Evening Talk: Inside the Eighteenth‑Century Reading Room

Buchanan Lecture - George Buchanan’s Afterlives: Borrowings of Buchanan’s Works in Scottish Libraries, c. 1750-1840

This lecture examines the many “afterlives” of George Buchanan by tracing how his works were borrowed and read across the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. During this period, Buchanan’s books circulated not only through the university libraries of Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews, and Aberdeen, but also far beyond them: among pupils at the Royal High School of Edinburgh, lawyers at the Advocates Library, ministers using the Leighton Library in Dunblane and the Dumfries Presbytery Library, and—perhaps most intriguingly—elite women borrowing from Chambers Circulating Library in Edinburgh’s New Town.

Through comparisons with the circulation patterns of other popular authors and texts, the lecture considers what these borrowing records reveal about Buchanan’s enduring appeal in Scotland during the long eighteenth century, as well as what they suggest about literate culture more broadly. Drawing on findings from the Books and Borrowing 1750–1830 research project, the lecture begins by introducing the project, outlining its key discoveries and its relevance to questions of literary longevity, before turning to Buchanan himself and the varied afterlives of his work.

Biography

Katie Halsey is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at the University of Stirling, and co-directs the centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies there. She has written and edited books on Jane Austen, Shakespeare, conversation in the long eighteenth century, the history of libraries, and the history of reading. Her most recent research project investigated which books were really circulating in Scotland in the period 1750-1840.

/ Doors open 6:30pm for tea/coffee included in ticket donation / For further information email [email protected]

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