Academic collection practices in recent years have extended to the private libraries of notable individual authors. As a consequence, book historians have become more interested in the study of provenance of the contents of these libraries, while literary scholars have devoted more attention to authorial annotations. At the same time, the Internet has encouraged both scholarly and hobbyist reconstructions of private libraries (see, for example, the “Legacy Libraries” on Librarything.com). Although there are many bibliographies and reconstructions of the libraries of authors, this is the first general consideration of these libraries and serves as an introduction to best practices for academic libraries in their acquisition, cataloging and issues of access. This collection begins with principal editor Richard Oram’s historical overview of writers’ libraries and institutional collecting, focusing primarily on English-language authors. The co-editor, Joseph Nicholson, has provided a definitive review of best cataloging and arrangement practices that facilitate scholarly access. The bookseller Kevin Mac Donnell discusses the marketing of these collections and obstacles to placing intact author libraries in institutions. Also included are case studies by Amanda Golden and David Faulds relating to the personal libraries of the poets Anne Sexton and Ted Hughes, indicating how these collections have the potential to enhance archival research. Fiction writers Iain Sinclair, Russell Banks, Jim Crace, poet Ted Kooser, and biographer Ron Powers describe their (sometimes passionate) relationship with books and their own personal libraries. The concluding chapter, a location guide to over 500 individual libraries, will be invaluable to scholars and librarians who want to know where writers’ libraries are currently located, what happened to them (if they are known to have been sold or dispersed), and what has been written about them.

This wide-ranging volume collects together twelve of the author’s longer essays, mainly drawn from those first published in the last two decades. Chiefly consisting of micro-studies of a variety of different aspects of early modern English history, the book concerns itself with social and economic change, the period of the English Revolution and its long-lasting impact, with Puritanism, with the family as a social institution, and with historical consciousness and different forms of historical writing. Some of the essays focus on a particular individual, not all well known – William Camden, John Milner, and Ralph Dutton – to open up a broader theme. One boldly attempts a comparison over three centuries of the evolution of local history as a subject on both sides of the Atlantic. Two other essays reach out into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but do so with echoes of the subject matter of some of those dealing with the early modern period. The inter-connectedness of social history, local history, and historiography is stressed and illustrated throughout. Both specialists and non-specialists will find much to interest them in this varied and rewarding volume.

This directory is a handy on-volume discovery tool that will allow readers to locate rare book and special collections in the British Isles. Fully updated since the second edition was published in 1997. this comprehensive and up-to-date guide encompasses collections held in libraries, archives, museums and private hands. The Directory: Provides a national overview of rare book and special collections for those interested in seeing quickly and easily what a library holds Directs researchers to the libraries most relevant for their research Assists libraries considering acquiring new special collections to assess the value of such collections beyond the institution,showing how they fit into a ‘unique and distinctive’ model. Each entry in the Directory provides background information on the library and its purpose, full contact details, the quantity of early printed books, information about particular subject and language strengths, information about unique works and important acquisitions, descriptions of named special collections and deposited collections. Readership: Researchers, academic liaison librarians and library managers.

A directory of authors and books read by Wordsworth before the age of thirty.

What are the influences that shaped the language used by one of the nineteenth century's greatest writers? How did his religious beliefs, the books he owned, the paintings and music he loved, affect almost sixty years' output of poems, plays, essays, and letters? This book attempts to define Browning's understanding of the nature and use of words and syntax by considering not only a full range of texts from the 1833 Pauline to the 1889 Asolando, but also the ideas important to Browning, the historical context in which he lived, and the other artistic passions that played a part in his life. In this companion volume to Tennyson's Language, Donald Hair establishes Browning's place at the crossroads between empirical and idealist traditions and explains his "double view" of language, arguing that both Locke and the Congregationalists found language to be at the same time empty and a God-given essential. The Victorian age's anti-theatrical bias, which Browning came to share, and his reading of predecessors, principally Quarles, Bunyan, Donne, and Smart, also shaped his understanding of the diction of poetry. Hair conceives of Browning's language as a theoretical whole, encompassing words, genres, rhyme, syntax, and phonetics. He also links Browning's interest in music with his rhyming, the most essential and characteristic feature of his prosody, and relates his interest in painting to the interpretation of the visual image in the emblem and in typology.

Beginning with 1953, entries for Motion pictures and filmstrips, Music and phonorecords form separate parts of the Library of Congress catalogue. Entries for Maps and atlases were issued separately 1953-1955.

A comprehensive 1996 listing of authors and books read by William Wordsworth during the years of his greatest poetry.

This book arose from a conference, supported by the Royal Historical Society, which took place at Institute of Historical Research, University of London. The event was held under the auspices of the Bedford Center for the History of Women, Royal Holloway, University of London.