Anna-Lujz Gilbert

My research focuses on the book history of early modern England, using both traditional and digital methods. My role at Manchester is as a postdoc on the project Continental European Books in Early Modern England, 1500–1640 (PI: Fred Schurink). The project is developing data methods to investigate the circulation of European texts and imprints in England at a time when the English market was reliant upon imported books. Previously, I was a postdoc on the Shaping Scholarship: Early Donations to the Bodleian Library project at UCL (PI: Robyn Adams), where I led the construction of a database of gifts to the Bodleian c. 1600–1620.

As well as the application of digital methods in book history, I have a particular interest in the public and semi-public libraries of early modern England. This has arisen out of my PhD, undertaken at the University of Exeter, on the town and parish libraries of Devon. My thesis uses surviving books alongside archival evidence to expose practices of book use amongst the middling sorts, an important constituency of readers whose bookish activities are rarely recorded. My PhD also left me with an abiding interest in the book cultures of early modern Devon, and provincial book cultures more generally.