The initial suggestion for the present volume was made by Don McKenzie in Oxford on the afternoon of 2 November 1996 during what turned out to be my last conversation with him. He seemed to be deflecting the notion of any such commemoration for himself while insisting that it was something Ian Willison would appreciate and enjoy. I agreed that it was an excellent-and long overdue-plan, and, having had some experience of the genre through the Australian Journal of French Studies, wrote a few days later to say that I was prepared to bear the brunt of the work for a publication in Melbourne, in other words at the periphery of that world of books whose centre Ian has occupied with his unique authority. In his reply Don, already conscious of the limited time likely to be available to him, bowed out of anything other than an advisory role. His first counsel was to make sure of the support of some of Ian's closest friends and associates before going any further. Not surprisingly, the first approaches were greeted with enthusiasm. By the middle of 1997, and before I returned from my last long leave to Australia, it was time to tell Ian what was afoot.

There are, of course, homage volumes that remain a secret to the recipient until the last moment. This was not and could not be one of those. For the last ten years Ian has been intimately involved in the fashioning of this book. It was he who proposed the names of the people to be asked if they would accept to belong to a substantial comite d'honneur, to a body of sponsors a little in the French style. The contacts I made-in conversation, by telephone, and by letter-in the pursuit of this preliminary task revealed a great deal about the range of Ian's friendships, about the networks he has created amongst scholars and librarians and about the esteem in which he is held. More coherently and positively than a list of subscribers, the names appended to this preface tell us about links and contexts that are an integral part of a generous conception of what the history of books represents in the realm of scholarship.

The supporters and well-wishers were eager, and they responded quickly. Their patience has been sorely tried by the time it has taken to complete the volume. Sadly, too, some of them have not lived to see it in print. The reason for the delay lies in particular in the many demands made on some of those chosen as key contributors. Ian's friends, whether still in active employment or in retirement, are busy and even over-committed in the way that seems almost normal at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Since there was a catalogue of desiderata drawn up by Ian, it became the editor's job to coax as many as possible of its items into a finished form. Some authors were models of rapid execution, while others needed a great deal of leeway. One or two, overwhelmed by illness or by promises made elsewhere, were ultimately unable to take their appointed places. None the less the pieces gathered together do fill out a structure based on the history of books, libraries and scholarship, the central preoccupations of Ian's career. At the same time the participants, recruited from a variety of countries across the English-speaking world and from Continental Europe, have close associations, notably as colleagues at the British Library or as members of the editorial team of the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain or again as promoters of similar enterprises elsewhere, with the master organizer of international collaboration being honoured here.

It will be obvious that this is not an omnium-gatherum festschrift of the run-of-the-mill kind. Despite this, there is a diversity of subjects dictated by the breadth of Ian Willison's interests and aspirations. Never one to resist the temptation of grand syntheses, he has encouraged those working alongside him to think beyond the local and the particular and to be aware of discussions proceeding in a variety of disciplines. At the same time he knows, as a bibliographer, that detail and precision matter and that ambitious theories in this area need to have a sound empirical basis. For this reason there are both essays and studies in the collection. In addition to carefully documented investigations of aspects of book and library history, there are reflections on past and future endeavours, testimonies by persons involved in notable projects that test and extend the limits of our practices, and attempts to explore ways in which we can better preserve and analyse the multifarious records of our civilization. Although the dominant perspective is Anglophone, a text in German-with a brief English summary-is there to remind us that Ian's own curiosity ranges further afield and that intellectual activity is not constrained by linguistic barriers. Indeed, but for the Australian topic I have chosen to treat, I could have given in to my natural impulse to demonstrate a belief that book history still prefers to speak French.

Finding a suitable title for the volume was not an easy task. Several suggestions were made-and rejected after consultation across the globe. In the end it was Joan Kirsop who had the inspiration now featured on the cover and on the title-page. Much more recently we discovered that our Commonwealth of Books had a Melbourne forerunner in Alan Atkinson's The Commonwealth of Speech: An Argument about Australia's Past, Present and Future produced by Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd in 2002. Atkinson is one of the few Australian general historians to take seriously questions of communication. It is a pity that his book, one we as specialists ought to digest and debate, is not better known or publicized. However, the thrust and the allusion here are quite different. In another age we might have been induced to use the phrase The Web of Empire illustrated on our dust-jacket. Put forward by the future George V, then Duke of Cornwall and York, to designate the account of his long imperial tour in 1901, and triggered by a placard seen in Durban, it seems peculiarly appropriate for a man charged officially for part of his career with the English language collections of the British Library and devoted in his retirement to stimulating all the relevant national book histories. In this context the fact that Ian Willison was appointed in 2005 a Commander in the Order of the British Empire for his services to the history of the book has a quite special resonance.

Apart from Ian's own input into The Commonwealth of Books, it is obvious that several other people made this tribute possible. First of all, the contributors must be thanked for accepting to be badgered and then for waiting patiently for the results of their labours to appear. David McKitterick, Warwick Gould and Robin Alston served as an informal subcommittee reading and commenting on several of the papers. Dennis Rhodes prepared the list of Ian's widely scattered publications, and for this we express our gratitude. Sarah Tyacke provided the photographic portrait that appears as a frontispiece. Once again I am grateful for the skilled editorial work of Meredith Sherlock, whose role is rightly recognized on the title-page. She remains a key and indispensable member of the Centre for the Book team.

Through Warwick Gould the Institute of English Studies of the School of Advanced Study of the University of London made available a subsidy towards the publication costs. Terry Belanger was similarly generous. During 2005 a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation of New York assisted the Centre for the Book in its research, which includes the preparation of publications. As always the Chaskett Fund of the Melbourne Community Foundation is standing behind the Centre in its efforts to promote bibliography and book history.

W.K.