Latest Posts
Seeking the Sublime: Elizabeth Montagu in Scotland, August 1766
Cuchullin sat by Tura’s wall; by the tree of the rustling leaf.—His spear leaned against the mossy rock. His shield lay by him on the grass. As he thought of mighty Carbar a hero whom he slew in war; the scout of the ocean came, Moran the son of Fithil. – Fingal, Book I Elizabeth […]
Women Borrowers
Today is International Women’s Day, and so I have been reflecting on the women in our records. I thought I would begin with a famous passage from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, in which the speaker is barred from entering a library in one of the ‘Oxbridge’ colleges: [H]ere I was actually at […]
Library Lives: Books, Borrowers, and Beyond: Innerpeffray Library, Saturday 22 May
The Books and Borrowing Project is pleased to announce the project’s first public event, to be held at the famous Innerpeffray Library on 22nd May at 2pm. This free online event will highlight Innerpeffray’s unique Borrowers’ Register and the stories it can tell about the library’s books and borrowers. Come along to find out about […]
World Book Day with Books and Borrowing
Today, Thursday 4 March 2021, we celebrate World Book Day with a look at some of the favourite books in our partner libraries’ records. In some of our previous blogs, Alex Deans wrote about the popularity of Jane Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs (1810) at Westerkirk Miners’ Library in the period 1813 to 1816, Gerard McKeever […]
Books, Borrowing, and the Bannatyne Club
By Kelsey Jackson Williams Not many people today would recognise the Bannatyne Club if you mentioned it in casual conversation, but in 1820s Edinburgh it was a name on everyone’s lips. Branded ‘harder to gain entry to than parliament’, the exclusive society, at first limited to thirty-five members, later to a hundred, had been founded […]
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 […]
Jane Porter and the Historical Novel before Waverley
“The war which had desolated Scotland was now at an end. Ambition seemed satiated; and the vanquished, after passing under the yoke of their enemy, concluded they might wear their chains in peace. Such were the hopes of those Scottish noblemen who, early in the spring of 1296, signed the bond of submission to a […]
Books for Borrowing: Walter Scott
Walter Scott’s novels typically feature at least one central character who has been conspicuously shaped by their reading and/or by experiences of oral storytelling. These characters present a natural avatar for the reader and also stand in for the author himself. There are versions of this in Scott’s earlier metrical romances, but the prototypical example […]
Reporting on Progress
Just before Christmas, I wrote the second of the project’s progress reports, designed to bring the members of our Advisory Board up to date with how we have been doing. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank every member of our board – Prof. Jennie Batchelor; Dr Robert Betteridge; Dr John Crawford; D. Alexander […]
Transcription Tales: The Visitors of Innerpeffray
Transcription is essential for most archival research and can be both a very enjoyable and frustrating activity. It is incredibly satisfying to read a piece of old handwriting and work out what it means and how it can help you with your research – alternatively, coming across handwritten text that you cannot decipher is infuriating. […]