - 33 IS - 2 SN - 0024-2535 DO - 10.1108/eb012764 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/eb012764 PY - 1984 Y1 - 1984/01/01 TI - PROLOGUE: THE WEN T2 - Library Review PB - MCB UP Ltd SP - 69 EP - 80 Y2 - 2024/04/19 ER -