Early Modern semi-public libraries workshop

In association with the History of Libraries seminar.

This event brings together work on a wide range of early modern private and institutional libraries which were in some way public. Speakers will introduce research on libraries and collectors in England, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany, inviting discussion on topics such as library acquisition, preservation, and methods of management.

The speakers are as below:

Tamara Atkin is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern English Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. She is currently completing a book about habits of book reuse in early modern England.

Anna-Lujz Gilbert is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, UCL, where she is building a database of the earliest donations to the Bodleian Library, c. 1600-1620, for the ‘Shaping Scholarship’ project. Her PhD from the University of Exeter was on the parish and town libraries of early modern Devon.

Dr Jacqueline Glomski is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Editing Lives & Letters (CELL), UCL. Her research focuses on theories of book collecting and library formation in the 17th century. She has recently co-edited and contributed to the volume Seventeenth-Century Libraries: Problems & Perspectives, published by Brill.

Kentaro Inagaki is a PhD fellow at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen. Within the framework of the ERC Synergy Project, ‘The European Qur’an’, he is completing a PhD dissertation on Levinus Warner (d. 1665), the German orientalist and diplomat, entitled ‘Between Two Worlds: Levinus Warner and Islamic Literature’.

Luke Kelly, PhD student at Mittuniversitetet (Mid-Sweden University), is currently researching the social practice of book donations to cathedral libraries in 17th-century England. As a social historian of the book, his research seeks to demonstrate how book donations helped to establish and maintain complex networks.

Helen Kemp is the 21st Plume Librarian at Thomas Plume’s Library, and Community Fellow in the School of Philosophical, Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Essex. She studies reading and writing in the early modern world and is currently working on a monograph about 17th century notebooks.

John-Mark Philo is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. His current project, “English and Scottish Scholars at the Global Library”, examines how Anglo-Scots scholars, merchants, and diplomats shared and accessed new knowledge at libraries in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. He is especially interested in how libraries have functioned, and still function today, as social and community spaces.

Alexandra Plane is a librarian and PhD student who is reconstructing the Scottish and English libraries of King James VI and I. This includes considering the extent to which the royal libraries functioned as a semi-public resource.

Jessica G. Purdy is Associate Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of St Andrews. She completed her PhD on parish libraries and readership at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2021. Her research interests focus on the history of books, libraries and reading, and the history of education

Caren Reimann is a post-doctoral researcher at the Herzog August Bibliothek (HAB), working at the project “Knowledge of the World. Early modern aristocracy and its cosmopolitan interest in collecting”, reconstructing noble woman’s libraries. Her PhD from the University of Würzburg was on the Arabic Gospels of the roman printing shop Typographia Medicea.

Ana Sáez-Hidalgo is Associate Professor at the Universidad de Valladolid. Her research is concerned with late medieval and early modern Anglo-Spanish cultural and literary relations, with special focus on book culture. Her most recent publications explore the cross-cultural dimension of the textual and material exchanges between Spain and England and the circulation of knowledge, ideas, and objects through English Catholic exiles on the Continent.

Ted Simonds is a rare book cataloguer currently working to catalogue early printed books in the Sion College Library collection, housed at Lambeth Palace Library. They completed the MSc in Book History & Material Culture at the University of Edinburgh, and undertook a placement at the National Library of Scotland, before training at the University of Reading Special Collections.

Andrea Thomas studied History at Somerville College, Oxford, and produced a doctoral thesis on ‘Renaissance Culture at the Court of James V’ at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of two books, several articles and essays, and has been a trustee of the Cranston Library since 2003.

Those wishing to attend should book a free ticket via the IES website.