The Lost Library of Anne Conway

The philosopher Anne Conway (1631-1679) owned a large library, and her reading and book ownership shaped her intellectual life in distinctive ways. Until now, however, almost nothing has been known about the details of her reading or her book collection. Current scholarship assumes that her library, like that of her husband, the third Viscount Conway (c. 1623–1683), was lost or dispersed after her death. This article presents previously unrecognised evidence of Conway’s book ownership, and identifies, for the first time, the only books currently known to survive from her personal library. It traces their path to their current location in the Old Library of Jesus College, Cambridge, through the library of the soldier, book collector, and Cambridge Fellow Francis Sterling (c. 1652-1692). The article demonstrates that the newly identified books reveal previously unknown patterns of intellectual exchange amongst Conway’s family, and argues that they have significant implications for our understanding of her early intellectual development

The Small Politics of Everyday Life: Local History Society Archives and the Production of Public Histories

Thousands of small, private archives sit in attics, cupboard, church halls and computer hard drives around the country; they are the archives of local history societies. Simultaneously freed from the control of archives sector and government initiatives, and yet saturated with local peculiarities and biases, local history society archives can seem to be the very antithesis of the wider archives movement, apparently private and parochial, undemocratic and uncatalogued. Consequently, local history society archives are rarely included in ‘the politics of the archive’ discussions. But if the activity of archiving is to be understood as a political act, what are the politics and meanings of local history and their archives? In this article, I suggest that certain types of local history society archive collections can help us paint a picture of the everyday lives of working-class people in Britain in the twentieth century. They detail the small politics of people’s lives – family, work, leisure, and beliefs. They give ordinary people a name, a face, and a life lived. Moreover, the workings of local history society archives raise important questions about historical production, for these groups play a significant role in rescuing and preserving archival collections, and in creating and curating their own histories

The global interests of London's commercial community, 1599-1625: investment in the East India Company

The foundation of the East India Company coincided with a dramatic expansion of England's overseas activities brought about through new trading, colonial, and exploratory ventures. This period has received considerable attention in relation to the development of the British Empire, but little is known about how merchants and other commercial actors invested in and contributed to these organizations. Using a newly developed dataset of membership and investment in overseas activities, this article reconstructs the individual portfolios of East India Company members in 1599, 1613, and 1624. This analysis reveals that investors took advantage of opportunities across the globe, and diverse portfolios were common. The implications of this are two?fold. First, this article makes clear that our current understanding of the East India Company as closely connected with the Levant Company is not sustained with evidence from investment patterns. Second, the interests of London's commercial community suggest new avenues for understanding the early British Empire as a tightly connected, globally focused set of institutions, people, and networks

Dearth and the English revolution : the harvest crisis of 1647-50

This article reconstructs the nature and scale of dearth in the late 1640s, emphasizing the coincidence of economic distress with constitutional crisis. It reconsiders the parish register evidence for subsistence crisis; examines the responses of central and local government; analyses the role of popular agency, especially though petitioning campaigns, in prompting reluctant magistrates to regulate the grain markets along lines stipulated by the late Elizabethan and early Stuart dearth orders, which had not been proclaimed since 1630; and accordingly suggests that the late 1640s represents a missing link in the historiography of responses to harvest failure

Using manuscript sources for British history

This article tells you how to use manuscript sources for British History. It was written in 1995 by RJ Olney from the Historical Manuscripts Commission

Annual review 2000-2001

Available from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:1520.3941(2000/2001) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo