Latest Posts
‘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 […]
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 […]
A Library Tour of Manchester
Reposted with permission from the Innerpeffray Library blog Back in December 2022, I headed to Manchester for a whirlwind day tour of some of its prestigious libraries! On the day I was lucky enough to take part in a tour of Chetham’s Library and spend a little time researching at the Portico Library. Unfortunately I […]
Forgotten Bestsellers: George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle (1749-88)
In our series on Forgotten Bestsellers, we have tended so far to focus on works of fiction, which I fear may perhaps have given loyal readers a slightly false impression of the genres most often borrowed from our libraries. In fact, although fiction does become very popular in the early nineteenth century, it is not […]
Some Notes on Book Hierarchies and Genre Classification
At the moment, Katie and I are working our way through one of the major normalisation tasks we need to complete before we can release the beta version of the database to our testers. This involves going through a (quite intimidating) spreadsheet detailing the 13,000 editions currently in our system and creating works-level records and […]
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 […]