Family Networks and Social Connections in the Survival of a Seventeenth-Century Library Collection (original) (raw)
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Library & Information History, 2009
Provenance is usually attributed through the analysis of marks of ownership on books. Frustratingly, however, a great many book collectors leave little or no direct evidence of this kind. This article re-examines the early history of the library at Dunham Massey, a National Trust property in Cheshire, and demonstrates that in this instance, paradoxically, it is precisely the lack of any mark of provenance which allows ownership to be assigned. It identifies a new stratum within the library at Dunham: a collection of books linked by a common absence of contemporary provenance. This collection is analysed alongside surviving printed and archival sources relating to Henry Booth, 1st Earl of Warrington, and its ownership hypothesized and tested. The article concludes with a brief analysis of the impact of the identification of a new seventeenth-century private library, both locally and in a broader historical framework.
Book Ownership and Authorial Identity: Reconstructing the (Im)Personal Library of Arthur Hugh Clough
2005
One traditional way for scholars to explore and to document the mental world of their subjects has been through their personal libraries. To the historical philologist and source scholar, the examination of the author' s own copy of a book, especially when corroborative evidence of the author reading the title is available in inscriptions, marginalia, notebooks, journals or letters, has long seemed among the most secure ways to turn the fleeting verbal echoes of influence or kinship into the security of documented annotation. Likewise, where an author' s personal library survives essentially intact, systematic cataloguing and analysis allow an overview of the author' s thought world and the weighting of different interests and influences at differing phases of the author's development. It all seems so obvious, so old hat. But, faced with X's copy of a book by Y, most scholars find the approach irresistible, reverting almost unthinkingly to the kind of author-centred interpretative agenda they might in other circumstances disparage. In this paper, I want, first, briefly to argue primarily with reference to Tennyson but also from my recent experience in special collections acquisitions that, like most traditional scholarly approaches, the study of an author' s books or personal library is ripe both for sceptical reappraisal and resuscitation, and then, also briefly, to apply such reappraisal to some long-untapped evidence about Clough's books and reading. Using book ownership to represent someone's mind is certainly not a new idea, nor, NA VSA Books & Identity-2 despite the taint of footnote-happy philology, is it intrinsically anti-literary. Chaucer characterizes the Clerke of Oxenforde through the books he owns, Shakespeare represents Pro spero through the "dukedom large enough" of his personal library, and, from George Eliot's Dr. Casaubon to E. M. Forster's Leonard Bast to Charles Frazier's Ada Monroe, novelists have depicted their characters through their books. 1 It seems intuitively right to apply the same general insight to studying the authors themselves. Nor has the approach been neglected by Victorianists. Even if the libraries themselves do not survive for most Victorian authors, inventories frequently do, most often in the form of the sale or auction catalogues when a library was being sold off.2 Or pietas of family or friends may have led to a separate catalogue at an early date, as for Scott with the Bannatyne Club's Catalogue o/the Library at Abbotsford (1838) or for Carlyle with the room-by-room lists of books in the guide to the Carlyles' Chelsea home (1896). J Where the libraty itself survives, there may be a modern catalogue, as with Nancy Campbell's catalogue of the various Tennyson family libraries or William Baker's study and catalogue oft, he George Eliot-George Henry Lewes books in Dr. Williams's library4 Sometimes the catalogue has been much enhanced by the research and annotation provided by a modern scholarly editor, as in Philip Kelley's great reconstruction of the Browning libraries, or William Baker's books on the George Eliot-George Henry Lewes and the Wilkie Collins libraries, and such catalogues may list, not only surviving books now dispersed among many different libraries and private owners, but also entries for books that do not survive, but that are known from other sources once to have been in the author' s possession. s Campbell' s catalogue of the books that survive from Somersby Rectory, for instance, is much less extensive than the list previously reconstructed from the auction record by G. Moore in a still-unpublished Nottingham M.A. thesis. Ii From there, of course, it is a hop-and-a-skip to the study, not of an author's library, but of
Book Ownership in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland: a Local Case Study of Dumfriesshire Inventories
Scottish Historical Review, 2012
Late eighteenth-century Scotland saw a period of growth in the availability of print material set against the backdrop of the Scottish Enlightenment. Yet despite much scholarly attention having been paid to the Enlightenment and an increasing interest in the books people were reading, little attention has been paid to the books that would have been found in individual Scottish houses and what they reveal about Scottish mindsets in these years. This paper addresses this topic, using a local case study of after-death inventories of personal possessions. These rich records reveal the size of household libraries, the varieties of books they contained, variation by occupation and social class, and the extent to which their owners engaged with and were influenced by debates and ideas of the time. In addition, the evidence allows us to consider the uses to which different types of books were put, examine differences between urban and provincial Scotland, and consider how and where people b...
New perspectives on pre Restoration Irish book history
Literature Compass, 2018
By focusing on the historian and antiquarian, Sir James Ware (1594–1666), this essay looks at potentially new ways book history can be analyzed. In so doing, it challenges preconceived ideas that the various groupings in Ireland were diametrically opposed to supporting any kind of common endeavour.
2017
In late-eighteenth-century Dublin, options were limited for an expanding reading public who wished to consult quality printed works. During this period of the Anglican Ascendancy, membership to institutional libraries or participation in associational activities was largely limited to elites and those from the Established Church. The Dublin Library Society provided a public reference library service without restrictions of confession, connection, elections, or status”with admission based only on ability to pay the initial two-guinea charge (and one thereafter). Using hitherto neglected primary sources, particularly contemporary newspapers, this thesis will examine the origins of the Dublin Library, public reaction towards it, and its position promoting cultural patriotism and inclusivity in public library service provision in late-eighteenth-century Dublin. Also, a detailed prosopographical analysis of the librarys founding subscribers, specifically for their occupational background...