Category: Books
Supernatural Visions: A Halloween Post
Second Sight Studying the Supernatural An entry showing that George Graham Bell borrowed ‘Aubreys Miscellanies’ from the Advocates Library on 1 January 1823 seems innocuous enough. But dare to open the library catalogue the full title reveals a world of the supernatural: Miscellanies, viz. I. Day-fatality. II. Local-fatality. III. Ostenta. IV. Omens. V. Dreams. VI. […]
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: The World Displayed; or, a Curious Collection of Voyages and Travels
From the moment I began to seriously crunch the numbers on the borrowers’ records of the Royal High School, the unrivalled popularity of two titles came to the fore: Charles Rollin’s Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians, and Greeks and The World Displayed; or, a Curious Collection of Voyages […]
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 […]
Forgotten Best-Sellers: Alain-René Lesage, Gil Blas (1715-35)
Over the past few weeks, prompted by seeing a copy of it in Walter Scott’s library during our trip to Abbotsford, I have been enjoying reading another forgotten best-seller, Alain-René Lesage’s L’Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane. I’ve been reading it in the 1748 translation by Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, […]
Robert Simson’s Books at the University of Glasgow
One of the many delights of working on the Books and Borrowing project is the discovery and inclusion of more borrowing registers as we progress. From our original fourteen, we have gone to eighteen. Our latest arrival, the Simson Borrowing Register, is linked to the Glasgow University Library and we thank the Archives and Special […]
Poetry: A Reflection
21 March 2022 was World Poetry Day. The Books and Borrowing team were either observing the strike action called by the University and College Union (UCU), or respecting the digital picket line, so we did not post a blog that day (for those interested in this dispute, please see here). However, I didn’t want to […]
International Women’s Day 2022
Today, 8 March, 2022 is International Women’s Day, and I’m therefore going to take the opportunity to reflect a little, both on the women writers and readers we find in our borrowing records, as I did last year and also on those we don’t see – the wives, daughters, mothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, friends, and […]
Il étoit une fois…: The Advocates Library and the ‘Le Cabinet des Fées’
When I began transcribing the borrowing registers of the Advocates Library, I expected to find that law reports, Session Papers, periodicals, and books of law were popular with the erudite lawyers of the Faculty of Advocates. I took stock upon the completion of the transcriptions for two registers covering the period from 1 April 1788 […]
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 […]