Mathematical Book Histories: Printing, Provenance, and Practices of Reading

This book both articulates and responds to increasing scholarly interest in the materiality of the book. Taking as its base the unique collection of mathematical books in the Russell Library at Maynooth, it addresses questions related to printing techniques and print culture, book production, provenance, and reading practices. It considers the histories of individual items of the Russell Collection, their previous locations and owners, and explores ways in which annotations, underlinings, hand-drawn diagrams, and the like reveal patterns of reading and usage. Finally, it seeks to elicit more information on a previously under-researched topic: the historical role of mathematics in the extensive network of Irish colleges that once covered Catholic Europe, located in places such as Salamanca, Rome, Douai, and Prague. Alongside delivering important new insights into print culture as a medium for transmitting scientific ideas, Mathematical Book Histories is thus also intended to contribute to a broader understanding of the role and significance of mathematics in the context of clerical instruction and more broadly in the academic tradition of Ireland up to the beginning of the twentieth century. Many of the volumes in the Russell Library reflect the remarkably rich book-trade that flourished in seventeenth and early eighteenth century Dublin and which was quite distinct from that in London. Booksellers often bought in their wares directly from abroad, with the result that publications could enter collections that did not enter the purview of contemporary English or Scottish scholars in Britain. 

Philip Beeley is a Research Fellow and Tutor in the Faculty of History and Fellow of Linacre College, University of Oxford. He is a  former President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics and is a member of the Bernoulli-Euler Kommission.

Ciarán Mac an Bhaird is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Maynooth University. He is co-organiser of the biennial Irish History of Mathematics Conference and Education Officer for the British Society for the History of Mathematics.