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The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries
A uniquely personal account of the life and enduring legacy of the Renaissance library
With the advent of print in the fifteenth century, Europe’s cultural elite assembled personal libraries as refuges from persecutions and pandemics. Andrew Hui tells the remarkable story of the Renaissance studiolo—a “little studio”—and reveals how these spaces dedicated to self-cultivation became both a remedy and a poison for the soul.
Blending fresh, insightful readings of literary and visual works with engaging accounts of his life as an insatiable bookworm, Hui traces how humanists from Petrarch to Machiavelli to Montaigne created their own intimate studies. He looks at imaginary libraries in Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Marlowe, and discusses how Renaissance painters depicted the Virgin Mary and St. Jerome as saintly bibliophiles. Yet writers of the period also saw a dark side to solitary reading. It drove Don Quixote to madness, Prospero to exile, and Faustus to perdition. Hui draws parallels with our own age of information surplus and charts the studiolo’s influence on bibliographic fabulists like Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco.
Beautifully illustrated, The Study is at once a celebration of bibliophilia and a critique of bibliomania. Incorporating perspectives on Islamic, Mughal, and Chinese book cultures, it offers a timely and eloquent meditation on the ways we read and misread today.
With the advent of print in the fifteenth century, Europe’s cultural elite assembled personal libraries as refuges from persecutions and pandemics. Andrew Hui tells the remarkable story of the Renaissance studiolo—a “little studio”—and reveals how these spaces dedicated to self-cultivation became both a remedy and a poison for the soul.
Blending fresh, insightful readings of literary and visual works with engaging accounts of his life as an insatiable bookworm, Hui traces how humanists from Petrarch to Machiavelli to Montaigne created their own intimate studies. He looks at imaginary libraries in Rabelais, Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Marlowe, and discusses how Renaissance painters depicted the Virgin Mary and St. Jerome as saintly bibliophiles. Yet writers of the period also saw a dark side to solitary reading. It drove Don Quixote to madness, Prospero to exile, and Faustus to perdition. Hui draws parallels with our own age of information surplus and charts the studiolo’s influence on bibliographic fabulists like Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco.
Beautifully illustrated, The Study is at once a celebration of bibliophilia and a critique of bibliomania. Incorporating perspectives on Islamic, Mughal, and Chinese book cultures, it offers a timely and eloquent meditation on the ways we read and misread today.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published December 3, 2024
29 people are currently reading
631 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Hui
5 books7 followersAndrew Hui is associate professor of humanities at Yale-NUS College, Singapore.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 11, 2025
I found this pretty dense and difficult to grasp in many places. I had to look up A LOT of words. Something I am not used to having to do.
December 25, 2024
An interesting study of the library, both its promises and its perils. While a place where thousands of years and dead authors are magically brought into the present, it also "may promise a false abundance" (10). Hui's study (pun intended) also doubles as a book on how knowledge as an idea shifts from a consensus of luminaries past to the invention of a solipsistic and brilliant scientist all by his lonesome.
July 14, 2025
Interestingly, The Study isn't strictly a work of intellectual history or literary criticism, but often evolves into something more personally reflective and complicated. It often feels narrative driven, rather than argument driven, and the movements within the book feel often, even as we delve into the woes of bibliomania, like the encomium to reading that anyone (especially those inclined to recording their reading on a website) can appreciate and relate to. But, honestly, this book is elevated by Hui's subjectivity, the brief glimpses of his own life that he shares, intermittently, throughout the book. How thoughtful, and artful, to bring together the personal essay with the critical; it seems of apiece with his fellow Princeton alum (who also writes, thinking with Auerbach) Daniel Mendelsohn. For both, literary history is the entrée into the writer's own past and history.
But when writing about the studiolo, and reading qua itself, how can the writer not be personal? The book is an intimate portrait, for Hui and for one of his subjects, Montaigne. Hui doesn't write about Erasmus here (brief mentions here and there, including some references to Lisa Jardine's fabulous biography), but the book, for him, was a kind of living thing, more intimate than even the physical flesh. Hui knows: what we read is who we are. It's also who we may become, and what we may be haunted by. The good, the bad, and the place of solace.
---
I once wrote a little nothing about Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies, and it strikes me once again that the important part of that title is «livre» and not, as we may assume «cité».
But when writing about the studiolo, and reading qua itself, how can the writer not be personal? The book is an intimate portrait, for Hui and for one of his subjects, Montaigne. Hui doesn't write about Erasmus here (brief mentions here and there, including some references to Lisa Jardine's fabulous biography), but the book, for him, was a kind of living thing, more intimate than even the physical flesh. Hui knows: what we read is who we are. It's also who we may become, and what we may be haunted by. The good, the bad, and the place of solace.
---
I once wrote a little nothing about Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies, and it strikes me once again that the important part of that title is «livre» and not, as we may assume «cité».
January 8, 2026
Summary: Traces the Renaissance study through the lives of bibliophiles, artistic portrayals, and the darker side of bibliomania.
“When evening comes, I return to my home, and I go into my study; and on the thresh-hold, I take off my everyday clothes, which are covered in mud and mire,and I put on regal and curial robes; and dressed in a more appropriate manner I enter into the ancient courts of ancient men and am welcomed by them kindly, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born; and there I am not ashamed to speak to them, to ask them the reasons for their actions; and they, in their humanity, answer me; and for four hours I feel no boredom,I dismiss every affliction, I no longer fear poverty nor do I tremble at the thought of death; I become completely part of them.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli
Machiavelli describes the dream of many bibliophiles. A study, or library, where we may retreat from the world, and for a space of time, keep company with other minds, some in conversation and others, silently looking on, waiting their turn. Andrew Hui explores this dream, and its realization by Renaissance humanists in their studiolo
He begins by tracing the development from the monastic cell to the Renaissance studies of Petrarch, Machiavelli, and Montaigne. In the case of the latter, the study becomes a circular tower, with quotations inscribed on the ceiling beams. He accumulated over a thousand volumes, a stupendous number for the time. and he recognizes that each reader reads something different in the works of others. They read themselves.
Hui turns to Renaissance painters and notes the curious portrayals of both St. Jerome and the Virgin Mary as not only saints but bibliophiles. It was particularly intriguing to consider figure after figure of paintings of the Annunciation with Mary holding or reading a book. Likewise, Durer, Rembrandt and others portray Jerome laboring among his books.
There is a darker side of bibliophilia. Too many books or the wrong sort of books might lead to a special kind of insanity, bibliomanias of various sorts. One might fall into an abyss of knowledge. Hui explores this theme through the madness of Don Quixote, which began with an addiction to books. Prospero neglected his dukedom for his library where he became engrossed in sorcery, which he use to survive when exiled by his usurping brother to an island with his daughter. Finally, Hui considers Faustus whose reading brought him to despair and ultimate damnation.
Hui takes us not only on a tour of renaissance libraries, real and imagined. He also takes us on a tour of the inner life of those who sought refuge in them. He reveals the fine line between illumination and solace, and insanity and madness. Our books may take us into a deeper perception of reality. Or they may lead us down rabbit holes of unreality. I couldn’t help wonder if solitude led some into more fruitful social engagement and others into isolation. But is this a function of our books or ourselves? It was curious that the bibliomanes were all fictional, the bibliophiles were historic figures. Yet who of us, who love books, haven’t wondered about the dangers of going over the edge? Hui’s study, thus explores not only the inner sanctum of the Renaissance studiolo. He explores the inner sanctum of the dedicate reader.
“When evening comes, I return to my home, and I go into my study; and on the thresh-hold, I take off my everyday clothes, which are covered in mud and mire,and I put on regal and curial robes; and dressed in a more appropriate manner I enter into the ancient courts of ancient men and am welcomed by them kindly, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born; and there I am not ashamed to speak to them, to ask them the reasons for their actions; and they, in their humanity, answer me; and for four hours I feel no boredom,I dismiss every affliction, I no longer fear poverty nor do I tremble at the thought of death; I become completely part of them.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli
Machiavelli describes the dream of many bibliophiles. A study, or library, where we may retreat from the world, and for a space of time, keep company with other minds, some in conversation and others, silently looking on, waiting their turn. Andrew Hui explores this dream, and its realization by Renaissance humanists in their studiolo
He begins by tracing the development from the monastic cell to the Renaissance studies of Petrarch, Machiavelli, and Montaigne. In the case of the latter, the study becomes a circular tower, with quotations inscribed on the ceiling beams. He accumulated over a thousand volumes, a stupendous number for the time. and he recognizes that each reader reads something different in the works of others. They read themselves.
Hui turns to Renaissance painters and notes the curious portrayals of both St. Jerome and the Virgin Mary as not only saints but bibliophiles. It was particularly intriguing to consider figure after figure of paintings of the Annunciation with Mary holding or reading a book. Likewise, Durer, Rembrandt and others portray Jerome laboring among his books.
There is a darker side of bibliophilia. Too many books or the wrong sort of books might lead to a special kind of insanity, bibliomanias of various sorts. One might fall into an abyss of knowledge. Hui explores this theme through the madness of Don Quixote, which began with an addiction to books. Prospero neglected his dukedom for his library where he became engrossed in sorcery, which he use to survive when exiled by his usurping brother to an island with his daughter. Finally, Hui considers Faustus whose reading brought him to despair and ultimate damnation.
Hui takes us not only on a tour of renaissance libraries, real and imagined. He also takes us on a tour of the inner life of those who sought refuge in them. He reveals the fine line between illumination and solace, and insanity and madness. Our books may take us into a deeper perception of reality. Or they may lead us down rabbit holes of unreality. I couldn’t help wonder if solitude led some into more fruitful social engagement and others into isolation. But is this a function of our books or ourselves? It was curious that the bibliomanes were all fictional, the bibliophiles were historic figures. Yet who of us, who love books, haven’t wondered about the dangers of going over the edge? Hui’s study, thus explores not only the inner sanctum of the Renaissance studiolo. He explores the inner sanctum of the dedicate reader.
September 2, 2025
Interesting topic, but... It is unnecessary to employ the entirety of the lexicon to articulate your thoughts effectively. In other words, Bro, why you use every word in the dictionary? The book was a little difficult to read at times, but I liked the author's take.
June 7, 2025
A little room of one's own,
To think and read and be alone,
And to collect the many things
That the world of wonders brings.
To think and read and be alone,
And to collect the many things
That the world of wonders brings.
December 14, 2025
Self-indulgent and repetitive, I've read several other better books on both Faust and libraries.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews