In 1701, the Cotton Library became Britain's first nationally owned manuscript collection, before entering the newly instituted British Museum in 1757. In the intervening years it was threatened by damp, neglect, inadequate organization, and a fire that wrought havoc on its material's survival. Through a detailed analysis of the content, form and language of contemporary inventories and catalogues, this essay explores how the library could sustain a hybrid identity as both a durable, nationally significant repository and a precarious assemblage of fragile paper and parchment during the eighteenth century. Analysing the ways in which custodians of the Cotton Library articulated their work reveals a historically repeating narrative of neglect, loss and recovery that echoed from the collection's seventeenth-century inception to the major restoration work carried out in the mid-nineteenth century. Instrumental in shaping the Cotton Library's identities, as well as how the discipline of antiquarianism perceived itself, this dialectic of preservation depended on, and was threatened by, the eroding forces of time's teeth.

1701 年，科顿图书馆成为英国第一个国家拥有的手稿收藏，然后于 1757 年进入新成立的大英博物馆。在此期间，它受到潮湿、疏忽、组织不善和大火的威胁，大火严重破坏了其材料的生存。通过对当代库存和目录的内容、形式和语言的详细分析，本文探讨了图书馆如何在 18 世纪维持一种混合身份，既是一个持久的、具有国家重要意义的资料库，又是一个脆弱的纸张和羊皮纸的不稳定组合。分析棉花图书馆的保管人表达他们的工作的方式揭示了历史上重复的关于忽视、损失和恢复的叙述，这与收藏相呼应” 从十七世纪开始到十九世纪中叶进行的主要修复工作。有助于塑造棉花图书馆的身份，以及古物学学科如何看待自己，这种保存辩证法依赖于时间牙齿的侵蚀力，并受到其威胁。