ADDRESS ON OTHER SIDE.

PUBLIC LIBRARY, BOSTON,

SUPERINTENDENT'S OFFICE,
JUSTIN WINSOR, Superintendent.
FREDERIC B. PERKINS, Office Sec'y.
MISS A. P. CALL, Asst. Office Sec'y.
MISS A. A. NICHOLS, Auditor.

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The Best Reading.

HINTS ON THE SELECTION OF BOOKS; ON THE
FORMATION OF LIBRARIES, PUBLIC AND

PRIVATE; ON COURSES OF

READING, ETC.,

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872,
BY G. P. PUTNAM & SONS,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

LANGE, LITTLE & HILLMAN, Printers, Stereotypers, and Electrotypers, 108 to 114 Wooster Street.

PREFACE.

ONE of the most obvious conclusions of the intelligent reader who glauces over any manual of this sort, will be that it is incomplete that it certainly does not exhaust the subject.

This little book claims no exemption from the inevitable imperfections of all attempts of this class. Perhaps one of its merits may be its comparative brevity; and its sins of omission-numerous as they may be-will probably be more excusable, in the judgment of most readers, than would be the error of burdening such a manual with an inordinate collection of titles, indiscriminately copied from the enormous mass of publications which crowd the market.

We have aimed at a middle course between a meagre catalogue of a bookseller's collection, and the elaborate comprehensiveness of a general bibliography. Under some four hundred different themes or topics, we have quoted briefly the titles of such books on each subject as are best known, and most surely acceptable either in American or English editions. We have included in these selections only those works which are likely to be consulted by the general reader; and we have OMITTED (excepting a few leading specimens): I. Law Books. II. Theological and Religious Treatises. III. SundaySchool Books. IV. Technical works in Science and Art. V. School Text-Books. VI. Many anonymous and doubtful Novels.