Andrew Hui’s The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries is an exquisite venture into the world of books—not merely as objects of knowledge, but as intimate companions in the intellectual lives of their owners. In this deeply thoughtful and evocative book, Mr. Hui undertakes a “historical investigation into the personal library”—an endeavour that takes us beyond mere architecture, beyond shelves lined with leather-bound volumes, to the very heart of how these libraries shaped and were shaped by the people who inhabited them. As much a study of physical spaces as a meditation on the nature of knowledge itself, Hui’s work moves gracefully between past and present, between the historical facts of the Renaissance and the quiet, intimate encounters between reader and text. It is, in its most profound sense, a book about the spaces where thinking takes place, and the ways in which those spaces—whether intellectual or physical—create, confine, and illuminate the mind.

In a rare moment of candidness, Hui admits in an interview that The Study was conceived as “very much a COVID project.” “We were very much stuck in Singapore,” he recalls, “and it happened pretty late compared to the rest of the world.” His words resonate with the global feeling of confinement that became the backdrop to so much creative and academic work during the pandemic: the sense of isolation, the unexpected stillness, the inward turn. For Hui, that stillness led him back to his own personal library—those volumes on his own shelves that had quietly collected dust, waiting for an intellectual reckoning. “I looked around my books,” Hui told me, “and they seemed to say to me, ‘You can write about us!’” In this seemingly simple moment, we see the profound connection between Hui and the objects he studies. His books were not just passive entities on a shelf, but sentient beings that called out to him, urging him to examine not just the world of the Renaissance scholar but his own intellectual and emotional relationship to the material.

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As much a study of physical spaces as a meditation on the nature of knowledge itself […] Hui approaches the Renaissance library not simply as an academic object, but as a text to be read in its own right

The Study is not merely a catalogue of Renaissance libraries or a technical exploration of their architecture. It is something much richer—an inquiry into the intellectual life that these libraries fostered. It asks, in essence, what happens when books, those most personal of objects, are placed in the public sphere, where they can be read, studied, and contested? What is lost and what is gained when the individual scholar’s private collection becomes part of the greater intellectual and political landscape of the Renaissance? Hui’s investigation of these questions is nuanced and layered, and he approaches the libraries of the period as much more than repositories of knowledge—they are vibrant intellectual spaces that both contain and produce meaning.

The Renaissance library, Hui argues, was not merely a space for the accumulation of knowledge, but a stage on which the scholar, often isolated in his study, engaged in a constant dialogue with both the past and the future. For the Renaissance scholar, the library was more than a place to access texts. It was a crucible in which ideas were formed, challenged, and reformed. Hui’s historical investigation focuses particularly on the personal libraries of influential figures—the intellectual giants whose work shaped the course of Western thought. In particular, he delves into the libraries of individuals like Petrarch and Pico della Mirandola, whose books were not just vessels of accumulated wisdom, but intimate parts of their intellectual selves. The library, in this sense, became a “mirror,” a space for intellectual self-fashioning. The Study thus invites readers to contemplate the deep connection between the scholar and his library, where the act of reading was not just an intellectual pursuit, but a process of identity-making, of self-discovery, and even self-transformation.

The placement of books, the relationship between the scholar and the space, was not incidental but essential to the intellectual engagement that took place. This, Hui argues, was a crucial feature of Renaissance libraries: their design was not just utilitarian, but performative. These libraries were designed to engage the scholar on a deeper, almost mystical level.

In another poignant interview moment, Hui described his own approach to writing The Study: “I thought a lot about books about books, writing about writing. It’s a very meta project.” And indeed, The Study is precisely this—an exploration of the relationship between knowledge and its written form, between the scholar and the books that both illuminate and constrain intellectual growth. What makes this book particularly striking is Hui’s ability to weave together personal reflection with historical investigation. As a literary critic, Hui approaches the Renaissance library not simply as an academic object, but as a text to be read in its own right—a text that speaks to the questions of knowledge and power that remain as pressing today as they were a thousand years ago.

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Hui’s writing is a graceful blend of scholarly rigor and poetic reverence

The act of writing about libraries—about the spaces where knowledge lives—becomes, in Hui’s telling, an act of scholarly self-examination. He describes his methodology as “very traditional for a literary critic,” an acknowledgement that his approach to history is not one of detached observation, but one that seeks to bring to the forefront the very process of intellectual engagement. This is not just a study of libraries, then, but of the mind itself—the way it encounters knowledge, processes it, and ultimately creates new understanding. “I wanted to tell a story,” Hui says, and indeed he does. The Study becomes a narrative that explores the tensions and dynamics that existed between the scholar and the space in which they worked. It asks not just what knowledge these libraries contained, but how the experience of engaging with that knowledge shaped the minds of those who entered them.

In examining the Vatican Library, Hui explores how the Church not only controlled knowledge but also determined how that knowledge was to be presented and preserved. The Vatican, as a library, was a paradox: it was both a place of intellectual discovery and a tool of ideological control. Hui reveals that, for all its magnificence, the Vatican Library was also deeply entangled with the political and theological concerns of the Church. Books, in this context, were not neutral—they were weapons in a broader struggle for power. This tension between knowledge as a source of liberation and as a mechanism of control runs throughout Hui’s book, highlighting the ways in which Renaissance libraries were not just intellectual sanctuaries, but also sites of struggle, censorship, and exclusion.

In a telling moment during our conversation, Hui reflected on the enduring relevance of these historical questions: “Some of the questions that we have not necessarily have answers to, but lots of people were asking the same questions a hundred, a thousand years ago.” These echoes from the past become the heartbeat of The Study. The questions of knowledge, access, and power that preoccupied Renaissance scholars are, in Hui’s telling, still the questions we ask today. What is the role of the scholar in the age of digital information? What is the relationship between the book and the individual? And, perhaps most importantly, what is the relationship between knowledge and power?

Through this complex and layered investigation, Hui has not only brought the Renaissance library to life, but he has made it a lens through which we might better understand our own relationship with knowledge. In his hands, the library becomes a metaphor for the mind itself—a place of both illumination and constraint, a space of solitude and dialogue, a site where ideas both flourish and are stifled. His work reminds us that knowledge, in all its forms, is not just an abstract concept—it is something lived, something that shapes us in deeply personal ways.

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Renaissance libraries were not just intellectual sanctuaries, but also sites of struggle, censorship, and exclusion

For all its historical richness, The Study is ultimately a deeply personal book. Hui’s own relationship with books, with libraries, and with the very act of writing permeates every page. In many ways, his book is a reflection of the kind of intellectual life he has lived—a life that has been shaped, in part, by the very libraries he now studies. As he says with quiet reflection, “I spent most of my life in university…most scholarship is pretty hard to read, impenetrable. I was trained to hyper-specialize, so I worked very hard to make my presentation accessible and clear and lucid, even if I might fail.” This commitment to clarity, to making complex intellectual ideas accessible, is evident throughout The Study. Hui’s writing is a graceful blend of scholarly rigor and poetic reverence, a tribute to the transformative power of libraries and books.

In the end, The Study is not simply a historical investigation into the libraries of the past, but a meditation on the eternal relationship between the scholar and the book. Through this lens, Hui asks us to reconsider the role of libraries not just as places of preservation, but as active, living spaces where knowledge is both contested and created. His investigation into the personal library of the Renaissance scholar becomes a mirror, reflecting not just a bygone era, but the ongoing questions that still shape the way we read, write, and understand the world. The questions remain: what does it mean to know something? And what, indeed, is knowledge without a place to contain it?

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