Loving Books in a Dark Age

An interesting albeit long article about how silent reading began.

Longreads

Michael Pye | The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe | Pegasus Books | April 2015 | 31 minutes (8,498 words)

Below is a chapter excerpted from The Edge of the World, by Michael Pye, as recommended by Longreads contributing editor Dana Snitzky. 

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There was nobody else alive, nobody who could read or preach or sing the service, except the abbot, Ceolfrith, and one bright boy: who was local, well-connected and about sixteen, and whose name was unusual. He was called Bede, and he wasn’t called ‘saint’ or ‘venerable’, not yet.

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