A CANON OF ONE'S OWN

It is one thing to write, as Harold Bloom has done (see page 4), about the idea of literary canons and ideal book collections; it is quite another actually to own such a collection. As a special Christmas offering, we are giving Independent on Sun day readers the chance to win one of the most desirable collections of all: a complete Everyman Classics hardback library, worth some £1,700 and consisting of 180

classics of Western literature from Homer and Sophocles to Borges and Waugh.

To win this prize, simply answer the following 10

questions, and complete the tie-breaker described below.

1 Which city boasted two royal libraries, one housed in a museum and the other in the temple of Zeus, which were destroyed after Caesar's invasion?

2 After whom is Oxford's major library named?

3 Which was the world's earliest known library?

a Assurbanipal's library at Nineveh?

b one in Babylonia, in the 21st century BC?

c Eumenes II's library at Pergamum?

4 Who founded the Library of Congress?

5 Which major English poet of the 20th century was a librarian?

6 Which modern English playwright was prosecuted for defacing library books?

7 Which Nobel Prizewinner's masterpiece involved the peregrinations of a bibliophile and his books? And what was the bibliophile's name?

8 From the point of view of preservation, what is the ideal room temperature at which to keep books?

9 Whose library was his dukedom?

10 Name the architects responsible, in 1852 and 1962 respectively, for the original designs of the old and new British Libraries.

! Send your entry, on a postcard, to: Everyman Competition, The Sunday Review, Independent on Sunday, 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5DL, no later than Wednesday 4 January. In addition to your 10 answers, your entry should include a definition, in no more than 12 words, of the perfect book collection. The winner will be the sender of the correct entry whose definition the judges consider to be the best.