Completed shortly before de Bury's death in 1345, the book wasn't published until 1473, and this "little treatise" as he described it, has been regularly reprinted in every century following.

He was educated by his maternal uncle John de Willoughby,[7] and after leaving the grammar school was sent to the University of Oxford, where he studied philosophy and theology.

[6] It is often reported that de Bury became a Benedictine monk at Durham Cathedral[8][3] although several respected sources dispute this,[6] as there is no evidence of him joining the Order.

[9] He was made tutor to the future King Edward III whilst Earl of Chester (whom he would later serve as high chancellor and treasurer of England) and, according to Thomas Frognall Dibdin, inspired the prince with his own love of books.

[6] Somehow he became involved in the intrigues preceding the deposition of King Edward II, and supplied Queen Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer, in Paris with money in 1325 from the revenues of Brienne, of which province he was treasurer.

On the first of these visits he met a fellow bibliophile, Petrarch, who records his impression of Aungerville as "not ignorant of literature and from his youth up curious beyond belief of hidden things".

[11] Petrarch asked him for information about Thule, but de Bury, who promised to reply when he was back at home among his books, never responded to repeated enquiries.

In September of the same year, he was made Bishop of Durham[12] by the king, over-ruling the choice of the monks, who had elected and actually installed their sub-prior, Robert de Graystanes.

He resigned the following year,[6][14] and, after making arrangements for the protection of his northern diocese from an expected attack by the Scots, he proceeded in July 1336 to France to attempt a settlement of the claims in dispute between Edward and the French king.

[15] De Bury travelled to Coblenz and met Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor, and in the next year was sent to England to raise money.

[16] The chief authority for the bishop's life is William de Chambre, printed in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, 1691, and in Historiae conelmensis scriptores tres, Surtees Soc., 1839, who describes him as an amiable and excellent man, charitable in his diocese, and the liberal patron of many learned men, among these being Thomas Bradwardine, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Fitzralph, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, the enemy of the mendicant orders, Walter Burley, who translated Aristotle, John Mauduit the astronomer, Robert Holkot and Richard de Kilvington.

As a great part of the charm of book lies in the unconscious record of the collector's own character, the establishment of Holkot's authorship would materially alter its value.

[28] Here, de Bury describes the practices for circulation control among the students of the college, utilising at times an open-stack rather than the dominant closed-stack system.