Author: Josh Smith
Vino and Venison: Kendal’s Reading Associations in the Eighteenth Century
Although all the libraries in the Books and Borrowing database are Scottish, just across the border, the northwest of England was also home to a thriving and active network of print associations. In Westmorland, located in present-day south Cumbria, by the early nineteenth century this included libraries, booksellers, book clubs and reading rooms. Although much […]
Thomas Jefferson and the ‘extensive good’ of the Subscription Library
As regular readers of the Books and Borrowing blog will know, I spent three months of my summer as a visiting scholar at the International Center for Jefferson Studies (ICJS) at Monticello, kindly funded by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities. During my time in the United States, I was fortunate enough to […]
On the Streets of Philadelphia: Annotations and Marginalia in a Philadelphian Political Pamphlet
Fittingly, my brief tour of American subscription libraries finished where it all began, in Philadelphia and the Library Company of Philadelphia. Founded in 1731, it is America’s oldest subscription library and cultural institution. Foremost amongst the Library Company’s founders was the polymath, and future Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin. Together, Franklin and forty-nine fellow shareholders chose […]
An Englishman in New York: A visit to Manhattan and the New York Society Library
Continuing my tour of American subscription libraries, I left Charleston and flew almost 650 miles north to New York and LaGuardia Airport. New York City is a true cornucopia of libraries, ranging from the magnificence that is the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of New York Public Library, to the equally impressive Morgan Library & Museum, […]
I’d Rather Charleston: A Trip to South Carolina and the Charleston Library Society
Last year, I was lucky enough to be awarded a SGSAH visiting researcher grant to fund a three-month placement at the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello in Virginia. Whilst I’ll spend the majority of my time in Charlottesville, the nearest city to Monticello, I’m also taking advantage of being ‘stateside’ by making a […]
Bruce, the Bible, and a Borrowing: James Bruce of Kinnaird and the Leighton Library, Dunblane
Working with historical borrowing records provides you with a host of names. In an earlier blog post, I wrote about the challenges of researching the biographical details of our library borrowers. In the modern age of scholarly research, the first step in such an endeavour is often a trusty web search in the hope of […]
A Return to the Records of the Bristol Library Society
In September of last year, I made my first research trip to Bristol where over the course of two weeks I photographed the records of one of the libraries my doctoral project examines, the Bristol Library Society (1772-1894). I discussed the fruits of that search in a previous blog post. I was fortunate to return […]
William MacGregor Stirling: Minister, Historian, and Antiquarian
It may seem facile to remark that behind each borrowing record is a borrower. Library records alone often tell us little of their identity. Typically, this may include the price of admission paid by a library borrower, perhaps a signature signed into the subscription book, or details of their occupation or address. For most library […]
The Records of the Bristol Library Society
Taking advantage of the recent loosening of Covid-19 restrictions, I was finally able to make the long trip to Bristol to access the library records which form the other half of my doctoral project. My project examines political reading and library membership at two British subscription libraries during the first three decades of the nineteenth […]
Scottish Libraries and the Associational World
‘Ours is the age of societies. For the redress of every oppression that is done under the sun, there is a public meeting. For the cure of every sorrow by which our land or our race can be visited, there are patrons, vice-presidents, and secretaries. For the diffusion of every blessing of which mankind can […]