The Country House Library
The Country House Library

Author: Mark Purcell

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0300248687

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Beginning with new evidence that cites the presence of books in Roman villas and concluding with present day vicissitudes of collecting, this generously illustrated book presents a complete survey of British and Irish country house libraries. Replete with engaging anecdotes about owners and librarians, the book features fascinating information on acquisition bordering on obsession, the process of designing library architecture, and the care (and neglect) of collections. The author also disputes the notion that these libraries were merely for show, arguing that many of them were profoundly scholarly, assembled with meticulous care, and frequently used for intellectual pursuits. For those who love books and the libraries in which they are collected and stored, The Country House Library is an essential volume to own.

The Big House Library in Ireland
The Big House Library in Ireland

Author: Mark Purcell

Publisher: National Trust

Published: 2011-06-01

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780707804163

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In 1850 there were perhaps 2000 country houses in Ireland. Standing at the heart of its demesne, each Big House dominated its locality, but by the end of the 20th century, only a few hundred survived intact. No more than a handful were still in the possession of their original owners, or contained many of their original contents, including a substantial library. In some cases, this might well have been the only library in the district, though whether it was a carefully assembled collection or a haphazard accumulation of ancestral books would have varied from place to place. The National Trust in what is now Northern Ireland is responsible for most of the survivors. These collections have survived almost like time capsules, never subject to atmospheric pollution or the attentions of reforming librarians, and not heavily used in modern times. Many of their books contain the bookplates and ownership inscriptions of their long-dead owners, as well as instructions to binders, handwritten marginal notes and prices, and even the odd pressed flower; most are also in their original bindings. Together these features tell us a good deal about the tastes and interests of the people who owned them, and about the use, abuse and circulation of print across the whole of Ireland over a period of more than 400 years. Drawing on a wide range of previously untapped sources and evidence from the collections themselves, this lavishly-illustrated book is a must for anyone interested in the history of reading, collecting or country houses in Ireland.

Consumption and the Country House
Consumption and the Country House

Author: Jon Stobart

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-06-02

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 0191039705

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This study explores the consumption practices of the landed aristocracy of Georgian England. Focussing on three families and drawing on detailed analysis of account books, receipted bills, household inventories, diaries and correspondence, Consumption and the Country House charts the spending patterns of this elite group during the so-called consumer revolution of the eighteenth century. Generally examined through the lens of middling families, homes and motivations, this book explores the ways in which the aristocracy were engaged in this wider transformation of English society. Analysis centres on the goods that the aristocracy purchased, both luxurious and mundane; the extent to which they pursued fashionable modes and goods; the role that family and friends played in shaping notions of taste; the influence of gender on taste and refinement; the geographical reach of provisioning and the networks that lay behind this consumer activity, and the way this all contributed to the construction of the country house. The country house thus emerges as much more than a repository of luxury and splendour; it lay at the heart of complex networks of exchange, sociability, demand, and supply. Exploring these processes and relationships serves to reanimate the country house, making it an active site of consumption rather than simply an expression of power and taste, and drawing it into the mainstream of consumption histories. At the same time, the landed aristocracy are shown to be rounded consumers, driven by values of thrift and restraint as much as extravagant desires, and valuing the old as well as the new, not least as markers of their pedigree and heritance.

The First White House Library
The First White House Library

Author: Catherine M. Parisian

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0271037148

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Although many early U.S. presidents were avid readers and book collectorsGeorge Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, to name a fewthey usually brought their own books to the White House and removed them at the end of their terms. Finally in 1850, Abigail and Millard Fillmore established the first official White House collection. The library that President and First Lady Fillmore assembled reflects not only their preoccupations and interests, but also those of a number of mid-nineteenth-century Americans. This catalogue of the first White House collection not only reveals much about the first family that established it and the age in which it was assembled, but also provides insight into American library history, reading history, and book trade and distribution networks. Aside from the editor, the contributors are William Allman, Elizabeth Thacker-Estrada, and Sean Wilentz.

Book Ownership in Stuart England
Book Ownership in Stuart England

Author: David Pearson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-01-26

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0192642723

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This volume provides a wide-ranging account of the development and importance of private libraries and book ownership through the seventeenth century, based upon many kinds of evidence, including examination of thousands of books, and a list of over 1,300 known owners from diverse backgrounds. It considers questions of evolution, contents and size, and motives for book ownership, during a century when growing markets for both new and second-hand books meant that books would be found, in varying numbers, in the homes of all kinds of people from the humble to the wealthy. Book ownership by women, and by non-professional households, is explicitly explored. Other topics include the balance of motivation between books for use, or for display; the relationship between libraries and museums; and cultures of collecting. While presenting a wealth of information in this field, conveniently brought together, this volume also advances methodologies for book history, and makes extensive use of material evidence such as bookbindings. It challenges received wisdom around priorities for studying private libraries, and the terminology which is appropriate to use. In addition, the list of owners, detailed in the Appendix, make this book a work of permanent reference, alongside its value in advancing book history.

Before the Public Library
Before the Public Library

Author: Mark Towsey

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-10-23

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 9004348670

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Before the Public Library explores the emergence of community-based lending libraries in the Atlantic World before the advent of the Public Library movement in the mid-nineteenth century. Essays by eighteen scholars from a range of disciplines seek to place, for the first time, community libraries within an Atlantic context over a two-century period. Taking a comparative approach, this volume shows that community libraries played an important – and largely unrecognized – role in shaping Atlantic social networks, political and religious movements, scientific and geographic knowledge, and economic enterprise. Libraries had a distinct role to play in shaping modern identities through the acquisition and circulation of specific kinds of texts, the fostering of sociability, and the building of community-based institutions.

The Georgian London Town House
The Georgian London Town House

Author: Kate Retford

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2019-03-07

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1501337319

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For every great country house of the Georgian period, there was usually also a town house. Chatsworth, for example, the home of the Devonshires, has officially been recognised as one of the country's favourite national treasures - but most of its visitors know little of Devonshire House, which the family once owned in the capital. In part, this is because town houses were often leased, rather than being passed down through generations as country estates were. But, most crucially, many London town houses, including Devonshire House, no longer exist, having been demolished in the early twentieth century. This book seeks to place centre-stage the hugely important yet hitherto overlooked town houses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, exploring the prime position they once occupied in the lives of families and the nation as a whole. It explores the owners, how they furnished and used these properties, and how their houses were judged by the various types of visitor who gained access.

The Social Life of the Early Modern Protestant Clergy
The Social Life of the Early Modern Protestant Clergy

Author: Jacqueline Eales

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2021-01-15

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 1786837153

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The Social Life of the Early Modern Protestant Clergy provides unexpected new insights on the lives of the early modern English and Swedish clergy through case studies and broader surveys. Rosamund Oates demonstrates how the first generations of clergy wives in England used hospitality to support their husbands in the process of reform. Jacqueline Eales examines the shift from the sixteenth-century debate about the legality of clerical marriage to a positive portrayal of women from English clerical families in the years 1620–1720. William Gibson challenges the view that the eighteenth-century English episcopate were rapacious, arguing that they were often careful custodians of episcopal estates. Jonas Lindström analyses the account books of late eighteenth-century pastor Gustaf Berg to illustrate his economic ties with his parishioners, which ran alongside their religious and social relationships. Drawing on Swedish evidence, Beverly Tjerngren charts the decline of hospitality evident in the home of widowed pastor Adolph Adde in the late eighteenth century. Finally, Jon Stobart examines the aspirations to gentility of the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Northamptonshire clergy through their domestic material culture.