"This volume arises from a conference, organized by the British Book History Research Network, the Edward Worth Library and the Rare Books Group of the Library Association of Ireland, which was held at the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, in November 2016"--Introduction.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Readers or collectors? Manuscripts and books in the lives of Irish scholars in late seventeenth-century Connacht [by] Bernadette Cunningham -- A tale of two seventeenth-century libraries: the books and world views of a Limerick patrician family and a Cork landowner [by] Marc Caball -- The Otway-Maurice collection: ecclesiastical collecting in late seventeenth to mid-eighteenth-century Ireland [by] Barbara McCormack -- Dr Edward Worth: a connoisseur book collector in early eighteenth-century Dublin [by] Elizabethanne Boran -- James Hardiman: book collector [by] Marie Boran -- Collection by donation: the benefactors’ registers of Oxford college libraries in the seventeenth century [by] William Poole -- Motives for book collecting in late seventeenth-century England [by] David Pearson -- ‘Calculated for instruction and entertainment’: lending libraries in Georgian Leeds [by] Rebecca Bowd -- ‘The finest theological library in the world’: the rise and fall of the Bibliotheca Sussexiana [by] Gabriel Moshenska -- A family of readers in eighteenth-century Scotland: the Areskines of Alva and their books [by] Karen Baston -- The country house library in Scotland [by] Mark Purcell -- The library as a weapon of state: the pamphlet collection of Gaspar Fagel in Trinity College, Dublin [by] Andrew Pettegree & Arthur der Weduwen

This volume explores the world of book collecting in early modern Ireland and Britain. It investigates the modalities of collecting texts, both manuscript and printed, and draws attention to the wider impact of the European book trade on changing reading habits and availability of books. Early modern book collectors bought books for a variety of reasons. By combining case studies of institutional and private book collectors the essays not only demonstrate how individual collections came into being, but also how both private and public collections interacted with each other. Book collecting, far from being a solitary exercise, was dependent on the expanding Republic of Letters. The essays therefore offer vital insights into the communal world of the early modern book trade. Publisher