The Enemies of Books

The Enemies of Books is a book on biblioclasts and book preservation by nineteenth century bibliophile and book collector William Blades. The book was first published in 1880 and has been republished in different editions in 1881, 1888, 1896, and 1902 and reproduced widely in electronic format in the twenty-first century. In the book, Blades, a well known collector and preserver of the works of British printer William Caxton, documented his outrage at any mistreatment of books in what became a passionate litany against biblioclasts, human and non-human, wherever he found them.