Latest Posts
Digital Picket
We are observing the strike actions called by the University and College Union (UCU) and respecting the digital picket. Our blogs will return October. The UCU website has more information about the strike actions.
Forgotten Best-Sellers: ‘Bell’s Surgery’
‘Bell’s Surgery’, or, to give it its proper title, A System of Surgery, was published in its first edition in six volumes between 1783 and 1788. It was a popular textbook that became what Richard Sher describes as a ‘strong seller’[1] with seven editions in print by 1801. Its influence went beyond its sales figures. […]
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 […]
A Visitor to Innerpeffray Library: Rupert Vardon de Burgh Griffith
Reposted with permission from the Innerpeffray Library blog: https://innerpeffraylibrary.co.uk/visitor-vignettes-lieutenant-rupert-vardon-de-burgh-griffith/ Almost exactly 124 years ago, on 22nd August 1899, one of my favourite signatures was entered into the Innerpeffray Visitors’ Books by a young visitor to the library. Every time I come across this page, I am delighted all over again that Alice Mary Griffith allowed […]
Stirling’s Historic Libraries
Here at the University of Stirling, we have been thinking about ways in which we might contribute to the celebrations for the 900th anniversary of Stirling burgh, and a colleague asked me to talk about Stirling’s historic libraries. Regular readers of this blog will know that none of the libraries featured in the Books and […]
‘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, […]
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 […]
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 […]