Book collecting in Ireland and Britain, 1650–1850

Elizabethanne Boran, editor

This volume explores the world of book collecting in early modern Ireland and Britain. It investigates the modalities of collecting texts, both manuscript and printed, and draws attention to the wider impact of the European book trade on changing reading habits and availability of books. Early modern book collectors bought books for a variety of reasons. By combining case studies of institutional and private book collectors the essays not only demonstrate how individual collections came into being, but also how both private and public collections interacted with each other. Book collecting, far from being a solitary exercise, was dependent on the expanding Republic of Letters. The essays therefore offer vital insights into the communal world of the early modern book trade.

Contributors: Bernadette Cunningham (RIA), Marc Caball (UCD), Barbara McCormack (MU), Elizabethanne Boran, Marie Boran (NUIG), William Poole (U Oxford), David Pearson (City of London Corporation), Rebecca Bowd (Leeds U Library), Gabriel Moshenska (UCL),  Karen Baston (ind.), Mark Purcell (Cambridge U Library), Andrew Pettegree & Arthur der Weduwen (U St Andrew’s).

For a full list of contents, see button on right.

Dr Elizabethanne Boran is the Librarian of the Edward Worth Library in Dr Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin. She is the editor of the three-volume Correspondence of James Ussher, 1600–1656, published by the Irish Manuscript Commission in 2015.