Author: Mark Purcell
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300248687
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
Beginning with new evidence that cites the presence of books in Roman villas and concluding with present day vicissitudes of collecting, this generously illustrated book presents a complete survey of British and Irish country house libraries. Replete with engaging anecdotes about owners and librarians, the book features fascinating information on acquisition bordering on obsession, the process of designing library architecture, and the care (and neglect) of collections. The author also disputes the notion that these libraries were merely for show, arguing that many of them were profoundly scholarly, assembled with meticulous care, and frequently used for intellectual pursuits. For those who love books and the libraries in which they are collected and stored, The Country House Library is an essential volume to own.
Author: Mark Purcell
Publisher: National Trust
ISBN: 9780707804163
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In 1850 there were perhaps 2000 country houses in Ireland. Standing at the heart of its demesne, each Big House dominated its locality, but by the end of the 20th century, only a few hundred survived intact. No more than a handful were still in the possession of their original owners, or contained many of their original contents, including a substantial library. In some cases, this might well have been the only library in the district, though whether it was a carefully assembled collection or a haphazard accumulation of ancestral books would have varied from place to place. The National Trust in what is now Northern Ireland is responsible for most of the survivors. These collections have survived almost like time capsules, never subject to atmospheric pollution or the attentions of reforming librarians, and not heavily used in modern times. Many of their books contain the bookplates and ownership inscriptions of their long-dead owners, as well as instructions to binders, handwritten marginal notes and prices, and even the odd pressed flower; most are also in their original bindings. Together these features tell us a good deal about the tastes and interests of the people who owned them, and about the use, abuse and circulation of print across the whole of Ireland over a period of more than 400 years. Drawing on a wide range of previously untapped sources and evidence from the collections themselves, this lavishly-illustrated book is a must for anyone interested in the history of reading, collecting or country houses in Ireland.
Author: Mark Girouard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300034721
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 467
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Book Description
A study of Britain's great nineteenth-century houses examines their architects, and the social, technological, and economic conditions that made the massive structures possible
Author: Jon Stobart
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191039705
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 484
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Book Description
This study explores the consumption practices of the landed aristocracy of Georgian England. Focussing on three families and drawing on detailed analysis of account books, receipted bills, household inventories, diaries and correspondence, Consumption and the Country House charts the spending patterns of this elite group during the so-called consumer revolution of the eighteenth century. Generally examined through the lens of middling families, homes and motivations, this book explores the ways in which the aristocracy were engaged in this wider transformation of English society. Analysis centres on the goods that the aristocracy purchased, both luxurious and mundane; the extent to which they pursued fashionable modes and goods; the role that family and friends played in shaping notions of taste; the influence of gender on taste and refinement; the geographical reach of provisioning and the networks that lay behind this consumer activity, and the way this all contributed to the construction of the country house. The country house thus emerges as much more than a repository of luxury and splendour; it lay at the heart of complex networks of exchange, sociability, demand, and supply. Exploring these processes and relationships serves to reanimate the country house, making it an active site of consumption rather than simply an expression of power and taste, and drawing it into the mainstream of consumption histories. At the same time, the landed aristocracy are shown to be rounded consumers, driven by values of thrift and restraint as much as extravagant desires, and valuing the old as well as the new, not least as markers of their pedigree and heritance.
Author: Catherine M. Parisian
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271037148
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
Although many early U.S. presidents were avid readers and book collectorsGeorge Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, to name a fewthey usually brought their own books to the White House and removed them at the end of their terms. Finally in 1850, Abigail and Millard Fillmore established the first official White House collection. The library that President and First Lady Fillmore assembled reflects not only their preoccupations and interests, but also those of a number of mid-nineteenth-century Americans. This catalogue of the first White House collection not only reveals much about the first family that established it and the age in which it was assembled, but also provides insight into American library history, reading history, and book trade and distribution networks. Aside from the editor, the contributors are William Allman, Elizabeth Thacker-Estrada, and Sean Wilentz.
Author: David Pearson
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198870124
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
This volume examines private libraries and book ownership in seventeenth-century England, with particular focus on how libraries developed over this period and the social impact that they had.
Author: Providence Public Library (R.I.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Classified catalogs
Languages : en
Pages : 176
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Book Description
Author: Mark Towsey
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004348670
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
Before the Public Library explores the emergence of community-based lending libraries in the Atlantic World before the advent of the Public Library movement in the mid-nineteenth century. Essays by eighteen scholars from a range of disciplines seek to place, for the first time, community libraries within an Atlantic context over a two-century period. Taking a comparative approach, this volume shows that community libraries played an important – and largely unrecognized – role in shaping Atlantic social networks, political and religious movements, scientific and geographic knowledge, and economic enterprise. Libraries had a distinct role to play in shaping modern identities through the acquisition and circulation of specific kinds of texts, the fostering of sociability, and the building of community-based institutions.
Author: Kate Retford
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501337319
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 365
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Book Description
For every great country house of the Georgian period, there was usually also a town house. Chatsworth, for example, the home of the Devonshires, has officially been recognised as one of the country's favourite national treasures - but most of its visitors know little of Devonshire House, which the family once owned in the capital. In part, this is because town houses were often leased, rather than being passed down through generations as country estates were. But, most crucially, many London town houses, including Devonshire House, no longer exist, having been demolished in the early twentieth century. This book seeks to place centre-stage the hugely important yet hitherto overlooked town houses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, exploring the prime position they once occupied in the lives of families and the nation as a whole. It explores the owners, how they furnished and used these properties, and how their houses were judged by the various types of visitor who gained access.
Author: Anne-Imelda Radice
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 122
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Book Description
