Books and Borrowing 1750-1830: An Analysis of Scottish Borrowers' Registers

This project uncovers and reinterprets the history of reading in Scotland in the period 1750 to 1830. Using formerly underexplored records of a diverse range of library borrowers, we will undertake cutting-edge research and create a valuable new resource that will reveal hidden histories of book use, knowledge dissemination and participation in literate culture. Despite nearly forty years of intensive research into the history of reading, we still know surprisingly little about reading in the past. Our knowledge tends to have an elite and masculine bias, and to be heavily weighted towards England's metropolitan centres. This is unsurprising, since until relatively recently, the well-preserved records of famous people have been far easier to exploit than more wide-ranging and complex sources. Our project will correct these biases using Scotland's uniquely rich manuscript records, considering their local contexts and their wider implications. Although the borrowing of books does not necessarily equate to the reading of books, evidence of book circulation is nevertheless key to understanding the reading life of a nation. We will collect together at least 150,000 records of book borrowing from historic borrowers' registers from 13 Scottish libraries covering a wide geographical range of provincial localities and metropolitan centres. We will include information from libraries used by the labouring classes, women, professionals, students, scholars and artisans. We will transcribe, organise and make available data through an extensive open-access database, and analyse and interpret records to test received accounts of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century culture. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of such records on this scale has never previously been attempted, and our research will allow us to confirm or reconsider hypotheses about reading and Scottish identity that currently rest on either anecdotal evidence or small case studies. Evidence from pilot projects (on Innerpeffray Library and Glasgow and St Andrews University Libraries) suggests new data may lead us to think differently about two important historical and literary movements: the Scottish Enlightenment and Romanticism. Our working hypothesis is that analysis of the substantial corpus of material in our database will significantly challenge prevailing ideas regarding which texts were most influential in our period, as well as notions of the Scottish Enlightenment as predominantly scientific, secular and metropolitan. Similarly, pilot projects suggest that the works by poets that currently dominate Romantic scholarship were very little borrowed in the period, and that accounts of the democratic nature of Scotland's intellectual culture have been substantially exaggerated. By considering the texts that were actually circulating and the people who actually borrowed them, we aim to provide concrete evidence from which scholars can begin to make new and more accurate claims. The project will be led by Katie Halsey (Stirling; PI), whose expertise in the history of reading and library history is key to the project's success and Matthew Sangster (Glasgow; CI), who will bring additional expertise in Romanticism and working with historic borrowers' registers to the project. The PI and CI will work with three postdoctoral researchers and an international advisory board, in collaboration with Aberdeen University Library, the Advocates' Library, Dumfries and Galloway Archives, Edinburgh University Library, Glasgow University Archives and Special Collections, High Life Highland, Innerpeffray Library, Kirkwall Library, John Gray Centre, Leadhills Heritage Trust, the Leighton Library, the National Library of Scotland and St Andrews University Library. Through intensive data creation, innovative academic publications and an ambitious public events programme, this project will work to radically expand our understanding of the history of reading and the history of ideas.