Forthcoming Events
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
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
Past Events
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.’