Julianne Simpson

I am Librarian at Chetham's Library Manchester, the oldest public library in Britain, founded in 1653, and an Honorary Fellow of the John Rylands Research Institute. I was previously Collections and Discovery Manager at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library with curatorial responsibility for foreign language and literature printed collections, incunabula, history of science, technology and medicine, and East Asian printed collections.

I have worked in London, Oxford and Melbourne and completed an MA in the History of the Book at the University of London in 1997. My own research uses the Plantin archives in Antwerp to study the sale and distribution of books across Europe in the 16th century. More broadly my research interests cover the international book trade in the 16th century, early modern private libraries and the study of provenance and annotation in early printed books