Cultures of Knowledge: An Intellectual Geography of the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters

Exploring the epistolary treasures of Uppsala University Library.

Demonstrating the catalogue at Uppsala University Library.

Last week provided us with an exciting opportunity to share the ongoing work of the Project, specifically relating to our union catalogue of early modern correspondence, at two of the most important research libraries in Sweden. In a whistle-stop tour of the Scandinavian state – one of the great powers of early modern Europe, with one of the most exciting epistolary collections in the world today – Project Director Howard Hotson visited Uppsala University Library (the Carolina Rediviva) and the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm, meeting their directors and other key library personnel; exploring their extensive holdings of early modern letters; and discussing our plans for the union catalogue with seminar audiences. The itinerary concluded in the Department of Literature and History at Stockholm University, where Howard presented his ongoing work on the intellectual geography of Ramism (a theme soon to be revisited in the context of our 2011 conference). We would like to thank everyone involved with the visit – especially Professor Erland Sellberg of the University of Stockholm, Dr Ulf Göransson and Håkan Hallberg of Uppsala University Library, and Dr Otfried Czaika of the National Library of Sweden – for their extremely generous Scandinavian hospitality, with a special ‘shout-out’ to Dr Per Landgren, a visiting scholar with the University of Oxford’s MEHRC, who conceived the idea, generously mobilised his scholarly connections on our behalf, and (as if this were not enough) also did most of the logistical legwork. Thanks, Per!

Introducing the catalogue at the National Library of Sweden, Stockholm.

Discussing intellectual geography at the University of Stockholm.

The Edward Worth Library, Dublin, is offering a single one-month fellowship to be held in 2011, to encourage research relevant to its collections. The Worth Library is a collection of 4,500 books, left to Dr Steevens’ Hospital by Edward Worth (1678-1733), an early eighteenth-century Dublin physician. The collection is particularly strong in three areas: early modern medicine, early modern history of science and, given that Worth was a connoisseur book collector interested in fine bindings and rare printing, the History of the Book. Research does not, however, have to be restricted to these three key areas. Further information about the collection and our catalogues may be found on the library’s website. The closing date for applications is 14 April 2011. For further details and application procedures please contact: Dr Elizabethanne Boran, Librarian, The Edward Worth Library, Dr Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin 8, Ireland (elizabethanne.boran[at]hse.ie). You can download the advertisement here (doc).

A lecture by Jacob Soll on ‘Enlightenment Libraries and the Quest for Universal Knowledge Reconsidered’ will take place at 3pm on Tuesday 25 May in the Seminar Room of the New Bodleian Library. Soll gained his doctorate in history at Cambridge University after completing a diploma of advanced studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His 2005 book, Publishing The Prince, about the afterlife and translations of Machiavelli’s work, won the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History. Since then he has written about the birth of information culture in Europe, including research on the origins of state archives, on note-taking by early modern readers, on accountancy in seventeenth-century Holland, and the critical uses of historical evidence in early modern Europe. In 2009 he published The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System. Soll teaches at Rutgers University, New Jersey. He is a Consulting Editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas and a co-founder and Associate Editor of the new online journal Republics of Letters, founded at Stanford University with Dan Edelstein.