Events

Forthcoming Events

EDITION Symposium 2026: Smith’s 'Wealth of Nations' at 250

Friday 20 November 2026, 13.00-18.00

Centre for Research Collections, Edinburgh University Library, and Project Room 1.06, 50 George Square 

Adam Smith’s 'An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations' has a reasonable case for the title of single most influential Scottish book. It is routinely cited as the primary account of, and blueprint for, the liberal economics of the eighteenth century that evolved into modern capitalism. It also formed an essential basis for the leading critique of that same capitalist system launched by Karl Marx.

Published in London in two expensive quarto-size volumes on Saturday the 9th of March 1776 by William Strahan and Thomas Cadell, the first edition of the 'Wealth of Nations' is currently in its 250th anniversary year. In collaboration with the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, this symposium will mark the occasion by reconsidering the genesis of the book, its contexts and its politics. 

The event is in two parts:

Main symposium, Project Room 1.06, 50 George Square 15.00–18.00

We are delighted to be hosting a fantastic line-up of speakers, including:

Michelle Craig (Glasgow), Briony Harding (St Andrews), Tom Pye (Oxford) and Craig Smith (Glasgow).

The talks will be followed by a wine reception.

Workshop, Centre for Research Collections, Edinburgh University Library, 13.00-14.00

This will be a special opportunity to see volumes from Adam Smith’s personal library held in the university collections, plus a range of other associated materials.

Past Events

Edinburgh Bibliographical Seminar and Workshop

Catalogues and Registers as Evidence in the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology 

20-24 July 2026

University of Edinburgh

EDITION is supporting an interdisciplinary seminar that aims to investigate the significant potential of historical registers of commodities, books, and borrowing as sources for the study of the history of mathematics, science, and technology, as well as intellectual history. Beyond their practical applications, catalogues and registers of books can reveal the intellectual landscape of a particular time and place. They can show which books were available, what was considered important, and how knowledge was organised and categorised. By examining these registers, catalogues, and records, we can track the circulation of ideas across disciplines and regions. This examination can provide context for understanding the development of scientific and mathematical thought. As the Books and Borrowings, 1750-1830, project has demonstrated, careful attention to the social context of registers of borrowing can thicken our descriptions and enrich our understanding of how knowledge has been used. Linked to the vision of the great or universal library, the concept of secular universalism has long been thought to spread its legitimisation through the globalisation of modern mathematics. Building on Kant, universalist logicians and philosophers lay claim to a secular universal mode of reasoning that is common to all minds, displacing previous evangelical universalist modes such as those associated with Leibniz, and non-universal epistemes. Becoming widespread from the globalisation of curricular reforms like William Whewell’s or the Madras system, this secular universal conception demanded a way to address the accumulated knowledge and traditions of the past to clear space for its own epistemic break. That is, modern, global mathematics is a site where ideas must somehow contend with the past before secular universalism can become universal.

Schedule and Further Details

Spring Lecture 2026

Emily Wingfield (Professor of English and Older Scots Literature, University of Birmingham): 'Initial Steps Towards an Edition of the Poetry and Related Writings of Mary, Queen of Scots'

Friday 27 March, 4.00-5.30

Chair: Dr Kate Ash-Irisarri

Venue: Project Room, 50 George Square

Abstract: In this lecture I reflect on the initial steps I have taken to produce a new critical edition, and English translation, of the literary works of Mary, Queen of Scots. In addition to considering the need for, and opportunities of, such an edition, I also evaluate the challenges it poses, focusing here in particular on difficulties of authorship and attribution, and of capturing Mary's notable word play in translation. I concentrate especially on the notorious Casket Sonnets, thinking about: what place these texts might play in the canon of Mary's writings, how best to present and translate them, and how/why we might make a new case (or cases) for Marian authorship.

Spring Workshop 2026

Prof. Emily Wingfield: 'Reading and Writing Mary, Queen of Scots'

Friday 27 March, 2.00-3.00

Centre for Research Collections, Edinburgh University Library

Abstract: In this workshop, we examine a range of items from Edinburgh University Library's Heritage Collections relating to writings by and about Mary, Queen of Scots, including copies of George Buchanan's 'De Maria Scotorum Regina' and 'Ane Detectioun of the duinges of Marie Quene of Scottes', and the latter's publication of the Casket Sonnets (discussed in the later lecture). We set these volumes alongside additional Marian material, including copies of Mary's 1566 will, and letters sent to Elizabeth I, and alongside material relating to Scotland's royal women and/or their European counterparts (including a copy of Virgil's 'Aeneid' associated variously with James III of Scotland, and James I's daughter, Eleanor, and a Book of Hours belonging to Anne of Brittany).

Autumn Lecture 2025

Helen Williams (Associate Professor of English Literature, Northumbria University): 'From Newcastle to the Middle East: The Work of Sarah Hodgson, Printer'

Friday 10 October 2025, 4.00-5.30

Chair: Dr Robert Irvine

Venue: Centre for Research Collections, Edinburgh University Library

Abstract: 'The Bible Sarah Hodgson printed in the Arabic language in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1811 was the first to emerge in England since the seventeenth century. That it should be produced in the North East, rather than in one of the two university towns, seemed unthinkable, and for a time, was under question. This talk examines the Bible as a transnational commodity that provides insights into the challenges and ingenuity of a woman’s  work in a global book trade during the early years of the nineteenth century.'

Autumn Workshop 2025

Helen Williams (Northumbria): ‘Identifying Women’s Work in the Newcastle Book Trades’ 

Friday 10 October 2025

Venue: Centre for Research Collections, Edinburgh University Library

Autumn's EDITION workshop, led by Dr Helen Williams, explored women's work in the early nineteenth-century Newcastle book trades and engaged with rare books in the Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh. The books included a Bible in the Arabic language printed by Sarah Hodgson, which Dr Williams discussed in her lecture later in the afternoon.

Spring Lecture 2025

Katherine Halsey (Professor of English Studies, University of Stirling) and Matthew Sangster (Professor of Romantic Studies, Fantasy and Cultural History, University of Glasgow): ‘Towards a True History of Reading Lives: Borrowing in Scotland, 1747-1837’

Friday 21 March 2025

Chair: Professor Penny Fielding

Abstract: ‘Histories of reading have often relied by necessity on anecdotal accounts by relatively elite readers. However, the affordances of digital technologies allow us to interpret previously intractable institutional manuscripts to provide a far richer evidentiary basis. Structuring their lecture around two key reading concepts from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, ‘instruction’ and ‘amusement’, Professors Halsey and Sangster will explore how readers in Scotland engaged with library books as pupils, students, professionals, members of communities and leisure readers. They will demonstrate how library borrowing records reveal rich, complex, idiosyncratic readers, liberated rather than bound by the libraries with which they interacted, ranging far beyond the ostensible purposes of their institutions in their diverse engagements with print.’

Spring Workshop 2025

Prof. Katherine Halsey (Stirling) and Prof. Matthew Sangster (Glasgow): ‘Edinburgh University Library’s Borrowing Registers’

Friday 21 March 2025

Description: ‘This workshop will introduce participants to the borrowing registers of Edinburgh University Library, one of the largest surviving collections of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century borrowing records in Scotland. It will explore the borrowings of the students, professors and townspeople who used the library for a wide range of intellectual (and less intellectual) purposes.

During the workshop, attendees will examine the content and material form of the registers, discussing the ways in which ideological assumptions are encoded in the institutional practices represented. They will also trace some of the rich reading lives revealed in the registers’ pages.’

Autumn Lecture 2024

Dirk Van Hulle (Professor of Bibliography and Modern Book History, University of Oxford): ‘Writers’ Libraries’

Friday 8 November 2024

Chair: Dr Hannah Simpson

Every writer is also a reader. A work of literature often starts in the margins of another book. Knowing what and how a writer read can help us understand the origins of their work. This lecture considered modernist authors as readers and examined how they read, how their reading translated into their own writings, and how we can map this process in a digital edition.

Prof. Van Hulle also gave a workshop at the Centre for Research Collections, Edinburgh University Library, earlier in the day:

Autumn Workshop 2024

Prof. Dirk Van Hulle: ‘The Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project’ 

8 November 2024

A workshop exploring the work of the Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project directed by Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon.

Spring Lecture 2024

Emma Smith (Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Hertford College, University of Oxford): ‘Following the Money: Book Collecting in the Age of Slavery’ 

Friday 16 February 2024

Chair: Professor James Loxley

For the inaugural EDITION event, we welcomed Professor Emma Smith to Edinburgh from the University of Oxford to give our 2024 Spring Lecture. Emma is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford. In April 2023, she published an opinion piece in The Guardian noting that ‘as we reckon with the UK’s colonial past, we need to examine the history behind valuable books – even our beloved Shakespeare’. Emma’s lecture for Edition developed her ongoing work on connections between rare books and wealth derived from the slave trade.

Spring Workshop 2024

Prof. Emma Smith: ‘Shakespeare, Mount Stuart and Book Collecting in the Nineteenth Century’ 

Friday 16 February 2024

The Scottish Novel in 1824

1 July 2024

This one-day symposium marked the bicentenary of 1824, an ‘annus mirabilis’ in the history of Scottish fiction that saw the publication of two experimental masterpieces: James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet. More generally, this was a moment of ascendancy for ‘Scotch novels’, with the instability wrought by the financial crash of 1825/6 yet to materialise, and with the Edinburgh milieu at the heart of anglophone literary culture.

This event featured a keynote lecture from Professor Ian Duncan (University of California, Berkeley), and was hosted by Scottish Writing in the Nineteenth Century (SWINC) at the University of Edinburgh. It was supported by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities.

As part of this event, EDITION organized a ‘show and tell’ workshop, featuring rare books and other materials from Edinburgh University Library's Heritage Collections and from Selkirk Museums. 

For more information see The Scottish Novel in 1824 – A Symposium.