The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, Volume 1, Part II: From the Earliest Times to 1707 – Networks, Collections and Genre

Presents exciting new research on the key book collectors, authors and genres which rose and fell in popularity across the medieval and early modern period in Scotland

• Includes a wide-ranging section of ‘Key Genres’ which provide a navigational tool for understanding the relationship between manuscript, print and readership
• Reveals new and exciting research into royal and academic book collectors, female authorship and reading practices, and the rise of news and cheap print
• Contains focused profiles of individual collectors and book owners, networks of readership and unique studies of well-known Scottish Renaissance authors

Over two parts, 69 leading scholars, librarians and archivists come together to analyse the development of the book in Scotland from the early seventh century BCE to the 1707 Union, from depictions of books in carved stone monuments to the printing presses of Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow producing pamphlets and receipts used for everyday business at the end of the seventeenth century.

Part II: Networks, Collections and Genre focuses on the types of books and printed material that were being made, produced, collected and used in Scotland in the medieval and early modern periods. On a scale not before attempted, Part II includes a survey of the genres of books and written material produced and consumed in Scotland over a millennium of the country’s history. Profiles of individual collectors help to illustrate the wider narratives of individuals, institutions and networks of the owners, collectors and patrons who helped shaped the bookish landscape of Scotland before the Union.