Open University Book History Research Group: ‘Reading Records: The Commonplace Books of Francis Russell at Woburn Abbey’

Sebastiaan Verweij will be giving a paper entitled ‘Reading Records: The Commonplace Books of Francis Russell at Woburn Abbey’. Everyone is welcome, and there is no need to book in advance. More details below.

The topic for the series as a whole is Paper, Pen and Ink: Manuscript Cultures in Early Modern England and the full programme is at http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/english/book-history/paper-pen-ink.shtml For further information, please contact the series organiser, Jonathan Gibson (jonathan.gibson@open.ac.uk).

Monday 3 February 2014
: University of London, Senate House, Room 234 (2nd floor), 5.30-7.00pm

Sebastiaan Verweij (University of Oxford)

‘Reading Records: The Commonplace Books of Francis Russell at Woburn Abbey’

This paper will present and discuss the manuscript library of Francis Russell, fourth earl of Bedford. The purposes of the paper are two-fold. Firstly, it will draw attention to this important and under-studied collection of manuscripts and discuss both its bibliographical nature and the extent of its engagement with early-seventeenth century intellectual and political culture. Secondly, the paper will ask how such a varied and extensive collection of ‘reading records’ (notebooks, commonplace books,annotated manuscripts, and more) can contribute to the ways in which literary scholars and historians make sense of this period.

Dr Sebastiaan Verweij works at Oxford, where he is the Research Associate for the Oxford edition of the Sermons of John Donne. He has published on Scottish literary culture and manuscript studies, and works more generally on English and Scottish early modern literature and book history.