Author: Cleo O'Callaghan Yeoman
The Bancroft Chronicles
In November, I was lucky enough to spend a month working as a Visiting Scholar in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley, as part of my PhD. Whilst there, I spent some time at the Bancroft Library, which is home to the University’s special collections. Established in 1859, the Bancroft Library (pictured […]
Forgotten Best-Sellers: Elizabeth Hamilton’s The Cottagers of Glenburnie (1808)
In 1808, Scottish author Elizabeth Hamilton published her third and final novel, titled The Cottagers of Glenburnie. As Pam Perkins observes in her introduction to what is currently the only extant scholarly edition of this novel, Cottagers became ‘when it was first published […] an immediate critical and popular success’.[1] It is with this success […]
‘Smith, Ferguson, and Witherspoon at 300’: Conference Report
Last month, Katie and I had the pleasure of attending the ‘Smith, Ferguson, and Witherspoon at 300’ conference (18–21 July 2023), hosted by the Institute of Intellectual History and the Department of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, and organised alongside the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society, the Institute for the Study of Scottish Philosophy, […]
Books and Borrowing’s Big Day Out
On Monday 26th June, Matt, Maxine, Kit, Gerry, Isla, Jill Dye, and I all met up for a Books and Borrowing Summer Social day out in Edinburgh (the rest of the team members were either abroad, unwell, or otherwise engaged, so do stay tuned for a full-team day out update later this year!). The idea […]
Conference Report: BARS ‘Romantic Boundaries’
Over the course of the past year, I have been organising, in my remit as Postgraduate Representative (PR) for the British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS), the 2023 BARS Postgraduate and Early Career Conference, alongside my fellow PR, Yu-Hung Tien (University of Edinburgh), and Dr Amanda Blake Davis (University of Derby), the Early Career Representative […]
Adam Smith; Or, ‘Tis 300 Years Since
This year marks 300 years since the birth of Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790). More specifically, today – Monday 5 June 2023 – marks Smith’s 300th birthday.[1] Born in Kirkcaldy, in Fife, Scotland, Smith first attended the University of Glasgow as a student in 1737, aged just 14. He subsequently studied for a […]
Forgotten Best-Sellers: Susan Ferrier’s The Inheritance (1824)
In 1824, Edinburgh-born Scottish novelist Susan Ferrier published her second of three novels, titled The Inheritance. The Inheritance was preceded by Marriage, published in 1818, and followed by Destiny, which was published in 1831. Ronnie Young describes The Inheritance as ‘the most critically successful of [Ferrier’s] works’,[1] and indeed, on 11 June 1824, Ferrier’s publisher, […]
Forgotten Best-Sellers: Mary Brunton’s Self-Control (1811)
In her blog last week, Katie Halsey introduced the first of a new series within the Books and Borrowing blog: the ‘Forgotten Best-Sellers’. These best-sellers must ‘either top the charts in a single library, or…appear frequently across a large number of different libraries’; they are works that ‘were clearly popular and important in their own […]
Novel Reading in Post-Enlightenment Scotland: a PhD
Hello! My name is Cleo O’Callaghan Yeoman, and I am delighted to be joining the Books and Borrowing team as I begin my SGSAH/AHRC-funded PhD this month, co-supervised by the Universities of Stirling and Glasgow. My PhD project centres upon analysing the relationships between novel reading and forms of ‘improvement’ within Post-Enlightenment Scotland. By combining […]