EDITION Spring Lecture 2025
Katherine Halsey (Professor of English Studies, University of Stirling) and Matthew Sangster (Professor of Romantic Studies, Fantasy and Cultural History, University of Glasgow):
‘Towards a True History of Reading Lives: Borrowing in Scotland, 1747-1837’
Chair: Professor Penny Fielding
16:00-17:30, Friday 21 March, Project Room (1.06), 50 George Square, University of Edinburgh
Followed by a drinks reception
Abstract: ‘Histories of reading have often relied by necessity on anecdotal accounts by relatively elite readers. However, the affordances of digital technologies allow us to interpret previously intractable institutional manuscripts to provide a far richer evidentiary basis. Structuring their lecture around two key reading concepts from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, ‘instruction’ and ‘amusement’, Professors Halsey and Sangster will explore how readers in Scotland engaged with library books as pupils, students, professionals, members of communities and leisure readers. They will demonstrate how library borrowing records reveal rich, complex, idiosyncratic readers, liberated rather than bound by the libraries with which they interacted, ranging far beyond the ostensible purposes of their institutions in their diverse engagements with print.’
Profs Halsey and Sangster will also be giving a smaller workshop earlier in the day
14:00-15:00, Friday 21 March, Centre for Research Collections, 6th Floor, Main Library, George Square
EDITION Workshop
Prof. Katherine Halsey (Stirling) and Prof. Matthew Sangster (Glasgow):
‘Edinburgh University Library’s Borrowing Registers’
Description: ‘This workshop will introduce participants to the borrowing registers of Edinburgh University Library, one of the largest surviving collections of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century borrowing records in Scotland. It will explore the borrowings of the students, professors and townspeople who used the library for a wide range of intellectual (and less intellectual) purposes.
During the workshop, attendees will examine the content and material form of the registers, discussing the ways in which ideological assumptions are encoded in the institutional practices represented. They will also trace some of the rich reading lives revealed in the registers’ pages.’
Numbers for both the lecture and workshop are limited, and you can sign up for either/both using Eventbrite here
EDITION (formerly the Centre for the History of the Book) is a collaborative initiative at the University of Edinburgh supporting new research in all aspects of the history of the book, from traditional forms of bibliography, codicology and textual editing to the latest theoretical and digital innovations.