Latest Posts
Introducing the Chambers’ Library Map of Borrowers, 1827-1830
The Books and Borrowing team are pleased to announce the release of the Chambers’ Library Map of Borrowers, 1827-1830. What began as a quick experiment in georeferencing the borrower addresses recorded in the ledger of Robert Chambers’ Edinburgh circulating library has developed significantly over the past few months, thanks to the hard work of Brian […]
Mrs Felix Yaniewicz and the Chambers’ Circulating Library, 1829
Sometimes the stars seem to align when doing research. For Books and Borrowing, the configuration of the arrival and transcription of the Chambers’ Borrowing Register and the identification of one of its borrowers has been almost spooky for me in the case of Mrs Yaniewicz. Mrs Yaniewicz took a ‘New Books’ quarterly subscription from the […]
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, […]
The Final Year: What Goes In?
The end of Year 2 is an odd time for a project like this. We can, I think, rightly be proud of where we’ve got to despite pandemic circumstances, with over 125,000 records currently in the system. This meets our benchmark and puts us on course to reach our target of 150,000 records by the […]
Event Report: Books and Borrowing: Edinburgh’s 19th Century Readers
On Thursday 23rd June, members of the Books and Borrowing team were joined by an online audience for an event highlighting our work on Edinburgh’s historic libraries. This session was hosted by the National Library of Scotland as part of their regular webinar series, and we’re grateful to the library as a whole, and particularly […]
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 […]
Eighteenth-Century Studies at Stirling Writing Retreat
From 23-27 May 2022, several members of the Books and Borrowing team (Katie, Gerry, Maxine, Cleo, Josh, and Danni) participated in the Eighteenth-Century Studies at Stirling Writing Retreat at the beautiful Alexander House in rural Perthshire. Fifteen scholars came together to write and to support each other in that endeavour. The idea of the retreat […]
The Pirate, The Sea and a Cargo of Books
by Linda Cracknell The moral compass was already set when I launched North in May to run a creative writing workshop at the Orkney Library & Archive, Kirkwall, Orkney. The Books and Borrowing project had established that there was an enthusiastic readership in nineteenth-century Orkney for both local Mary Brunton’s best-selling novel of moral excellence, […]
Abbotsford; or, The Day Out
The ‘Books and Borrowing’ team recently had the pleasure of a long-awaited trip to Abbotsford, the former home of Walter Scott on the river Tweed in the Scottish Borders. As I have discussed previously here and here on this blog, Scott has a peculiar importance for the study of library borrowing records between 1750 and […]
Guest Post – An Overview of Glasgow in the Eighteenth Century
by Dr Craig Lamont, University of Glasgow In April, the Books and Borrowing project examined a swathe of material relating to eighteenth-century Glasgow, with papers on registers, marginalia, the missing lectures of Adam Smith, and the cultural context of William Hunter’s library. To set the scene, I provided an overview of Glasgow in the period, […]