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.
Green, Daryl: - Daryl Green is Associate Director for Heritage Collections and Co-Director of the Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh. Daryl has worked professionally with manuscripts and early printed books at York Minster Library, the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), the University of St Andrews and Oxford. He has published on early Scottish book ownership, the history of science communication and on professional topics such as exhibition theory and image rights.
Mann, Alastair J.: - Alastair J. Mann is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Scottish History at the University of Stirling. After a career in book publishing, for three decades Alastair has researched and published widely on the Scottish early modern book, especially on copyright and censorship, including his Saltire prize-winning The Scottish Book Trade, 1500 to 1720 (2000). He is an historian of the politics of the Restoration period and has published the biography King James VII: Duke and King of Scots, 1633-1701 (2014). His work also focuses on Scottish government and parliamentary history in Scotland and Europe from 1200 onwards. In digital humanities he is co-editor of the major online resource The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707 (2008-19) at http: //rps.ac.uk/ and Principal Investigator of the Leverhulme Trust funded Scottish Privy Council Project (2020-24) and co-editor of the Scottish Privy Council Records (1692-1708) (2024), at http: //spcr.ac.uk/.
Marshall, Joseph: - Joseph Marshall is Director of Collections Management at the National Library of Scotland. He trained as a rare books librarian and was Head of Special Collections at Edinburgh University Library for five years. His research interests include the writings of King James VI & I and he co-edited the edition published by Ashgate in 2003. His professional interests include digitisation, preservation and metadata.
Wingfield, Emily: - Emily Wingfield is Professor of English and Older Scots Literature at the University of Birmingham. She specialises in Older Scots romance, manuscript culture, and women's literary culture, with key publications including The Trojan Legend in Medieval Scottish Literature (2014) and the Saltire-shortlisted Scotland's Royal Women and European Literary Culture 1424-1587 (2023). She is now working on an Anglophone critical edition and translation of the writings of Mary, Queen of Scots.
