Warning
Contains spoilers for Librorum
The title of the story is derived from the Latin idiom “Helluo librorum,” meaning an avid and insatiable bookworm. This relates not only to Violet and William’s connection to books, but also their attraction to each other. Percy’s surname, Fairbank, comes from Alfred Fairbank: a prolific calligrapher, paleographer, and author on handwriting.
Although no specific date and location are given, details within the story reveal its setting as Britain in December 1889, with the final chapter taking place in January 1890. The extra fifty pounds which Percy mentions would be worth GBP £8,220 in 2023.
The name of the university as a Scriptorium relates to medieval scriptoria found in monasteries, where books were copied and decorated with illuminations. In Latin, it means a “place for writing.” The design of the library is inspired by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden, Chetham's Library in Manchester, and the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.
Several of my own stories make cameo appearances in the library. Violet sees a green-skinned water nymph (Merrin from Blindsighted Wanderer), a cat with a ruby earring (Phoebe from Run Like Clockwork) and a woman with a pair of raven wings (Beatrice from The Nightland Quartet.) The white fox is Lumi from The Foxfires Trilogy, and similar to her, it creates the northern lights with its tail. In addition, Violet’s summary of her novel as “an unhappy woman who strikes a bargain with a witch,” not only mirrors her own situation, but also references The Garden of Bones. The excerpt which she writes at the beginning of Librorum is lifted directly from the story. Librorum was pitched as “Beauty and the Beast, if they never left the library, and were steeped in dark academia.” Beauty and the Beast is the story which Percy has been commissioned to rewrite. The two authors which he requests from the library, Villeneuve and Beaumont, are among the earliest to record the fairy tale in written form.
Percy angrily laments that “Lang has brought out a new collection of fairy tales.” The Scottish folklorist Andrew Lang released The Blue Fairy Book (containing Beauty and the Beast) in 1889. This is the book which Rouge asks Violet to read from. Violet is able to hear voices through the walls. This shows that even though the hidden library is concealed within a book, it is not a neighbouring section of the university, but rather overlaps the main library in an alternative dimension.
The fairy tales restored by Violet include Little Red Riding Hood, The Little Mermaid, The Bremen Town Musicians, and The Nightingale. The white bear from the north is a character from the Norwegian fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon. The two fairy tales relating to Rouge mirror Violet’s relationships. When she is restoring Little Red Riding Hood, she specifically writes the scene in which the Wolf seduces the girl, referencing how she was seduced and then hurt by Percy. Later, when Violet is reading Beauty and the Beast to Rouge, she focuses on the scene in which a conflicted Beauty is preparing to leave her captivity, referencing her growing feelings for William.
William captures, and later releases, Violet in the same way: disguised in a cloud of steam from a departing train. |