Private Libraries and their Documentation, 1665-1830

The essays in Private Libraries and their Documentation revolve around the users and contents of early modern private book collections, and around the sources used to document and study these collections. They take the reader from large-scale projects on historical book ownership to micro-level research conducted on individual libraries, and from analyses of specific types of primary sources to general typologies and overviews by period and by region. As a result of its comparative approach and active engagement with questions regarding the nature, selection and accessibility of sources, the volume serves as a guide to sources and resources in different regions as well as to state-of the-art methods and interpretational approaches.

Publication of this volume in open access was made possible by the Ammodo KNAW Award 2017 for Humanities.

Rindert Jagersma (PhD, University of Amsterdam) is a book historian and bibliographer, specialised in the quantitative approach of the book trade of the Dutch Republic around 1700. In the ERC-funded MEDIATE project, he focuses on Dutch auction catalogues and their owners.

Helwi Blom (PhD, Utrecht University) lectures in French (Radboud University) and Comparative Literature (Utrecht University). Her scholarly interests include chivalric romance, popular print, and book and library history. In the MEDIATE project, she studies early modern French private library catalogues.

Evelien Chayes (PhD, University of Amsterdam) is a researcher at the CNRS Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes, Paris. She has published monographs and articles on the circulation of texts and book ownership during the Renaissance up to circa 1700.

Ann-Marie Hansen (PhD, McGill University) is Project Manager of ‘Unlocking the Fagel Collection’ at the Library of Trinity College. Her research interests include early modern readers’ interactions with print, book collecting, and cataloguing practices, particularly with regards to Sammelbände.