Libraries, Books, and Collectors of Texts, 1600-1900: (Routledge Studies in Cultural History)

This book presents the collectors’ roles as prominently as the collections of books and texts which they assembled. Contributors explore the activities and networks shaping a range of continental and transcontinental European public and private collections during the Renaissance, Enlightenment and modern eras. They study the impact of class, geographical location and specific cultural contexts on the gathering and use of printed and handwritten texts and other printed artefacts. The volume explores the social dimension of book collecting, and considers how practices of collecting developed during these periods of profound cultural, social and political change.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Annika Bautz and James Gregory Part I: Renaissance Collectors 1. Building a Library Without Walls: The Early Years of the Bodleian Library Robyn Adams and Louisiane Ferlier 2. Universal Knowledge and Self-Fashioning: Cardinal Bernardino Spada’s Collection of Books Giulia Weston 3. "A Paradise & Cabinet of Rarities": Thomas Browne, His Library, and Communities of Collecting in Seventeenth-Century Norfolk Lucy Gwynn 4. Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn: A "Collecting Friendship" as Told Through a Reevaluation of Manuscript PL 2237 and Print Album PL 2062 in the Pepys Library, Magdalene College Cambridge Catherine Sutherland Part II: Gentlemen and Their Libraries from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century 5. "Ye Best Tast of Books & Learning of Any Other Country Gentn": The Library of Thomas Mostyn of Gloddaith, c.1676–1692 Mary Chadwick and Shaun Evans 6. Fashioning a Gentleman’s Library: Displaying the Cottonian Collection, 1791–1816 Susan Leedham 7. "He Was Always Fond of Books": John Couch Adams’s Genesis as an Academic Collector Sophie Defrance Part III: Beyond Mere Records of Collecting: On Book Catalogues 8. From Francis Bacon’s Historia Literarum to Samuel Johnson’s Literary History: The Catalogus Bibliothecae Harleianae (1743–45) Alex Wright 9. Booksellers’ Catalogues and Readership in the Luso-Brazilian World Luciane Scarato 10. Reading in the Provinces: Plymouth Public Library’s Nineteenth-Century Catalogues Annika Bautz Part IV: Bibliomania 11. Satire and the Bibliomania in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain Shayne Husbands 12. The "Fancy for Fine Printing": Collecting Whittaker’s Golden Magna Carta James Gregory 13. Blurred Lines in the History of Domestic Libraries in the Age of Dibdin’s Bibliomania Keith Manley

About the Author :
Annika Bautz is Associate Professor of English and Head of the School of Humanities and Performing Arts at Plymouth University. James Gregory is Associate Professor in British History at the University of Plymouth.

Review :
"The quality of the historical scholarship is high. Many of the papers offer fascinating insights into archival practices in little-known parts of the world... Above all, Manuscripts and Archives is to be applauded for traversing the divide that so often separates medieval and early-modern historians from their colleagues who study more remote societies. The inclusion of a solitary contribution from a practising archivist is a small but welcome bonus." - Geoffrey Yeo, Library & Information History